Why Recycle Paper

Why Recycle Paper? “I recycle because I feel like I’m being a good person and contributing to society,” says Amanda Enclave of suburban Los Angeles, California. About 30% of people in America recycle regularly and there are questions to ask about it. Why recycle? What are we gaining by recycling? Does recycling actually help the environment? Hopefully this paper will show recycling for what it is: useless. John Tierney writes in the New York Times, …recycling programs aren’t good for posterity. They offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups- politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations-while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
To start it off; not all recycling is bad. Recycling aluminum cans is actually beneficial. However, this paper concentrates on the worst type of recycling: paper recycling. Recycling paper is an activity that waste money, human and natural resources, and time. The recycling movement that has swept this nation started with the Mobro 4000 barge. It was filled with trash and needed to be dumped somewhere. There was no place for it to go so it sailed up and down the Atlantic coast. For doing so it received a lot of media-attention and people formed the idea; America was running out of landfill space to dump trash. In response to this, government worker Jay Winston Porter published “An Agenda for Action” which was read nationally. It said such things as “…recycling is vital”, “We’re running out of places to dispose our trash”, and “1/3 of the nations landfills will be full within the next few years.” Since “An Agenda for Action” was written the percentage of trash recycled jumped from 10% to 30%. Thanks to Mr. Jay Winston Porter, Americans started to waste their time and money. Landfill space is a huge point that is made by people who favor recycling. They seem to think that if we don’t recycle we will be buried under mountains of trash. Just like Mr. Porter said, “We’re running out of places to dispose our trash.” In actuality America has plenty of room. Americans throw away 220 million tons of trash a year. It sounds like a lot but America has space to put all that trash. Newspaper from a household in a year weighs about 520 pounds and only occupies 40 cubic feet in a landfill. If there was a 35-mile by 35-mile landfill that was 200 feet high, it could hold the trash of America for the next 1,000 years. That would be roughly .0003% of the United State’s total area. Landfill capacity has been increasing over the past years in most parts of the America and has only shrunk in a few areas such as New Jersey. Landfills also have to meet strict government regulations and standards. Even though there are strict standards, people who are in favor of recycling say that the decomposing materials are hazardous to people and that methane gasses can build up and explode. At the United State’s biggest landfill, Puente Hills Landfill, they harvest the methane gas for the decomposing organic materials. The gas is then used to provide electricity for 60,000 homes for the next 30 years. As for the smell, in some areas trash is buried and seeds are planted. The resulting area is turned into parks, golf courses, or other areas of recreation. According to the New York Department of Sanitation, 40% of their recycled items go to the landfill. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) estimates that there will be 5.7 cancer-related deaths due to landfills in the next 300 years. Also there has been advancements in packaging which helps lower the amount of food that is thrown in the trash. Packaging helps reduces the chances of food poisoning and other food related health problems along with keeping landfill size at a minimum. It wastes the consumers time sorting the materials and wastes money that the consumer is paying to have it taken away. There is a significant cost difference. In almost all communities in the United States it cost more to recycle then to landfill. It takes roughly 40-50 dollars to throw away a ton of trash in a landfill. It takes about 150 dollars to recycle a ton of trash. That would make the annual cost of recycling 8 billion dollars. Recycling is supposed to get a net profit. However, in New York City in the past 15 years there has been a net loss. The loss in 2004 was 33 million dollars. The true cost of recycling is hidden in the tax money that the government takes. They use tax money for things that someone would not normally spend money on. Since recycling paper is a manufacturing process it costs more money. First workers have to pulp the paper. Then moved to a screening facility. After that it goes through centrifuge cleaning and then a floatation process. When that is done it is moved to a place where kneading takes place and then it is washed. It’s then bleached, paper made, and then the waste is disposed. This whole process pollutes the air, takes gas, time, and money to move the materials to different centers to be treated. The chemicals at the different centers that are used to treat the paper are harmful for the environment. The paper that has been treated is of lesser quality then the original paper. Jobs are created because recycling is such a long multi-step process. Having more jobs will help raise the economy. This is true but the people who work in the recycling industry are doing a job that serves no purpose. It’s just like paying them to run around all day. The money used to pay the workers could be used to raise teacher salaries, provide health care for all Americans, or to help other social problems. A University of Michigan economist named Richard Porter says, “The fact that lots of people are needed to carry out recycling programs is basically evidence that recycling is expensive, requiring lots of labor (as well as capital) that could have been used to full fill other goals of public policy.” Saving the trees is easily the most popular reason of why people choose to recycle. The truth is, if Americans recycle it leads to fewer trees. It sounds crazy but it is true. Trees that are used to make paper are grown on tree farms around the world. If Americans kept using recycled paper then there would be no use for having tree farms. The result would be fewer trees, because there would be no use for the trees people plant at tree farms. Roy E. Cordato is one of the people who have researched this: If we stopped using paper, there would be fewer trees planted. In the paper industry, 87% of the trees used are planted to produce paper. For every 13 trees ”saved” by recycling, 87 will never get planted. It is because of the demand for paper that the number of trees has been increasing in this country for the last fifty years. The lesson is this: if your goal is to maximize the number of trees, don’t recycle.
Trees that are used for making paper aren’t trees that take years to mature before they can be used. Trees are a renewable resource which means that trees cut down can be replaced by new trees. “ The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests is more than 20 times the number of trees consumed by the world each year for wood and paper (Benjamin 80). There are 3 times as many trees then there was in the year of 1920. One of the main reasons people want to save the trees is because they give off oxygen. This is true but with age a tree reaches a point where leaves and needles fall off the tree. The fallen leaves and needles start to decay and start to release carbon dioxide, which is the opposite of what environmentalist want. When a tree dies it goes from producing oxygen to producing carbon dioxide. Trees need to be cut down at this point. Another common myth is that the trees used to make paper are from the endangered rainforest. Actually this is not true. Trees used for paper are generally in the northern most forests of the world. What recycling amounts to in the end is that it is a feel good activity. If consumers were more informed they wouldn’t get so much satisfaction from recycling. The satisfaction is shown in research done by sociologist. They concluded that recycling makes a person feel good. The good feeling comes from thinking that they are helping the planet and it also gives a sense of community. Daniel Benjamin who is a professor at Clemson University says “The basis of why people recycle is on misinformation.” He is saying that if people knew the true waste of recycling, they wouldn’t do it. In conclusion, recycling is a waste of money, human and natural resources, and time. From the start with the Mobro 4000 and “An Agenda for Action by Jay Winston Porter, recycling has been a pointless waste of time. Environmentalist want Americans to think that there will be a shortage of landfill space when there really isn’t. They also want people to think that organic materials that decompose are hazardous to the health of Americans when it really isn’t. Also the cost of recycling is higher than if someone would just dump it in a landfill. The process of treating recycled paper is a long process that pollutes the air and costs a lot of money. Not recycling helps saves trees. More trees are planted to be harvest for paper. In the world there is 3 times as many trees as there was 88 years ago. However ultimately, recycling does accomplish one thing. It makes people feel good about themselves! Recycling is pointless, worthless, and makes people money-less. When this paper has served its purpose it is going into the trash…where it belongs.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Daniel, Garbage and Recycling.San Diego: Greenhaven Press inc. (2007).
“Rethink Recycling”. 20 Nov. 1995. Ehponline.com. 02 Mar. 2008 .
Paper Recycling is Bad for your Butt AND you World, 2 June, 2005, Lockjawslair.com. 02 Mar. 2008 .
“Recycling.” Bullshit. Showtime. April 29, 2004. Broadcasted onYoutube.com, Jan 15, 2008. .
Tierney, John: “Recycling…Is Garbage”. New York Times, 1996: 24-29, 44, 48, 51, 53. 02 March, 2008. .
Tierney, John. “Recycling is Uneconomical.” Is Recycling an Effective Response to Pollution? Eds. Tamara L. Roleff, San Diego: Greenhaven, 2000.

Cited: Benjamin, Daniel, Garbage and Recycling.San Diego: Greenhaven Press inc. (2007). “Rethink Recycling”. 20 Nov. 1995. Ehponline.com. 02 Mar. 2008 . Paper Recycling is Bad for your Butt AND you World, 2 June, 2005, Lockjawslair.com. 02 Mar. 2008 . “Recycling.” Bullshit. Showtime. April 29, 2004. Broadcasted onYoutube.com, Jan 15, 2008. . Tierney, John: “Recycling…Is Garbage”. New York Times, 1996: 24-29, 44, 48, 51, 53. 02 March, 2008. . Tierney, John. “Recycling is Uneconomical.” Is Recycling an Effective Response to Pollution? Eds. Tamara L. Roleff, San Diego: Greenhaven, 2000.