So an recent article by The Visible Hand In Economics has managed to get me off my bum and get me writing this long overdue blog post. Now I’m a bit of a closet Greenie- it’s hard not to be when you’re into the outdoors, like paddling free flowing rivers and skiing snow  covered mountain peaks. Of course I’m not a Watermelon type Greenie, but, those discussions are for another day.

One of the things I’m big on is Reducing the amount of packaging and other crap I consume. One of the things I’m less into is paying to Recycle that crap that I do, despite my best efforts, end up saddled with. This blog post is about why I think paying for recycling is wrong- it’s focussed mainly on Economic arguments and I certainly can’t claim them to be original, but, it’s nice to get your own views down on paper.

If it costs (I’m talking about the Economic concept of Cost here not just the money you have to pay for something) more money to
recycle something than it does to simply dispose of it then I think it’s bad personal policy to recycle.
Take a Glass bottle for example (numbers hypothetical, but, it does cost REAL money to recycle- the costs outweigh the value of the raw material recovered):
It costs a manufacturer 5 cents for the raw materials to make a bottle
When I’ve finished drinking the beer time it costs 2 cents to collect the glass from my curb-side, it requires 2 cents of labour and 4 cents of energy to turn the glass back into slag glass that can be sold for 2 cents.
If I just dump it it costs 2 cents for the curb-side collection and 2 cents to provide the landfill services.

So the net ‘cost’ of recycling = (2 + 2 + 4) – 2 = 6 cents
The net costs of dumping to landfill = 2 + 2 = 4 cents

I’m paying 2 cents to recycle. What I am getting for this two cents? Some would say that it costs more to recycle because the landfill cost doesn’t fully factor the externalities (environmental impact etc…) so sure, you could argue that I am ‘paying a premium’ to protect the environment. But, whatever the case that is a 2 cent cost in resources- the question to ask is ‘could those resources be put to better use’? So, for example, if I chose instead to dump to landfill and instead donate the two cents to a University doing research into glass bottles, twice as strong as normal but containing half the glass, might that be a better idea?

It’s even more of a problem, as noted in the article I posted at the top, when the costs are totally hidden from us. Do we think properly about reducing consumption of glass bottles when recycling them is ‘free’?