David McRaney  |  Journalist

Recycling is a waste of time

It hurts the environment more than it helps, it wastes energy, fuel and resources; and it robs the American taxpayer of more than $9 billion dollars a year.

I know, I know. Just like you, I've always thought recycling was a good thing. But, after seeing a program on the futility of it and then doing a little research, I had an epiphany, and am completely certain people who recycle should stop.

John Tierney, a staff writer for the New York Times, recently wrote, "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America."

The article generated a lot of heat from liberals and environmentalist, especially since the New York Times is supposed to be on their side.

A similar article pointing out the economic waste involved in recycling ran as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal as well.

But, the reason you are most likely reading about this for the first time is the recycling industry is deeply embedded in the corporate industrial machinery of this nation, and to pull it out would be a difficult bureaucratic process.

With that in mind, let me explain just why it is terribly stupid to recycle.

(All of the following is paraphrased from the New York Times, Penn and Teller, and the Wall Street Journal)

First of all, paper comes from trees, much the same way chicken nuggets come are supposed to come from chickens. Since paper manufacturers want to keep manufacturing paper, they grow trees specifically for that purpose. Trees, like chickens, are renewable, and thus are farmed so there can be a constant supply.

Recycling paper actually does more harm to the environment than just harvesting raw materials. When you recycle paper, you have to employ people to drive gas-burning vehicles that take the paper to energy hogging factories that de-ink and bleach the old paper, creating chemical runoff and rich plumes of toxic smoke.

Plastic bottles, unlike aluminum cans, have almost no value once they are used. It takes more time, money and resources to create products from recycled plastic than it does to create new plastic products from scratch.

What's that? Did you just say something about landfills and garbage dumps overflowing? Well, currently, with just the landfills we already have in this country, and at the rate we fill them, we can dispose of garbage for another 1,000 years.

Sure, plastic is not biodegradable, but Pandora's box is open. Plastic is here to stay until something better comes along.

Sure, no one wants to deforest the planet, but recycling paper does not save trees; in fact the more paper you use, the more trees they grow.

The only product worth recycling is aluminum. It is actually less expensive and more beneficial to the environment to create new Coke cans from old ones.

In the end, most recycling is wasteful, yet we have been brainwashed to think the opposite. For decades, we have been tricked into handing over money to the government for programs that solve nothing, and recycling is one more we can add to that list.

Originally published in The Student Printz on March 29, 2005