The Recycling Myth
mises.org
The Recycling Myth
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Re: The Recycling Myth
#2What is being described here is how the Swedish government is externalising costs. Of coarse it looks good, and profitable on paper because most of the costs (and environmental effects) have been put onto the population.
As the article mentions this is bad for the environment.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#3The basic premise is that (in Sweden) the uncounted cost of cleaning and sorting waste and driving to dispose of it is greater than the savings due to recycling. It would have been nice to see at least an order-of-magnitude calculation estimating the uncounted cost. If the cost is so obviously greater than the savings of recycling, then a simple estimation should be sufficient.
The author is probably right, but some concrete numbers would go a long way to supporting his argument.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#4The title really should be "The Myth of Forced Recycling"
I guarantee you there are efficient and even profitable ways to recycle, but those not only don't require the use of force but will be made less efficient by its presence.
That being said... Why is this on HN? I would prefer to keep more political topics off of here. Mises.org has some really good technology and Intellectual Property right related articles, but people might be inclined to ignore the source if they're already inclined to believe that it will be off topic.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#5Typical american mindset: Everything is money. Use something, throwaway when don't needed, bury it, contaminate the soil, the seas, it's cheaper.
Of course they are external cost to recycle, what he doesn't say is that THEY ARE EXTERNAL COST TO NOT RECYCLING. Nature knows that since long long ago, she recycles everything.
The Pacific is filled with polymers just because people love to use plastics and don't recycle them, fishes dye (external cost) every day because they confuse it with jellyfish. Jellyfish plague the seas(external cost).
Plastics additives are getting to our food chain(external cost). Our water contaminated by flame retardants and biphenols A when you bury it are affecting us (external cost).
If you want to make new paper you need to contaminate the rivers (Think about International Paper corp.). Making aluminium from oxide, instead of melting takes an exorbitant quantity of energy(external cost).
This article is pure demagogy, if he want to be serious he needs to put numbers over the table.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#6I don't know which part of Sweden the author lives in, but it's apparently not my part. In our trash room here we have bins for glass (white/coloured), paper, batteries and garbage. Card board boxes and other "big" stuff (basically anything that isn't normal consumables) is left at the recycling station (and assuming you do that on your way to work and don't go once per item, the extra energy needed is next to nothing).
I'd say that he's trying very hard to make a point, and exaggerates.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#7Typical american mindset: Everything is money. Use something, throwaway when don't needed, bury it, contaminate the soil, the seas, it's cheaper. Of course they are external cost to recycle, what he doesn't say is that THEY ARE EXTERNAL COST TO NOT RECYCLING. Nature knows that since long long ago, she recycles everything. The Pacific is filled with polymers just because people love to use plastics and don't recycle t…
Fishes dye ? You mean they change colour because they ingest polymers ? Or you mean they die ?
My money is on the 'expiry' :)
Anyway, you make excellent points, and the article is spouting typical industry grade bs.
Resources are finite.
A guy called 'Eckart Wintzen' promoted a concept he called 'taxing resources removed', which essentially is the opposite of 'value added tax'. His idea was that you should pay taxes on those resources that you remove from the biosphere, and that products made from recycled goods ought to be tax free.
I think it was an excellent concept.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#8The basic premise is that (in Sweden) the uncounted cost of cleaning and sorting waste and driving to dispose of it is greater than the savings due to recycling. It would have been nice to see at least an order-of-magnitude calculation estimating the uncounted cost. If the cost is so obviously greater than the savings of recycling, then a simple estimation should be sufficient. The author is probably right, but some…
Why is he 'probably right' without proof ?
I remember when I was a kid that factories were paying for old paper and old glass. A whole generation made their pocket money that way. If it was worth something back then I would expect it to be worth something today.
Re: The Recycling Myth
#9What is being described here is how the Swedish government is externalising costs. Of coarse it looks good, and profitable on paper because most of the costs (and environmental effects) have been put onto the population. As the article mentions this is bad for the environment.
So, there was basically a glaring hole in the logic of the article, and I was wondering if there's anyone else here that can answer it for me....
Garbage is already a big externality. A positive one. The government takes care of hauling away your trash and disposing of it, somewhere, and you get to benefit from the economies of scale of centralizing this.
The truly individualist, libertarian thing to do with your garbage is not to leave it on the curb for the government to pick up. It's to bury it in your backyard.
What's that you say? "Not in my back yard"?
I had a couple actual questions buried in the snark. Is it still legal to bury trash in your own back yard, on your own property, assuming you take the necessary precautions to prevent it from seeping into groundwater? And if so, would you - or the article's author - do so?
And if someone wanted to start a garbage collection corporation, using land they own, that they've lined so it doesn't leech into groundwater, and hauling away garbage with their own trucks, would the government stop them? I don't think so, but I dunno if it's ever been tried. I think that they'd quickly find out that skipping every other house on the block because they aren't a customer isn't very cost-effective, instead.
I don't think it's necessarily wrong to externalize costs back onto the population if they initially came from the population. It's like complaining about the free food your employer gives you, when there's nothing stopping you from getting your own food elsewhere. (I admit that I've been guilty of that on occasion, but at least I don't write articles - from a libertarian/anarchist POV - about how the government owes me convenient garbage disposal.)
Re: The Recycling Myth
#10I don't know which part of Sweden the author lives in, but it's apparently not my part. In our trash room here we have bins for glass (white/coloured), paper, batteries and garbage. Card board boxes and other "big" stuff (basically anything that isn't normal consumables) is left at the recycling station (and assuming you do that on your way to work and don't go once per item, the extra energy needed is next to nothin…
I live in a (rent-controlled) apartment in Stockholm. Our apartment building does not have a trash room; all storage needs to happen in the apartment. The recycling center is easily reachable on foot though, so there's no driving involved.
For people living in the suburbs, the nearest station can easily be a kilometer or so away, which might be further than you're willing to walk, carrying a week or two's worth of recyclable materials.
Like many other commenters below, I too reacted at the single-minded economical focus of the article, while still agreeing that the current recycling system is a bit ... annoying, heh.