Recycling(Neg) Matthew Hamilton, Eveready

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Recycling(Neg)
Table of Contents
1. Advantages to Not Recycling.................................................................................................................1
1.1 Money Could be Used Elsewhere...................................................................................................1
1.2 Current Methods Cost Less.............................................................................................................1
1.3 Significant Amount of Money Could be Saved(Minneapolis)........................................................1
2. FAIL.......................................................................................................................................................2
2.1 Watertown, SD Program Harder Than Tossing in Landfill.............................................................2
2.2 More Hassle and Time to Recycle...................................................................................................2
2.3 Lots of Labor and Capital Needed..................................................................................................2

1. Advantages to Not Recycling

1.1 Money Could be Used Elsewhere

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

But to an economist, this is a red herring. After all, jobs would also be created if governments allowed
citizens to throw garbage in the street and then hired people to pick it up. If tax revenue weren't paying
someone to sort cans and bottles in a recycling processing facility, that money could be used in some
other way—perhaps paying teachers to educate children, or never collected as a tax in the first place—
both of which might have a greater social benefit.

1.2 Current Methods Cost Less

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

But another point has much greater credibility. The time-consuming process of recycling faces an
unfair fight if the alternative—tossing something in a trash can—is virtually free. And in the United
States, that's often been the case. In most American municipalities, the standard practice has been for
households to pay for trash collection through taxes assessed on the market value of their homes and/or
with a monthly garbage bill unrelated to the amount of trash put out for disposal. As a result, an
individual homeowner (or business, in many cases) faces essentially no marginal cost for throwing
away another bag or three of trash each week. That's an obvious disincentive to recycle. Why go to the
effort of sorting recyclables when you can just toss them in the garbage can for free?

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1.3 Significant Amount of Money Could be Saved(Minneapolis)

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

Other district communities face the same problem. Early last year, Lake County, Minn., officials were
debating what to do about their recycling program—mandated by the state—because they couldn't
afford to pay the $57,000 bid for a hauler to pick up recyclables at county recycling drop-off sheds. In
St. Cloud, Minn., city officials estimated in 2002 that they could save about $200,000 a year by not
recycling the 2,800 tons collected. A 2001 Wisconsin legislative audit of the state's recycling program
calculated that it cost $95 a ton to recycle (net of the revenue from selling recyclables) but just $85 to
collect and dump in a landfill.

2. FAIL

2.1 Watertown, SD Program Harder Than Tossing in Landfill

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

Watertown, S.D., hasn't opted out, but it has begun to look more carefully at the costs of recycling.
Mike Boerger, the city's superintendent of wastewater and solid waste, runs the curbside collection
program for recyclables and oversees the local landfill as well. “I just put this little spreadsheet
together,” he said, to analyze the costs and revenue associated with Watertown 's annual recycling
average of about 700 tons.
Boerger's recycling costs include the expense of sending a collection truck around to pick up
recyclables (“probably 500 stops a day, 4 days a week”) plus his payment to the local firm that
processes and markets the recyclables. On the revenue side: the money made when the recyclables are
sold and the avoided costs saved by not putting the 700 tons in the landfill (calculated at his landfill
tipping fee of about $31 a ton). “Now, you could argue with my methodology here,” he said, but “when
it gets down to it, it's a heck of a lot cheaper just to landfill solid waste than it is to recycle it.”

2.2 More Hassle and Time to Recycle

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

The costs of recycling programs depend on a number of factors. Collection costs are key, and there are
economies of scale that make recycling a difficult proposition in sparsely populated areas like Lake

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County . Also, it's usually cheaper to collect trash than recyclables because it can be crushed more
compactly than materials that have to be processed before sale. Glass bottles, for example, need to be
sorted by color; crushing them makes that next to impossible. “The collection of recyclables fills trucks
more quickly and requires more trips,” noted the Wisconsin analysis.

2.3 Lots of Labor and Capital Needed

Douglas Clement(senior writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis)“Recycling—righteous or
rubbish?”, the Heartland Institute, March 2005,
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/17273.pdf

“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 fulfill
other goals of public policy,” wrote Richard Porter, a University of Michigan economist, in his recent
book The Economics of Waste.

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