World of Education/World of Education.iso/world_e/envfacts.zip/RECYCLE.TXT

Text File | 1993-09-11 | 21KB | 387 lines

Excerpts from Fort Freedom BBS, 914/941-1319 -- a pro-science,
pro-technology, pro-free enterprise oasis. Call in, its free!

THE IDIOCY OF COMPULSORY RECYCLING ---------------------------- [93.061]

Recycling  is one of the most successful of the recent scams perpetrated
by  environmentalists.  It  is a waste of time,  money,  and  resources.
Naturally,  when  anything  this  stupid  presents  itself,  government,
Federal, State and local, rushes to embrace the idea. Laws force  people
to  wash  and sort their garbage. Of all rubbish, that made  of  plastic
enrages the eco-psychos most, since it is the thing most shaped  by  the
hand of man. It is also the thing least worth recycling.

      "A  study conducted for the National Solid Wastes Management
      Association,  a trade group of private trash haulers,  found
      the  cost  of  processing in a recovery plant the  range  of
      materials  left at curbside is $50 a ton, while  the  market
      value  is  $30. In a separate study, Waste Management  Inc.,
      the  nations  largest trash hauler, added in  the  costs  of
      collection  and put the total average cost at about  $175  a
      ton and the average value of recovered materials at $40."

      "[P]lastic [accounts] for 30 percent of total collection and
      handling  costs  ... while constituting just  3  percent  by
      weight of the material collected."

      "In  1990, Waste Management and DuPont announced, with great
      fanfare,  a  joint venture to recycle PET and HDPE  bottles.
      But  ... Waste Management ... discovered to its horror  that
      it  was  costing  as  much as $1,500 a ton  to  collect  and
      process plastics with a market value of $80 to $100  a  ton.
      Waste  Management dropped out of the venture in 1991 and  Du
      Pont, last June."

In  the  light  of  this,  wise  and honest  Federal,  State  and  local
governments  would  admit  than  they had  been  dopes  and  repeal  all
recycling laws. Our governments, Federal and State, chose to make a  bad
situation  worse.  Sen.  Max Baucus (D, Montana),  head  of  the  Senate
Environmental  and Public Works Committee, wants to  pass  the  cost  of
recycling  onto the manufacturers and sellers; they would  pay  for  the
costs  of disposal, not taxpayers. At the local-idiocy level, 165 state-
levels bills banning or taxing the use plastics were introduced in 1992,
though, fortunately, few were passed.

There  are  no  real problems in disposal of garbage. Any  problems  are
politically  and legally manufactured by government and the professional
liars  and  shysters of the environmentalism industry. The best  way  to
dispose  of  garbage depends on local circumstances:  cities  may  chose
incineration, rural municipalities may choose landfills. There are other
ways, such as deep-ocean dumping, as well. In fact, the only garbage  we
can't  seem  to  get  rid  of is the environmentalist  and  governmental
garbage which is pushing us around.

                                  More

Holusha,  John. "Who Foots the Bill For Recycling?". The New York  Times
   [Late  Edition  --  Final], 1993 Apr 25, Sec. 3, p.  5.  Informative.
   Watch  out  for  the  green  taint: there  is  an  over  reliance  on
   information from environmentalists.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Trash That Recycling Plan
                          By J. Winston Porter

["Mr. Porter is president of the Waste Policy Center in Sterling, Va. He
served  as  EPA  assistant administrator for solid and hazardous  wastes
from 1985 to 1989."]

[From The Wall Street Journal [Eastern Edition], 1993 Jun 28, p. A16:3.]

This  summer,  the chairman of the Senate Environmental  Committee,  Max
Baucus  (D.,  Mont.), plans to make good on a promise  he  made  to  the
Conference of Mayors in April. It was there that he said he would  press
for  bold new recycling legislation. Such a bill, modeled after  a  plan
being  tried  in  Germany,  could require manufacturers  to  absorb  the
disposal costs of their product's packaging. But before Sen. Baucus gets
too  excited about foisting a version of this on American businesses and
consumers,  it would be wise to take a closer look: Germany's  recycling
system is rapidly unraveling.

The  company  in  charge  of recycling Germany's  trash,  Duales  System
Deutschland  (DSD), announced recently that it is $180 million  to  $300
million  in  the  red,  and the news has unleashed some  harsh  official
criticism.  "The `green dot' has run aground," was the judgment  of  one
staffer  on  the  Bundestag's environment committee,  referring  to  the
symbol  on German packaging that signified it is recyclable through  the
DSD  system.  "Industry has bitten off more than it can chew."  A  state
senator  from Hamburg called the program "foolish," adding that  in  its
present form the plan "leads to new environmental burdens."

How Germany got to this point is an instructive tale for Sen. Baucus and
the  American recycling lobby. In 1991, bowing to heavy green  pressure,
Germany  passed a law requiring its businesses to take back and  recycle
all  forms of packaging -- bottles, cans, containers, cartons and sacks.
Such  packaging amounts to about one-third of Germany's municipal trash.
To  prove  it  meant  business, the government set  ambitious  recycling
rates: By 1995, 72% of all German glass, steel and aluminum packaging is
to  be  recycled;  for paper, paperboard, plastics and  composites,  the
target is a slightly more modest 64%.

Retailers  quickly lobbied for and won an amendment exempting them  from
accepting wastes at their stores -- leaving it to the manufacturers  and
distributors  alone  to  guarantee (and  pay  for)  the  collecting  and
recycling  of  all  packaging wastes. Left holding  the  bag,  some  600
producers responded by creating the DSD, a nonprofit company, to collect
and sort the stuff.

Until now the DSD has funded itself through a system of license fees  on
each type of packaging material. Upon payment of the fee, a producer  is
entitled  to place a "green dot" on its packaging, which tells consumers
that  recycling  is  "guaranteed." DSD's fees  are  currently  based  on
volume, but this approach has not proved cost-effective.

Beginning  this  October, DSD aims to cover expenses by charging  member
companies  license  fees  that  more  closely  reflect  its  costs   for
collecting and separating trash: 4.5 cents per pound of glass packaging;
9.5  cents  for paper; 16 cents for steel; 28.5 cents for  aluminum;  47
cents for composites; and 74 cents for plastics. Most of these fees,  it
should  be  noted,  greatly  exceed the market  value  of  the  recycled
material. DSD's revenues from these fees are expected to range from  $60
million  a  year for aluminum to $1.3 billion for plastics. The  company
expects to take in $2.5 billion in 1994. But whether this will be enough
to keep the system going seems less and less certain.

DSD  services  96% of German households. In many areas,  consumers  must
bring  their  glass  bottles and sometimes paper to  community  drop-off
points. At a growing number of residences and commercial establishments,
a  blue  of green bin is provided for paper packaging, and a yellow  bin
for all other packaging. In other words, the contents of the yellow bins
look  a lot like, well, regular trash. The melange must first go to  one
of about 200 sorting centers where steel is pulled out magnetically, and
the rest is separated by hand -- a slow and costly process.

While  the extraordinary expense of Germany's system is clear, the  real
environmental  benefit  --  except perhaps for  a  modest  reduction  in
packaging  to  lower recycling costs -- is not. This is especially  true
when it comes to plastic, a very large component of the German packaging
market.  "The  Achilles' heel of the Duales System is made of  plastic,"
wrote  Wolfgang Roth in the Suddeutsche Zeitung. "The question  that  is
becoming  increasingly  obvious is: Is intensive  reprocessing  in  this
sector  even  desirable on ecological grounds?" In Sweden,  Switzerland,
France,  and  parts  of the U.S. and other countries,  trash,  including
plastic, is safely incinerated to make heat or electricity -- arguably a
form  of recycling. Incidentally, plastics are certainly a cleaner  fuel
than coal, one of Germany's major energy sources.

Germany's  recycling costs per ton range from about $100  for  glass  to
more  than $2,000 for plastics. Overall cost is about $500 per  ton  for
all  German recyclables. In the U.S., by comparison, trash is  collected
and  sent  to  landfills or waster-to-energy incinerators for  costs  of
about  $75  to  $150 per ton; per-ton collection and sorting  costs  for
recyclables  are about $150 to $250. And Americans recycle some  22%  of
their  trash  --  which  compares favorably  with  Germans,  whose  high
recycling  rates  apply  only to packaging wastes.  The  overall  German
recycling rate appears also to be in the low 20% range.

In today's Germany, "recycling at any cost" has overwhelmed common sense
and  economics, with international repercussions. The main flaw  of  the
German  "green  dot" system is that it goes way overboard in  collecting
all  types  of  packaging  at rigidly mandated  rates.  This  introduces
enormous  market  inefficiencies: Huge  costs  are  being  incurred  for
separating  a  lot of packaging that has almost no market value.  And  a
dearth  of  domestic  buyers  has led to the  dumping  of  cheap  German
recyclables  on  foreign  markets -- depressing  prices  in  neighboring
countries.

In 1988, as an assistant administrator with the Environmental Protection
Agency, I set a national goal in the U.S. of a 25% recycling rate.  Some
state  legislatures have set their own targets that average  about  30%.
But  these  are mostly aimed at the total waste stream, not at  specific
components.  In the U.S. the free market has been allowed  to  work,  so
those  items with the most value and least cost to collect and reprocess
tend to be the ones recycled: Today half of all recycling tonnage in the
U.S. is composed of corrugated boxes and newspapers. Most of the rest is
made up of a few types of cans and bottles.

In  the  brave  new world of environmental correctness  it  is  time  to
subject  green  ideologies  to serious number crunching  regarding  real
economic and environmental impact. We can start with debunking the  idea
that Germany's floundering recycling system would work here.

          [The following is not part of the original article.]

Recycling  of  some  materials,  for example,  aluminum  and  paper,  is
worthwhile in a free market. The problem with compulsory recycling  laws
is  that  politicians and bureaucrats, not free individuals, decide  how
much  of  a  particular  item  to  recycle.  The  result  is  usually  a
permanently glutted market. State intervention destroys the  market  for
the  material.  In  order  to  sustain a  sham-market,  the  state  must
intervene  more  and  more, with such compulsory measures  as  recycled-
content  laws,  taxes and fees on virgin materials,  and  whatever  else
lawyerish minds can conceive.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                Dumping: Less Wasteful Than Recycling
                           By Clark Wiseman

[``Mr. Wiseman, a professor of economics at Gonzaga University in
Spokane, Wash. is a visiting fellow at Resources for the Future, in
Washington, D.C.'']

  [From The Wall Street Journal, 1991 Jul 18, p. A10:3.] [927 words]

The proposal by the hard-pressed government of New York City to
suspend its recycling program for a year is a direct result of the
high cost of recycling. At around $300 per ton, the cost has proven to
be well in excess of the $65 per ton figure that was originally
estimated. True, the program has been plagued by labor problems and a
low level of citizen participation, but it is wishful thinking to
believe that either more cooperation from sanitation unions or the
achievement of greater civic support and a higher recycling rate will
bring the costs of recycling down to an acceptable level.

Curbside recycling programs across the U.S. typically cost far more
than landfilling, frequently twice as much, even when sales revenues
and avoided waste disposal costs are included in the calculation. On a
strictly economic basis, large-scale recycling is simply wasteful,
leaving taxpayers and end users of solid waste disposal services
paying a larger bill. The frenzied national push for recycling is
largely the result of grossly mistaken beliefs about landfilling and
the magnitude of the disposal problem, together with a seriously
flawed decision- making process in the siting of landfills.

What most people don't know about landfills could fill a landfill. At
the current rate, if all the nation's solid waste for the next 500
years were piled or buried in a single landfill to a depth of 100
yards -- about half the eventual height of Staten Island's Fresh Kills
landfill -- this ``national landfill'' would require a square site
less than 20 miles on a side. With compaction, even this volume could
be halved.

Most people also don't know that the amount of solid waste generated
nationally has grown at only a 2% average rate over the past 30 years,
considerably less than the growth of the GNP. This means that our
``throw away society'' is actually throwing out a progressively
smaller share of its output. There are indications that this rate of
growth is declining as the economy becomes more service-oriented.

The view is widely held that landfilling should be minimized because
of the great environmental risks. But landfills are constantly
becoming less obnoxious. New federal and state performance standards
are comprehensive and stringent, with environmental considerations
entering into all relevant aspects of landfill construction and
operation, including location; fencing; groundwater and gas monitoring
and control; frequency of earth covering for rodent, bird, and odor
control; closure; and post-closure gas and groundwater monitoring.
Many landfills designed and operated with this degree of environmental
control already exist; some have already filled and closed, and the
land has been converted to other (often recreational) uses.

If our landfills are to be environmental Cadillacs, the issue then
becomes one of sticker price. As might be expected, this will vary
according to differences in land prices. A new landfill can cost up to
five times as much as a standard 1975 landfill. Even so, landfill
costs account for only about 25 cents of the cost of disposing of the
garbage in a standard 32-gallon can.

The remainder of what one pays is the relatively high cost of
collection, hauling and perhaps hidden and explicit taxes. Even where
land is expensive it is seldom more than a small fraction of the
landfilling portion of waste disposal charges. Even with the sky-high
land prices and the long hauls that are necessary in most metropolitan
areas, landfilling is a bargain.

The solid waste problem is not one of space, ecology or even cost. The
problem is a political one -- that of siting new landfills.
Anticipating the loss of amenities or property values, potentially
affected property owners unite into a group capable of bending
government to its will. The special interest nature of the resulting
policies is not different in nature from farm subsidies, protective
tariffs and unnecessary military instillations, all of which confer
losses upon citizens at large.

The landfill siting problem is directly related to population
densities. In some of the more sparsely populated areas of the Western
states there are virtually no siting difficulties. By contrast, in the
East, permitting new landfills is political suicide.

Fortunately, a decision-making procedure is available that helps the
creation of new landfills, while still preserving control over the
environmental consequences of landfills. The state of Wisconsin has
since 1982 legally required municipal and county governments to
establish local negotiating committees in response to applications for
the creation of a landfill by a private landowner. The committees,
which must include a prescribed number of private citizens as well as
elected officials, are empowered to negotiate the financial and other
contractual relations between the landfill owner and local
governments. Environmental and technical matters are not negotiable
but are handled by a separate process at the state level. Although --
or perhaps because -- failure to reach an agreement can result in
outside mediation and possibly arbitration by a state agency,
agreements have been negotiated by committee in almost all cases.

The workability of a system along these lines results from the
explicit recognition of a prescribed set of rules. Although such rules
constrain their powers, local elected officials do not complain, since
their longevity in office can only be enhanced by the inability to
make ``unpopular'' decisions.

The choking off of a viable alternative like low cost and
environmentally sound landfills is wasteful of society's resources.
Before continuing to run headlong toward politically popular but
costlier alternatives -- including recycling -- it would be wise to
give increased attention to the real cause of the so-called solid
waste ``crisis.''


         [The following is not part of the original article.]

In places of the country where land is expensive, garbage incinerators
are a practical alternative to dumping. The City of New York spent
most of the decade of 1980 trying to build garbage incinerators but
its efforts came to naught. The City's tale is instructive:

June 1980: the New York State Senate approved a bill allowing New York
     City to Build a solid-waste recovery plant at the site of the old
     Brooklyn Navy Yard.

By 1982: the plan for a recovery plant is replaced by a plan for an
     incinerator.

December 1984: the New York City Board of Estimate approves a
     resolution calling on the Sanitation Department to proceed
     immediately with plans for incinerators in five boroughs. The
     plants are to begin operating in 1991.

August 1985: the Board of Estimate gives final approval for
     construction of a garbage-burning incinerator at the old Brooklyn
     Navy Yard.

September 1985 to April 1989: The Naderite NYPIRG (Public Interest
     Research Group) begins its campaign of suits, lobbying, and
     disinformation.

June 1989: NYPIRG, EDF, NRDC, the Interstate Sanitary Commission and
     the United Jewish Organization (representing Jews in the
     Williamsburg section of Brooklyn where the incinerator would be
     located) file suit to bar construction of the incinerator.

January 1990: David Dinkins, who as candidate pledged a two-to-three
     year moratorium on the incinerator, is elected mayor of New York
     City.


                             More Reading

Hang, Walter Liong-Ting. A Citizen Guide to Anti-incinerator
     Pro-recycling Campaigns. New York: NYPIRG, 1987. The Naderites
     are masters of using the media and the judicial system to block
     progress. Here's how to do it straight from the horse's mouth.

Inhaber, Herbert. ``Resolving the NIMBY Problem'', Cato Policy Report
     13(3):8-9 (1991). Inhaber suggests that a ``reverse Dutch
     auction'' is the solution NIMBY. Offer a bonus to the community
     which accepts the facilities no one wants. If no community in the
     U.S. accepts, keep raising the bonus. Communities vote on whether
     to accept the facilities, following regular democratic
     procedures.

Osterberg, Charles. ``Deep Ocean: The Safest Dump'' [Op-Ed], The New
     York Times, 1989 Jun 14, I, p. 27:2.]

Postrel, Virgina I. and Scarlett, Lynn. ``Talking Trash'', Reason
     23(4):22-31 (1991 Aug/Sep).

Rathje, William L. and Ritenbaugh, Cheryl K., Eds. American Behavioral
     Scientist 28(1) (1984 Sep/Oct). Special issue devoted to
     ``Household Refuse Analysis: Theory, Method, and Applications in
     Social Science''.

Rathje, William L. ``Rubbish!'', The Atlantic, 1989 Dec, pp. 99-106,
     108-109.

Scarlett, Lynn. ``Dirty the Environment by Recycling'', The Wall
     Street Journal, 1991 Jan 14, p. A12:3.

Simon, Julian L. ``Dump on Us, Baby, We Need It'' in Julian L. Simon,
     Population Matters (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,
     1990), pp. 458-460. This piece originally appeared as ``Humanity
     Doesn't Waste the Benefits Found in Trash'', Chicago Tribune, 27
     Feb 1990, p. 11.