Long ago when entering the glassware business, I visited a unit of Ball-Incon, a huge bottle maker and consumer of recycled glass. I tagged along with a group of 5th graders for a plant tour. It was eye-opening.
Among the tidbits offered was bottle makers can only use a certain percentage of recycled glass in a new bottle (I think it was 20%) for reasons having to do with physics, so the majority of a recycled glass item started from scratch, silica and potash. Also, glass is the only item that can be recycled back into itself. Everything else must be stepped up in hardness... light plastic recycled in heavier plastic, light paper into heavier... same with aluminum.
So then I toured the recyclers, in the mid-80s, when business was good and growing. Huge operations. USA #1 export in volume (not in money) is scrap: paper, aluminum, glass steel, you name it. China is the market. Mountains of the stuff is exported. "Wow..." I exclaimed to the tour guide, "all of this scrap will come back to USA as products." "No..." he laughed, "Almost all of this will end up in the landfill. There is not enough market, in fact the market for recycled materials is very small... we sort it out, and then ship most it off to landfills."
Well, that was interesting. You mean people get on their hands and knees and sort garbage every week, most of which will end up in a landfill anyway? Yep. Isn't that an incredible waste? Yep, but politics is about making people feel good about themselves.
Penn & Teller did an entertaining episode on recycling, but caution, they use a bad word.
We are conditioned to believe things that just are not true, like Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11, like only we can save the Libyan people. Twenty years after my tour of the recyclers my daughters, in grade school, were being dosed with the obligatory report on recycling. At this point the demand for scrap materials was at its zenith. I suggested, in addition to the reference materials and resources the teacher required they study, they also simply call the recycling company that has the contract to pick up recycling in out neighborhood, and ask them what happens to most of what is sorted for recycling. I introduced my daughters to the concept of the "public relations" department, and how they shared company information, and would be especially delighted to field a question from a grade-schooler doing a report.
My skeptical daughters called, and the receptionist answering the phone probed her young caller to better direct her call. Hearing my daughter's question, even the receptionist assured my daughter most of what is recycled is sent to landfills. PR confirmed it too. Even when top prices were being paid. It is no secret.
Too much trash begins with subsidies of packaging materials, which allows goods to be shipped farther, and thus concentration of production. If the true cost of a hydroelectric dam was figured into the price of electricity required to smelt aluminum into cans, if the true cost of logging our national forests was figured into paper, if the true costs of oil for plastics and transportation was direct assigned, we would have far less packaging, far more diverse regional businesses thriving, and far less packaging going to the landfills. If persons actually had to pay what packing costs, we’d have practically no landfills. The costs are socialized, as when banks are bailed out, so your children have less so bankers can have more.
Products would cost more, but indirect costs would be less... Beer 10 cents a bottle more, recycling a dollar less.
The solution gets to free markets, and underlying property rights. One natural law right is your property is what you can homestead and mix with your labor. The flip side is what you cannot work is no longer yours, it becomes homesteadable. Property law was change in USA in the 1800s that violated these principles, which led to many of the problems we have today. Government fostered the problem, and makes it worse with a policy of recycling. But then that is a pattern, isn't it?
If we cared about the environment, we would simply cut the subsidies to the packaging generators, and their raw material extractors. We'd let the free market sort out who bids up for what. And then we'd see revolution in "green" systems, based on markets and not on politics.
Among the tidbits offered was bottle makers can only use a certain percentage of recycled glass in a new bottle (I think it was 20%) for reasons having to do with physics, so the majority of a recycled glass item started from scratch, silica and potash. Also, glass is the only item that can be recycled back into itself. Everything else must be stepped up in hardness... light plastic recycled in heavier plastic, light paper into heavier... same with aluminum.
So then I toured the recyclers, in the mid-80s, when business was good and growing. Huge operations. USA #1 export in volume (not in money) is scrap: paper, aluminum, glass steel, you name it. China is the market. Mountains of the stuff is exported. "Wow..." I exclaimed to the tour guide, "all of this scrap will come back to USA as products." "No..." he laughed, "Almost all of this will end up in the landfill. There is not enough market, in fact the market for recycled materials is very small... we sort it out, and then ship most it off to landfills."
Well, that was interesting. You mean people get on their hands and knees and sort garbage every week, most of which will end up in a landfill anyway? Yep. Isn't that an incredible waste? Yep, but politics is about making people feel good about themselves.
Penn & Teller did an entertaining episode on recycling, but caution, they use a bad word.
We are conditioned to believe things that just are not true, like Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11, like only we can save the Libyan people. Twenty years after my tour of the recyclers my daughters, in grade school, were being dosed with the obligatory report on recycling. At this point the demand for scrap materials was at its zenith. I suggested, in addition to the reference materials and resources the teacher required they study, they also simply call the recycling company that has the contract to pick up recycling in out neighborhood, and ask them what happens to most of what is sorted for recycling. I introduced my daughters to the concept of the "public relations" department, and how they shared company information, and would be especially delighted to field a question from a grade-schooler doing a report.
My skeptical daughters called, and the receptionist answering the phone probed her young caller to better direct her call. Hearing my daughter's question, even the receptionist assured my daughter most of what is recycled is sent to landfills. PR confirmed it too. Even when top prices were being paid. It is no secret.
Too much trash begins with subsidies of packaging materials, which allows goods to be shipped farther, and thus concentration of production. If the true cost of a hydroelectric dam was figured into the price of electricity required to smelt aluminum into cans, if the true cost of logging our national forests was figured into paper, if the true costs of oil for plastics and transportation was direct assigned, we would have far less packaging, far more diverse regional businesses thriving, and far less packaging going to the landfills. If persons actually had to pay what packing costs, we’d have practically no landfills. The costs are socialized, as when banks are bailed out, so your children have less so bankers can have more.
Products would cost more, but indirect costs would be less... Beer 10 cents a bottle more, recycling a dollar less.
The solution gets to free markets, and underlying property rights. One natural law right is your property is what you can homestead and mix with your labor. The flip side is what you cannot work is no longer yours, it becomes homesteadable. Property law was change in USA in the 1800s that violated these principles, which led to many of the problems we have today. Government fostered the problem, and makes it worse with a policy of recycling. But then that is a pattern, isn't it?
If we cared about the environment, we would simply cut the subsidies to the packaging generators, and their raw material extractors. We'd let the free market sort out who bids up for what. And then we'd see revolution in "green" systems, based on markets and not on politics.
0 comments:
Post a Comment