RECYCLING FOR RECYCLING'S SAKE

There is hardly a better example of the advantages of a free market over a command economy than recycling. The free market always has "encouraged" (i.e., offered a profit) for recycling when it made sense and was good business. Scrap-iron dealers did not need the wise men in Congress to legislate their profession. When silver was above $15 an ounce, printers (who use more photographic material than photographers) were offered equipment to extract the silver from their exhausted film developers. Today, at $3.70 an ounce, they pour it down the sink.

But in a command economy, such as is dying out in the ex-Soviet Empire and such as is fast growing in the USA, recycling is carried out because Congress (or some other institution whose commands are enforced by guns) says so. The Reauthorization of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) faded to reach the senate and house floors (as S.976 and HR.3865), but issue to be pushed again now that we will have gaga Gore-Gore and his minion Carol Browner to save the planet. The RCRA sets industry-wide standards of how much is to be recovered and utilized: 40% for paper, glass and steel 66% for aluminum, and 25% for plastic containers, regardless of the recovery costs, and regardless of whether there is a market for the waste of what has already been used once. All of this and more is to be done to fight off the great crisis: "We are overwhelming ourselves with garbage and we are running out of safe and secure places in which to place it," says Sen. Baucus, a Democrat from Montana of all places.

Oh, really. Prof. Rathje's recently reviewed book [AtE Oct 92; see also AtE Jul 90] Rubbish! refers to a 1989 study which found approximately 200 geologically safe landfill sites with available highway access in less than half of New York State. How many sites would they have found in Montana or Colorado?

The wailing about no more landfill sites is second only to the wailing about unnecessary packaging. Consumers in a free market have shown that they prefer their milk in paper cartons over heavy glass bottles, not to save energy (which they do), but because they are more convenient. But the RCRA would set standards at gun point, and the same ones for Montana as for Rhode Island. There is, of course, a lot of needless packaging. Lipsticks, dear ladies, are made from slaughterhouse wastes that even the pigs refuse to eat. They are practically worthless, and what you pay for is the dye, the casing, and the paper package, with an added premium if the slaughterhouse waste is labeled "Max Factor" instead of "Woolworth." So what? Is it up to you or to Sen. Baucus to decide what lipstick in what package to buy? Once again, he is using scare tactics to get your vote, just as ex-scientists use them to get funds, and sham-environmentalist organizations use them to get your sympathy.

[More. K.Chilton, J.Lis. "Recycling for recycling sake," Journ. of Regulation and Social Costs (1615 H St NW, Washington, D.C), vol. 2, no. 3 (Oct. 1992).]

Things take me longer now than they used to, and I have more to do, so I can't print bumper stickers any more. Otherwise I would print this one (use it, I will make no copyright claims):

(Bumpersticker: "Save the planet's wheat- Recycle bread" w/picture of grain and toilet.)