{"id":29210,"date":"2022-06-20T10:15:24","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T14:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=29210"},"modified":"2022-06-20T10:16:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T14:16:09","slug":"how-americas-recycling-program-failed-and-scarred-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2022\/06\/20\/how-americas-recycling-program-failed-and-scarred-the-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"How America\u2019s Recycling Program Failed\u2014and Scarred the Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"attachment wp-att-29211 keychainify-checked\" href=\"\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=29211\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-29211\" src=\"\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/recycling_failed_environment-1024x645-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"802\" height=\"505\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In March 2019, <em>The New York Times<\/em> ran <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/16\/business\/local-recycling-costs.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">a shocking story<\/a> exploring why many prominent US cities were abandoning their recycling programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhiladelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents\u2019 recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy,\u201d <em>Times <\/em>business writer Michael Corkery reported. \u201cIn Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Philadelphia and Memphis were not outliers. They, along with Deltona, Florida, which had suspended its recycling program the previous month, were just a few examples of <em>hundreds <\/em>of cities across the country that had scrapped recycling programs or scaled back operations.<\/p>\n<p>Since that time, cities across the country have continued to scrap recycling programs, citing high costs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe cost of recycling was going to double, and the town wasn&#8217;t going to be able to absorb that cost,\u201d <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thedenverchannel.com\/news\/national-politics\/the-race-2020\/cities-across-the-country-no-longer-recycling-because-it-is-just-too-expensive\" rel=\"nofollow\">said<\/a> Dencia Raish, the town clerk administrator for Akron, Colorado, which ended its program in 2021 and now sends \u201crecyclables\u201d to a landfill.<\/p>\n<p>While many Americans likely are distraught about America\u2019s failed recycling experiment, a new video produced by Kite &amp; Key Media reveals that abandoning recycling\u2014at least in its current form\u2014is likely to benefit both Americans and the environment.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-0\">A Brief History of Recycling<\/h2>\n<p>Like many problems in American history, recycling began as a moral panic.<\/p>\n<p>The frenzy began in the spring of 1987 when a massive barge carrying more than 3,000 tons of garb<a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mobro_4000\" rel=\"nofollow\">age\u2014the Mobro <\/a>4000\u2014was turned away from a North Carolina port because rumor had it the barge was carrying toxic waste. (It wasn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThus began one of the biggest garbage sagas in modern history,\u201d <em>Vice News<\/em> <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/nzzppg\/the-mobro-4000#:~:text=Thus%20began%20one%20of%20the,doomed%20to%20never%20make%20port.\" rel=\"nofollow\">reported<\/a> in a feature published a quarter-century later, \u201ca picaresque journey of a small boat overflowing with stuff no one wanted, a flotilla of waste, a trashier version of the Flying Dutchman, that ghost ship doomed to never make port.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Mobro was simply seeking a landfill to dumb the garbage, but everywhere the barge went it was turned away. After North Carolina, the captain tried Louisiana. Nope. Then the Mobro tried Belize, then Mexico, then the Bahamas. No dice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Mobro ended up spending six months at sea trying to find a place that would take its trash,\u201d Kite &amp; Key Media notes.<\/p>\n<p>America became obsessed with the story. In 1987 there was no Netflix, smartphones, or Twitter, so apparently everyone just decided to watch this barge carrying tons of trash for entertainment. The Mobro became, in the words of <em>Vice<\/em>, \u201cthe most watched load of garbage in the memory of man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Mobro also became perhaps the most consequential load of garbage in history.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Mobro had two big and related effects,\u201d Kite &amp; Key Media explains. \u201cFirst, the media reporting around it convinced Americans that we were running out of landfill space to dispose of our trash. Second, it convinced them the solution was recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Neither claim, however, was true.<\/p>\n<p>The idea that the US was running out of landfill space is <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.waste360.com\/operations\/regional-landfill-capacity-problems-do-not-equate-national-shortage\" rel=\"nofollow\">a myth<\/a>. The urban legend likely stems from the consolidation of landfills in the 1980s, which saw many waste depots retired because they were small and inefficient, not because of a national shortage. In fact, researchers estimate that if you take just the land the US uses for grazing in the Great Plains region, and use one-tenth of one percent of it, you\u2019d have enough space for America&#8217;s garbage for the next thousand years. (This is not to say that regional problems do not exist, <em>Slate <\/em><a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/technology\/2011\/02\/landfills-are-we-running-out-of-room-for-our-garbage.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">points out<\/a>..<\/p>\n<p>Mandated recycling efforts, meanwhile, have proven fraught.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ix9Kj_9kFbo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-1\">The Economics of Recycling<\/h2>\n<p>During moral panics, it\u2019s not uncommon for lawmakers to get involved. Recycling was no exception.<\/p>\n<p>Within just a handful of years of the Mobro panic, a recycling revolution spread across the continent. In a single year, more than 140 recycling laws were enacted in 38 states\u2014in most cases mandating recycling and\/or requiring citizens to pay for it. Within just a few years 6,000 curbside programs serving some 70 million Americans were created.<\/p>\n<p>Some people saw problems early on in this approach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact is that sometimes recycling makes sense and sometimes it doesn\u2019t. In the legislative rush to pass recycling mandates, state and local governments should pause to consider the science and the economics of every proposition,\u201d economist Lawrence Reed <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/recycling-myths\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" data-toggle=\"popover\">wrote in 1995<\/a>. \u201cOften, bad ideas are worse than none at all and can produce lasting damage if they are enshrined in law. Simply demanding that something be recycled can be disruptive of markets and it does not guarantee that recycling that makes either economic or environmental sense will even occur.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reality is recycling is incredibly complicated\u2014something <em>Discover <\/em>magazine <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"http:\/\/discovermagazine.com\/2009\/jul-aug\/06-when-recycling-is-bad-for-the-environment\" rel=\"nofollow\">pointed out<\/a> more than a decade ago. While it makes sense to recycle some products, there\u2019s also circumstances where recycling makes no sense at all.<\/p>\n<p>Take plastic. For various reasons, plastic is not conducive to recycling. A Columbia University study <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"http:\/\/www.seas.columbia.edu\/earth\/wtert\/sofos\/bhatti_thesis.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow\">published in 2010<\/a> found that a mere 16.5 percent of plastic collected by New York\u2019s Department of Sanitation was actually \u201crecyclable.\u201d That might not sound like much, but it\u2019s actually much higher than the percentage of plastic that is recycled globally, according to other studies.<\/p>\n<p>Physics has a lot to do with this. In most cases, it\u2019s less expensive to simply make new plastic than to recycle old plastic. But the costs of recycling are not just economic.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-2\">The Environmental Costs of Recycling<\/h2>\n<p>Proponents of recycling often acknowledge its economic costs. These costs can run high and recently got even higher (more on that later), but they say those costs are necessary to protect the environment.<\/p>\n<p>The argument ignores, however, that recycling\u2014especially recycling done badly\u2014also comes with severe environmental costs. It doesn\u2019t just take dollars to recycle plastic but also energy and water (think about how much water you spend rinsing your recyclables for a moment).<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\">\n<div id=\"om-fqmeg7lcejd7fy5oro5r-holder\">\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"om-lxkcubhhqwmdm0lkjkbp-holder\">\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>For plastic in particular, the environmental costs are even more staggering than the economic costs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe newest, high tech methods of recycling [plastic] generate carbon emission 55 times higher than just putting it into a landfill,\u201d Kite &amp; Key Media says.<\/p>\n<p>But greenhouse gas emissions aren\u2019t the only environmental cost. Did you ever wonder how we got a patch of plastic in the ocean that is twice the size of Texas?<\/p>\n<p>The Great Pacific garbage patch is a mass of debris in the Pacific Ocean that weighs about 3 million tons. How it got there is <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch\" rel=\"nofollow\">not exactly a mystery<\/a>. It\u2019s a collection of trash that came from countries in Asia, South America, and North America that researchers believe has increased \u201c10-fold each decade&#8221; since the conclusion of World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Americans who\u2019ve spent the last few decades recycling might think their hands are clean. Alas, they are not. As the Sierra Club noted in 2019, for decades Americans\u2019 recycling bins have held \u201ca dirty secret.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHalf the plastic and much of the paper you put into it did not go to your local recycling center. Instead, it was stuffed onto giant container ships and sold to China,\u201d journalist Edward Humes <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sierraclub.org\/sierra\/2019-4-july-august\/feature\/us-recycling-system-garbage\" rel=\"nofollow\">wrote<\/a>. \u201cThere, the dirty bales of mixed paper and plastic were processed under the laxest of environmental controls. Much of it was simply dumped, washing down rivers to feed the crisis of ocean plastic pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s almost too hard to believe. We paid China to take our recycled trash. China used some and dumped the rest. All that washing, rinsing, and packaging of recyclables Americans were doing for decades\u2014and much of it was simply being thrown into the water instead of into the ground.<\/p>\n<p>The gig was up in 2017 when China announced they were done taking the world\u2019s garbage through its oddly-named program, <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Operation_National_Sword\" rel=\"nofollow\">Operation National Sword<\/a>. This made recycling much more expensive, which is why hundreds of cities began to scrap and scale back operations.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s decision provoked anger in the United States, but in reality the decision was a first (and necessary) step toward improving the environment and coming to grips with a failed paradigm.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-3\">Means and Ends<\/h2>\n<p>Americans meant well with their recycling efforts. We thought by recycling trash instead of burying it in a landfill, we were doing some good. Instead, tons of it (literally thousands and thousands of tons) was thrown into rivers and other waterways, contributing to the ocean plastic <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/why-socialism-causes-pollution\/\" data-toggle=\"popover\">pollution<\/a> problem.<\/p>\n<p>How did this happen?<\/p>\n<p>There are several answers to this question. NPR says Big Oil\u2014always a convenient scapegoat\u2014<a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2020\/09\/11\/897692090\/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled\" rel=\"nofollow\">is to blame<\/a> for letting people believe that recycling plastic made sense. But I think basic economics and moral philosophy are a better place to start.<\/p>\n<p>There was a reason Larry Reed, who today is president emeritus of FEE, sniffed out the false promise of recycling nearly 30 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMarket economists\u2014by nature, philosophy, and experience\u2014are skeptical of schemes to supplant the free choices of consumers with the dictates of central planners,\u201d Reed explained at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The idea that mountains of refuse can just be turned into something of value with the right local mandates never smelled right, largely because we have centuries of evidence that show markets are smarter than government bureaucrats because markets use infinitely more knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>This might sound simple, but the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman correctly observed it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hardest thing in the world to understand is that people operating separately, through their joint relations with one another, through market transactions, can achieve a greater degree of efficiency and of output than can a single central planner,\u201d Friedman noted in <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoover.org\/news\/ten-years-ago-milton-friedman-discussed-economic-effects-911-uncommon-knowledge\" rel=\"nofollow\">a 2001 interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><iframe style=\"position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 552px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;\" id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=feeonline&amp;dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3JlZnNyY19zZXNzaW9uIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9mZiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0Zndfc2Vuc2l0aXZlX21lZGlhX2ludGVyc3RpdGlhbF8xMzk2MyI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJpbnRlcnN0aXRpYWwiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X3Jlc3VsdF9taWdyYXRpb25fMTM5NzkiOnsiYnVja2V0IjoidHdlZXRfcmVzdWx0IiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1529493018025279490&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Ffee.org%2Farticles%2Fhow-america-s-recycling-program-failed-and-scarred-the-environment%2F&amp;sessionId=a3b101af360e9beee4f6bb804101588293e31b58&amp;siteScreenName=feeonline&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=b45a03c79d4c1%3A1654150928467&amp;width=550px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1529493018025279490\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p>This is not to say recycling can never work. It can.<\/p>\n<p>Items like cardboard, paper, and metals (think aluminum) account for as much as 90 percent of greenhouse gas reduction from recycling, research shows, and they also make the most sense economically, since they are less expensive to recycle and offer more value.<\/p>\n<p>The problem isn\u2019t recycling, but the means we use to recycle. The author Leonard Read, the founder of FEE, was fond of a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem that touched on ends and means.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed;\u201d Emerson <a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=xs20SXpiARgC&amp;pg=PA24&amp;lpg=PA24&amp;dq=Cause+and+effect,+means+and+ends,+see+and+fruit,+cannot+be+severed;+for+the+effect+already+blooms+in+the+cause,+the+end+pre-exists+in+the+means,+the+fruit+in+the+seed.&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=8UOyAVY7Rb&amp;sig=ACfU3U3mmbCAS0DiSDM9jCc5_XB1DkMEgA&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwioj43I7_r3AhVElI4IHas2BCMQ6AF6BAgLEAM\" rel=\"nofollow\">wrote<\/a>, \u201cfor the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Emerson and Read understood was that noble ends are not enough. If the means we use to achieve a desired result are rotten, the fruit itself is likely to be rotten as well.<\/p>\n<p>The ends desired from recycling\u2014a cleaner planet\u2014 were pure. The means we chose to pursue those ends\u2014dictates of central planners\u2014were not.<\/p>\n<p>By relying on government coercion, we ended up with a recycling system that made no sense\u2014economically or environmentally. And that\u2019s why we ended up with tens of thousands of tons of recycled items dumped into the ocean. Putting government in charge of recycling was a big mistake.<\/p>\n<p>If Americans are serious about recycling to create a better future for humans, they\u2019d get government out of the recycling business and make way for entrepreneurs armed with local knowledge and the profit motive.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of seeing recyclables dumped into our rivers and oceans, we\u2019d see them creating value. That\u2019s a win for humans and the planet.<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" defer=\"\" async=\"\"><\/script>\n<div>\n<h5><a class=\"keychainify-checked steem-keychain-checked\" href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/people\/jon-miltimore\/\"><br \/>\nJon Miltimore<br \/>\n<\/a><\/h5>\n<p>Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing\/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"font-style: italic;\">This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/how-america-s-recycling-program-failed-and-scarred-the-environment\/\" class=\"keychainify-checked\">original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In March 2019, The New York Times ran a shocking story exploring why many prominent US cities were abandoning their recycling programs. \u201cPhiladelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents\u2019 recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy,\u201d Times business writer Michael Corkery reported. \u201cIn Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill.\u201d Philadelphia and Memphis were not outliers. They, along with Deltona, Florida, which had suspended its recycling program the previous month, were just a few examples of hundreds of cities across the country that had scrapped recycling programs or scaled back operations. Since that time, cities across the country have continued to scrap recycling programs, citing high costs. \u201cThe cost of recycling was going to double, and the town wasn&#8217;t going to be able to absorb that cost,\u201d said Dencia Raish, the town clerk administrator for Akron, Colorado, which ended its program in 2021 and now sends \u201crecyclables\u201d to a landfill. While many Americans likely are distraught about America\u2019s failed recycling experiment, a new video produced by Kite &amp; Key Media reveals that abandoning recycling\u2014at least in its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[446,652,3858],"class_list":["post-29210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-recycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}