January, 2010
The True Environment Cost of Recycling
Christine DiPietro
On average, curbside recycling costs 35 to 55 percent more than just disposing of the garbage, and is an industry that costs taxpayers $8 billion a year. It's a price that, though detrimental to the economy, might be worth it if we received some great environmental gain. However, there is a big truth that no one seems to be telling us: we don't.
Most of my “environmentalism” comes from the fact that I am cheap – I buy my eggs in bulk and print PDFs two to a page – front and back whenever I can -- and plug in my appliances to a power strip, which I can quickly turn “off” before leaving the house – just to make sure unnecessary energy isn't used (or charged to me).
And, environmental issues are multifaceted; recycling, deforestation, water pollution and air quality are all separate issues with different and specific “solutions.”
For example, drinking out of a ceramic mug rather than a disposable cup made of polysrene seems like the ecological choice when landfills are considered – but it takes more energy to manufacture the mug and each use requires it to be washed which requires more energy and water as well. According to Martin Hocking, a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, you would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-per-use was less or equal to the cup you disposed of immediately. However, a ceramic mug reduces the amount of materials that ends up in the landfill.
And then there is recycling: it has become an aspect of good citizenry – more people recycle than vote. And why do we do it? It makes us feel good. We think that by sending our used plastic and paper products back to a manufacturing plant, we are some how reducing our effect on the environment.
Even on the surface, recycling doesn't make sense. We are told we recycle materials because they are valuable, however the government charges us fees for our recyclables to be collected. If the resources were valuable, citizens would be paid to recycle, or, at least have their resources picked up for free. However, the cost of the recycling process is greater than the eventual sales price of recycled materials -- so local communities have subsidize recycling programs, either out of property taxes or fees collected for garbage disposal.
Adding to the processes expense, pick up recycling doubles the number of waste removal trucks on the road, using separate trucks for trash and recycling. This puts carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and uses fuel – which pricewise is more expensive and valuable than landfill space, which costs about $36 per ton of solid waste.
Recycling -- like the process to make the now “reusable” material -- it is a manufacturing process, and therefore it too has environmental impact. It changes the nature of pollution, sometimes increasing it and sometimes decreasing it. The EPA examined both virgin and recycled paper processing and found more toxic substances present in higher levels in the recycling processes.
Recycling newsprint actually creates more water pollution than making new paper: for each ton of news paper that is recycled, an additional 5,000 gallons of waste water is discharged. And for those that were mislead in elementary school – there is no threat of deforestation from paper use. Trees are grown to make paper like potatoes are grown to make French fries, so recycling does not save trees. We have three times more trees today than we did in 1920 – but if you stop using and buying things on paper, they'll stop growing trees for it – then there will be fewer trees and less economic stimulus (not to mention more water pollution). If you want more trees, use more paper.
Then there is plastic, which between the transport, sorting, storing and cleaning of recycled plastic, it takes more energy to recycle than it does to make.
We use even more resources when participating in the common practice of exporting our recyclables: the United States exported $22 billion of recycled materials to 152 countries in 2007, an amount that is estimated to have increased by 50 to 70 percent in the last two years. Regardless of the way it is transported, we are using fuel -- a more precious resource—and creating serious carbon emissions.
There is an exception to the recycling-is-bogus truth: aluminum. It does actually cost less and uses fewer resources to take old cans and make new ones than start with a virgin product. Here, the recycling process requires less than 5 percent of the energy needed when starting from raw materials – which in aluminum's case is bauxite ore.
To make aluminum, the bauxite ore is mined then shipped to a refining plant where machines crush and chemically treat the ore to produce alumina. Then, a high voltage electrical current is passed through the mixture to separate the aluminum from the oxygen. From one ton of the original bauxite ore, only 500 pounds of pure aluminum are produced – but for the same “manufacturing-grade” aluminum to be produced through recycling, scrap metal is simply melted and recast. And, aluminum can be recycled over and over without breaking down.
Aluminums value is the reason why you see people on the street collecting cans from waste bins, and nothing else – recycling aluminum has an actual value and they can receive money for it.
The argument that we are saving landfill space is not valid either: the EPA estimates 40 percent of what you separate into recycling at home, ends up in the landfill anyways. While environmentalists and Oprah have made landfills out to be vast wastelands of toxic chemicals that attract rodents, disease and can be smelled for miles; today this is not the case.
When properly managed, modern landfills are none of the above. State regulations require that waste is covered daily with soil or an alternate cover – which deters rodents and reduces the smell associated with natural decomposition – all while bringing new business to an often otherwise remote area.
The methane gases that were the scare of history's landfills are now monitored and steps are taken to avoid any hazardous buildups. Many landfills, in order to prevent methane from entering the earth's atmosphere, burn it to produce energy that is used by surrounding communities. In a true instance of conservation, methane is a renewable resource that produces half the energy of natural gas – and North Carolina's natural gas program is one of the best in the nation.
We are not running out of landfill space either – if Americans continue to generate garbage at their current rates for the next 1,000 years, the waste for the entire country would fit in a landfill 100 yards deep and 1225 square miles – a piece of land about one and a half times the size of Alachua County – an insignificant amount of space when considering the entire size of the United States.
So, what's the solution? On average, a combined voluntary drop-off and buy-back option is substantially less costly and uses far fewer resources than a curbside recycling program. We could go back to thick glass reusable (not recyclable!) bottles – which would be more costly initially but save money in the long run. Or, you could adopt my personal policy of being cheap and lazy. I hate dealing with the plastic grocery bags that sit under our kitchen sink, so I carry a larger purse and fill it with my groceries before leaving the store.
Recycling uses more resources than we are conserving and makes the budget situation for a community worse off – not to mention it has an adverse effect on the environment. Simply put, when people are recycling (anything but aluminum), they are wasting resources – both economic and environmental. If you want to do something stupid, that wastes time and money but makes you feel good, buy lottery tickets – at least you won't be ruining anything for the rest of us.