Rethinking the Rites of Recycling

nvironmentalists may not like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposal to suspend the recycling of cans and bottles. But it could be their best chance to save their reputations and do some good for the environment.

The recycling program was sold to New Yorkers nearly a decade ago with the promise that it would save money. It did not. If New York had instead shipped all those recyclables to out-of-state landfills, the city would have saved more than half a billion dollars, and that figure doesn't even include the biggest costs, which are the labor and storage space that citizens are forced to donate to the cause.

Recycling newspapers makes a certain amount of sense, because used newsprint often has economic value and people often have special bins for their newspapers anyway. But why clutter the city with bins for stuff that's less than worthless? The city pays extra to collect and dispose of the bottles and cans, and then 40 percent of the stuff ends up in landfills anyway.

Could this sort of recycling ever pay for itself, as environmentalists are still promising? Maybe, but only if its devotees abandon their passion for hand-sorted trash and their belief that we're running out of natural resources. They've expected recycling to become profitable as raw materials become more expensive, but they're on the wrong side of two historical trends. For thousands of years, the costs of natural resources have been falling in relation to the cost of labor.

Recycling might someday pay if the sorting were done not by hand but by machines. Miners and oil drillers have used computerized technology to extract small concentrations of materials that would once have been unprofitable. Maybe robots will one day profitably sift garbage for minerals and plastics.

But many environmentalists don't like this vision. In some cities, they've fought plans to use automated sorting equipment because they wanted people to have the hands-on experience. Here in New York, one of the most expensive labor forces on the planet is being forced to sort materials that third world peasants wouldn't waste their time saving.

Recycling has become a sacrament of atonement for buying too much stuff — for secretly loving stuff too much, as James B. Twitchell explains in "Lead Us Into Temptation," a study of consumer passions. "While we claim to be wedded to responsible consumption," he writes, "we spend a lot of our time philandering. Trash is lipstick on the collar, the telltale blond hair." Recycling is our way of saying, "I'm sorry, honey."

Sinners have every right to repent, but in this country religious sacraments are not supposed to be legally mandated or publicly subsidized. Recycling bottles and cans next year would cost taxpayers more than $50 million. Why don't its devotees find another ritual of atonement that might help the environment and save the city money?

SUPPOSE that all the time and money spent exhorting children and adults to recycle were spent instead urging each New Yorker to pick up one piece of litter each day. Millions of pieces of trash would disappear; street-cleaning bills would plummet.

Perhaps guilty consumers could get used to paying for their sins with cash. Environmentalists could urge the end of free trash collection. If people had to pay for each can of trash they produced, they'd find ways to reduce waste, and the city budget would benefit.

Or suppose environmentalists channeled their zeal for recycling into another political cause: putting tolls on the East River bridges. These tolls would have economic virtues (more on that in another column), while also reducing air pollution and fuel consumption by easing traffic congestion. The recycling program, by contrast, increases local air pollution and fuel consumption by putting extra trucks on the roads to collect bottles and cans.

Could the act of paying a toll be turned into a sacrament? Could children and adults be trained to regard the toll as penance for the extravagance of owning a gas- guzzling, polluting machine?

Some recycling devotees might not be satisfied. Paying a toll on the East River bridges might seem too simple, too antiseptic, too easy by comparison with the mortification of sorting garbage. For these ascetics, maybe the best ritual would be for them to get out of their cars altogether and walk across the bridges, possibly on their knees. For extra penance, these pilgrims could carry sacks filled with old bottles and cans.

The cost of landfill is not usually considered at full market value when comparing recycling costs because it can be passed on to somebody else, usually a future generation as was done with Love Canal.

Likewise, the cost of extracting new materials is not factored into the equation. For example, the cost of depleting the iron ranges in northeast Minnesota has produced generations of poverty and depopulation.

Within reason, recycling has benefits beyond immediate economics. Giving those on the bottom of the economic rung a chance to work rather than claim a handout is one of those benefits.

The aluminum industry has been very responsible and successful about promoting recycling. The glass industry, on the other hand, has been a case study in irresponsibility refusing to do such simple things as standardize colors. Do we really need 128 shades of green for wine bottles, f'rinstance?

Another cost not recognized by the throwaway mentality is social costs. Again, I'll pick on the glass industry. When someone throws a beer bottle on the parking lot and damages a tire (or someone's bare foot), the cost of not recycling is imposed on a third party which gained no benefit from the transaction.

Therefore, I can support bottle deposit laws much easier than I can those on aluminum cans (the consequenses of stepping on cannot even compare to glass).

You are making a circular argument here. You are claiming a knowledge beyond the market that does not exist, and your example is false. Love Canal did not impose costs on future generations because of lack of recycling. Costs to future generations were caused by greedy politicians who used political power to override the concerns of the company who disposed of the waste in a safe and accepted manner. The only way to judge the costs is by the market, as costs are subjective and change radically over time as new technologies are developed.

You are wrong again. I grew up in the area, and the iron mines produced generations of stable, well paying jobs. If they had not existed, the jobs would not have existed. If the demand for iron would have been lower, there would not have been as many jobs. A great deal of iron is recycled already, where it makes sense to do so. We are not running out of resources, as evidenced by the fall of the price of materials in constant dollars.

If we have learned anything in the last 85 years, it is that the market should be relyed on to set prices and determine efficiencies. Trying to rely on central planning and wishful thinking results in massive poverty and death, as has happened in those socialsist countries that have insisted on this approach. The more central planning, the more poverty. Mandated recycling without regard for the market is just central planning in a microcosm.

Thanks, Samuel, for starting to deconstruct Rubber Duckie's response. As soon as I read it, I knew that it had to be answered point by specious point. I will continue your good work:

First of all, Love Canal was a hazardous waste dump site, not Municipal Solid Waste dump site. There is a world of difference. A modern Municipal Solid Waste dump site is designed for permanent disposal, and the costs necessary to do this properly and safely are designed into the dump. Also, the lifetime operating costs of the dump are factored into the tipping fees, because these costs have to be capitialized while the dump is active.

If Iron had never been extracted from Minnesota, would they be any richer? The Iron may be gone now, and the jobs may be gone now. But if there was no Iron mining, there would never have been jobs to start with. BTW, the vast majority of waste Iron and steel is recycled in this country, because it is profitable to do so.

Within reason, recycling has benefits beyond immediate economics. Giving those on the bottom of the economic rung a chance to work rather than claim a handout is one of those benefits.

Fifty million dollars in direct costs for NYC to provide subsistance level degrading work to a few homeless people is not a cost that is within reason. It would be far more cost effective to give them real jobs that don't involve sorting through other people's garbage.

The economics of aluminum and glass are very different. Aluminum ore must be refined using a very expensive and energy consuming electrical cathodization process. Waste aluminum does not need to be re-refined, so these energy costs are saved. So recycled aluminum is an economically viable product, provided the costs of collection are not too high. The problem with residential recycling is that the costs of collection, especially when the real cost of time and resources in considered, is huge, far outweighing the value of the material recovered. As for glass, even if we had state-approved colors for bottles, the cost of reprocessing a glass bottle is pretty much the same as starting from virgin material, since the first step is to pulverize the glass bottle to where it is basically the same material as the virgin material. So even if there is no collection and transportation expense, glass recycling is not viable. The fact that there are a multitude of colors only makes in more unviable.

As an aside, the reason we need 128 shades of green is that there are 5000 manufacturers who are trying to sell their products, and will produce a bottle that displays their product in the best light and distinguish them in the marketplace. Consumers like pretty colors and shiny objects, and the producer is trying to maximize sales and profit. This is basic to the exchange economy and is the engine that makes our country run. If you don't like that, you have problems with this country that go far beyond waste management.

Another cost not recognized by the throwaway mentality is social costs. Again, I'll pick on the glass industry. When someone throws a beer bottle on the parking lot and damages a tire (or someone's bare foot), the cost of not recycling is imposed on a third party which gained no benefit from the transaction.

Littering is illegal in every municipality in the land. If someone is going to risk a $500 fine, a 5 cent deposit is not going to change his mind. If the beer bottle in your example breaks, the homeless guy is not going to pick it up to recycle it anyway. The cost imposed on society is not the cost imposed by not recycling. The cost is imposed by improper disposal. That is why there are legal penalties for improper disposal.

Therefore, I can support bottle deposit laws much easier than I can those on aluminum cans (the consequenses of stepping on cannot even compare to glass).

I don't know of any deposit laws that apply to bottles only. But bottle laws don't do anything about broken bottles anyway. That's a littering problem. There is a limit on how much money we should be willing to pay to solve that problem. Fifty million dollars in NYC would pay for a lot of street sweepers each year. It might even be possible to do the job for less.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.