Scraponomics Episode 104: The Reign of Recycling Article in NYT (Part 2)

“One of the original goals of the recycling movement was to avert a supposed crisis because there was no room left in the nation’s landfills. But that media-inspired fear was never realistic in a country with so much open space.” — John Tierney, Columnist for the New York Times

Last week, we talked about an article in the New York Times by columnist John Tierney called The Reign of Recycling. Again, despite its negative feedback, I thought the article made a lot of great points, questioning whether we’re seeing recycling as something it’s not. We briefly discussed the cost-benefit analysis for recycling certain plastics, for example, but lets talk about some other issues.

One thing people seem to think a lot about is landfill space; that is, unless we find a way to recycle everything, we’ll eventually run out of landfill space. That may be true, but I think the other side of that question is, is this space shortage as right around the corner as we think?

Tierney, referencing a study from the University of Minnesota, writes “…all the trash generated by Americans for the next 1,000 years would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the land available for grazing.” If this is the case, then it may be a sign that we should refocus what we try to recycle and why.

But what about the morality of recycling? Personally, I think it goes back to putting the effort into recycling when it’s cost-effective. I wish current technology was at a level where everything could be recycled cost-effectively. Until then, though, I say more of our energy and money should be put into things like research, mining material already in landfills that can now be recycled cost-effectively, and designing products for recycling. Perhaps we should simply look at recycling from a different angle.

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