Maybe this blog is inspiring those of you already sold on recycling, or maybe not. Maybe it's changing minds of those previously not on the band wagon, or maybe not. But I feel like I should present some arguments for those of you not initiated. I found a great article "Anti-Recycling Myths" by Dr. Richard A. Denison in response to a "Recycling is Garbage" by John Tierney from New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996. Dr. Denison combats some of the most common arguments against recycling. At it's most broad, it claims that it is not a money making scheme created by hippies. I will present arguments against recycling followed by a response below.
-The modern recycling movement is result of the fake crisis about landfill space, concocted by the media and liberal environmentalists.
-Focusing on landfill space misses the point entirely. The biggest environmental rewards of recycling come from reducing natural resource usage, damage and pollution that arise when extracting virgin material and producing new products. Materials that are collected for recycling have already been extracted and processed once, so processing the material again is usually much less energy demanding than the first.
-Landfill space is cheap and plentiful.
-Landwill space is a commodity, priced according to supply and demand. The biggest growth in recycling programs in the United States has been in regions where landfill space is expensive compared to the U.S. average.
-Recycling should pay for itself.
-Landfills and incinerators do not pay for themselves, and we shouldn't expect this of recycling either. We should not focus on start up costs of recycling programs but rather look at it overtime. Recycling programs are becoming more competitively priced with disposal options.
Denison, Richard A. and John F. Ruston. "Anti-Recycling Myths." Environmental Defense. 18 July 1996. Web. 5 December 2010.
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