The ACE Archives: What a Waste

Recycling Isn't Garbage 
by Victoria Ludwig

Is recycling just a load of garbage? According to John Tierney it is. In his New York Times Magazine article "Recycling is Garbage" (June 30, 1996), he states that recycling is "a waste of time and money, and a waste of human and natural resources." Is he right? Not if you ask the millions of Americans who daily sort their household trash to separate out recyclables. Not if you ask all the companies who prevent millions of tons of recyclable material from entering our nation's waste stream each year. And certainly not if you ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who recently congratulated the nation for attaining its 25 percent recycling goal.

The New York Times Magazine received more than 1,000 letters to the editor in response to Tierney's cover article, and more than two-thirds of those disputed his points. The piece represents the backlash against recycling that surfaces from time to time among individuals and groups who have a strong ideological opposition to recycling. Not surprisingly, Tierney does not quote a single representative of the industry he is attacking. Instead he relies on anecdotes and the unfounded claims of anti-recyclers. Furthermore, he uses New York City's recycling woes to extrapolate to the nation's recycling effort as a whole.

The truth about recycling is that it is a vibrant, growing, multi-million dollar U.S. industry. Currently there are more than 3,000 businesses involved in processing recyclable materials and manufacturing recycled products. These companies wouldn't be in business if it wasn't an economically viable enterprise. The actions of the U.S. paper industry are proof of this reality--in the 1990's they voluntarily built or expanded more than 45 recycled paper mills.

Recycling enjoys enormous support from the public. More than 45 percent of Americans are served by curbside recycling, and most communities routinely achieve participation rates of 80 percent or higher. Of course, recycling costs money--it's a public service, as is trash collection and disposal. Recycling is one of the few public services, though, that generates revenue, in the form of money earned from the sale of recyclables. This revenue helps reduce the overall cost of running a recycling program. Recycling makes money in another way, too. A fee is assessed on every ton of garbage disposed of at a landfill or incinerator, and local governments must foot the bill. When a ton of garbage is recycled, however, this "tipping fee" does not have to be paid, reducing the cost of the program even more.

Preston Read, Recycling Program Manager for Arlington County, reports that "Arlington has one of the lowest contract collection costs in the region for its curbside recycling program, which means that residents pay less than $1.00 per month for recycling." He adds that strong participation in the program has pushed the County's recycling rate past 30 percent.

The environmental benefits of recycling are significant. It takes less resources and energy to manufacture a product form recycled feedstock than from virgin raw material, and recycling-based manufacturing decreases the need to extract natural resources from the earth through environmentally destructive activities such as strip-mining and oil drilling. All this adds up to the conservation of our finite natural resources, pollution abatement, and energy savings. As an example, at current recycling levels the U.S. is saving enough energy to provide electricity for 9 million homes.

It is these environmental costs and benefits that escape Tierney's tired, shallow economic analysis. He argues that the price of a product is a reasonable reflection of its environmental costs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Polystyrene, to use his example, is ubiquitous because it is inexpensive to produce, but its price hardly contains all the damage to aquatic ecosystems done by the production of styrene and other plastics. Nor does it contain the enormous taxpayer subsidies of its principal feedstock, oil

A common argument used against recycling paper is that recycling doesn't really save trees because more trees are being planted than are being cut down. While this statement is true, it fails to mention that these trees are planted in tree farms, which are designed to produce a constant supply of wood, and only wood. Tree farms, usually comprised of one or two high-yield, densely planted species, are not the same as natural forests, which are thriving ecosystems providing animal habitats and preserving biodiversity. In fact, the statement that more trees are being planted than cut down betrays the fact that natural forests are being replaced with tree farms.

Finally, you might wonder whether the bottles, cans, and papers you put at the curb each week are really recycled. Are there markets for these things? You bet there are. As mentioned earlier, the thousands of businesses involved in recycling in the U.S. are an important part of our economy, and they are integral to the success of the industry. As with all commodities that are bought and sold on the free market, prices for recyclables fluctuate. Even when prices are low, though, the recycling system still moves along. The fact remains that for several manufacturing industries, recyclable materials are less expensive feedstocks than their virgin equivalents.

You can help improve the market value of your recyclables by closely following the procedures of your local recycling program. Keep in mind that recyclables are commodities, like other goods with a price tag. Recycling only clean, acceptable materials will ensure that your recyclables maintain their value. For information on how to recycle in Arlington County, call the Department of Environmental Services at 358-6570.

So, is recycling garbage? As the U.S. reaches toward a new 35 percent recycling goal by the year 2005, it's anything but.

Victoria Ludwig is an Arlington resident and an ACE Board member.

Article from the Fall, 1996 edition of The Arlington Environment, Volume Four, Number Two.

Kate Donohue
ACE222hq@aol.com
January 29, 1997 

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