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New evidence suggests that sometimes simply throwing garbage away is more environmentally friendly, financially prudent and safer for human health than following the omnipresent fashion of recycling. An article by John Tierny, "Recycling is Garbage," which appeared in the New York Times Magazine, challenges the current recycling wisdom. While recycling occasionally makes economic sense (aluminum cans, automobile tires), it is more often a pointless and costly exercise.
A number of governments are starting to rethink recycling. New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani recently called New York's recycling goals "absurd" and "impossible." Sometimes mandates to recycle and use recycled products create worse environmental and health hazards than the problems they were meant to solve.
Critics charge that legislated mandates for the use and purchase of recycled products have wasted taxpayers' money, cost consumers more, both at the point of purchase and by limiting product options, dampened the development of resource-saving technological innovations and on occasion harmed the environment. Technology, they contend, has made it possible to use resources without danger of exhausting them. And as for the space necessary to dispose of solid waste by traditional methods, garbage generated at current rates for the next 1,000 years could be contained in a landfill just 100 yards deep and 35 miles square.< Source: Former Gov. Pete du Pont (National Center for Policy Analysis), "Rubbish Bin of Recycling," Washington Times, July 20, 1996. |