Government mandated recycling is often counter productive.  Because recycling is so politically popular, public officials developed goals as part of their waste management plans to recycle a specific percentage of household waste. To meet these goals, local governments have employed mandated recycling programs and mandated that certain products contain a percentage of recycled content. As a result, local governments expend enormous resources to promote recycling, even when that means using more resources than recycling saves. Despite conventional wisdom, recycling has environmental trade-offs, and in many cases it can be the less environmentally sound option because recycling can use more energy and water, and emit more air pollution than other alternatives.  States spend a total of $322 million annually to subsidize recycling, according to one study. 

How can we know how much recycling make sense? 

Recycling is one important part of our “integrated waste management system.”  This system recognizes that some portions of our waste are most efficiently recycled, some placed in landfills, and some burned in incinerators.  The key is finding the mix of options that conserve the most resources, while protecting the environment. Market-driven competi­tion is the best way to achieve this goal.  Each option represents its costs to society:  the value of the water, energy, land, labor, and other resources that the disposal option requires.  Hence, by allowing competition between disposal options, we enable the most resource-efficient (the least expensive) option to win in any given case.

Unfortunately, governments usually don’t allow market forces to operate in the waste management market.  Instead they produce 30-year waste plans and attempt to manage the waste economy the way soviets used to manage their economy.  It works about as well.  Because officials cannot possibly estimate future waste generation, nor can they envision future disposal technology.  As a result, public officials often make poor decisions, invest in the wrong technologies, and often choose the less efficient dis­posal options.

Should the government regulate packaging to reduce waste?

Ironically, attempts to eliminate packaging can increase refuse by eliminating packaging that prevents spoilage or product damage.  For example, developing countries experience food spoilage of 30 percent to 50 percent because of inadequate packaging, storage, and distribution.  With sophis­ticated packaging, storage, and distribution, developed nations only experience 2 percent to 3 percent food spoilage.  Market forces are a better tool for reduction of waste.  Manufacturers know that more efficient packaging — rather than its elimination –– saves re­sources. For example, J. Winston Porter, former EPA Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste, reports that 1980 and 1998, manufacturers reduced the material necessary to make a two-liter plastic bottle from 65 to 48 grams; an aluminum can from 19 to 14 grams; a glass bottle from 255 to 170 grams; a steel can from 48 to 36 grams; and a plastic grocery sack from nine to six grams.

Are we running out of landfill space?

There is plenty landfill space available to safety dispose of our waste.  In the 1990s, people claimed we would run out of space because, they said, existing landfills would close in five to 10 years.  But that is true at any point in time since landfills only last that long. Problems arise when states fail to permit new facilities. There was then (and still is) plenty of land on which to place new landfills. During the alleged landfill crisis, A. Clark Wiseman of Gonzaga University pointed out that, given projected waste in­creases, we would still be able to fit the next 1,000 years of trash in a single landfill 120 feet deep, with 44-mile sides.  Wiseman’s point is clear:  land disposal needs are small compared to the available land in the three million square miles of the contiguous United States. The real landfill problem was political: Fears about the effects of landfills on the local environment led to the rise of the so-called not-in-my-backyard syndrome (NIMBY), which made permitting facilities difficult.  Actual landfill capacity was not running out.  The market response to this problem was the construction of larger landfills, creating greater disposal capacity even with fewer landfills.

Do landfills increase public health risks?

Estimates of landfill risks –– based on EPA assumptions that “maximally exposed” individuals face a cancer risk of one in a million –– reveal that the risks to public health are not significant. When compared to most other forms of businesses and activities we experience in daily living, the risks posed by landfills to the surrounding communities are miniscule.