Why Should Maria Recycle:
It's pathetic that we live in a country where people like Jake here need an incentive for everything! Here's an incentive: recycling creates jobs, plain and simple. More jobs than landfills, too. So for you red-blooded 'uh-merr-icans' who feel you should be financially rewarded, there you go.
Candy, Springfield
Haha, Jason and Tim owned this pathetic website. Keep on not recycling, Maria. Unless someone can provide you with quantitative data on the incentives of recycling - the incentives, that is, for YOU to recycle. Obviously, pork-barrelers that grab tons of tax dollars "spreading awareness" have incentives, as do municipalities with money to gain, but unless manufacturing companies and recycling companies can pass along their profits to you, why would you expend YOUR capital (time, effort, money, energy) giving THEM your resources (whatever raw material can be gleaned from your garbage).
Jake, Charlottesville, VA
Recycling is so much a part of our culture that it might as well be a religion. More people sort their trash into recycling bins than vote. Recycling is a waste of time, money and in many ways, actually hurts the environment.
First, recycling paper does not save the rainforest. Almost all the deforestation around the equator is done to open new farmland or for building materials, according to the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industries.
In fact, we have more trees in the U.S. right now than we have had at any point in the last 100 years — and it’s not because of recycling. Logging companies are interested in making a profit for as long as possible. The result is that they are actually planting more trees each year than they are cutting down. Some economists argue that recycling paper actually results in fewer trees, because if there is less demand for new paper, companies have less incentive to plant trees. Additionally, recycling paper requires the old paper to be “de-inked,” a process resulting in toxic chemicals we can’t recycle.
Another common myth is that we are running out of landfill space at the risk of being buried in our own garbage. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans produces about 200 million tons of trash each year, so it’s a natural concern to have. But don’t be fooled: We have room. Professor Clark Wiseman of Gonzaga University estimates that we could fit all of our trash for the next thousand years in one 44-square-mile landfill.
And it’s not like landfills are just a giant pile of garbage anyway. Modern landfills cover each day’s trash with fresh soil and collect the methane from the decomposing materials to sell to power companies. Grass can be planted, and parks and golf courses can be built over the buried waste. The Toyon Canyon landfill in Los Angeles is one modern landfill that practices methane collection and will eventually be a park.
Recycling can also be harmful to the environment, since it’s a manufacturing process with all of the associated harmful by-products. Additionally, curbside recycling programs require more trucks on the road, more fossil fuels burned and so forth.
Not all recycling is inefficient. Recycled aluminum is the notable exception, requiring only about 5 percent of the energy needed to produce new metal. People recycle pop cans because someone is willing to pay them for it. The rest of the perceived economic benefit from recycling comes in the form of subsidies worth $8 billion — your money — from the federal government.
Professor Daniel Benjamin of Clemson University estimates that recycling costs about 35 percent more than conventional waste disposal. The government should quit supporting recycling ad nauseam. If something is worth the money, it will be recycled.
So when you are done reading this newspaper, save the environment and money — throw it in the trash.
By Tim Hadachek
Jason , Suwanee