Recycling Is Wasteful Summary

Doug Bandow in “Recycling is Wasteful” claims recycling does not help the environment and is too costly to fund. He gives evidence and reasoning to explain why recycling is more harmful than we think. The authors sub claims are: recycling creates more pollution, resources are not scarce, an easier way of handling garbage, and lastly, recycling costs too much money.

The sub claim Bandow has about recycling creating more air pollution has little evidence to back it up, but when factories are producing “renewed” items they are using energy that may or may not needed to be used. The author says “For instance, producing paperboard burger containers yields more air and water pollution and consumes more energy than does manufacturing polystyrene clamshells. It takes more water to recycle newsprint than to make it afresh”. The author claims it would be better to make new materials out of commodities that haven’t already been processed in factories or used by people. Are recycled items really beneficial to the environment or simply a “feel good” factor to thinking we are helping?

The second sub claim is resources are not scarce, which ties into the first sub claim. Bandow states our resources are not scarce because many trees are planted with the intent that they are going to be used specifically for paper. Instead of
Since garbage is taken to landfills most people perceive the issues of their trash as out of sight-out of mind type of situation, but the amount of trash currently present on Earth is no big fuss because it would not cover much. In this article the support of this sub claim comes from A. Clark Wiseman of Spokane's Gonzaga University, he discloses “At the current rate, Americans could put all of the trash generated over the next 1,000 years into a landfill 100 yards high and 35 miles square. Or dig a similar-size hole and plant grass on top after it was