Peenie Wallie: The Recycling Myth

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February 05, 2008

The Recycling Myth

http://www.mises.org/story/2855

What is interesting about this Soviet-style planned recycling is that it is officially profitable. It is supposed to be resource efficient, since recycling of the materials is less energy-consuming than, for instance, mining or the production of paper from wood. It is also economically profitable, since the government actually generates revenues from selling recycled materials and products made in the recycling process. The final recycling process costs less than is earned from selling the recycled products.

However, this is common government logic: it is "energy saving" simply because government does not count the time and energy used by nine million people cleaning and sorting their trash. Government authorities and researchers have reached the conclusion that the cost of (a) the water and electricity used for cleaning household trash, (b) transportation from trash collection centers, and (c) the final recycling process is actually less than would be necessary to produce these materials from scratch. Of course, they don't count the literally millions of times people drive to the recycling centers to empty their trash bins; neither do they count, for instance, energy and costs for the extra housing space required for a dozen extra trash bins in every home.

Economically, Swedish recycling is a disaster. Imagine a whole population spending time and money cleaning their garbage and driving it around the neighborhood rather than working or investing in a productive market! According to the government's books, more money flows in than flows out; therefore recycling is profitable. But this ignores the costs of coercion.

This is what the tree-huggers don't get. They all think recycling is the way to go, but it isn't. It's cheaper to throw everything into a hole and make new glass and paper and metal from scratch. Way cheaper. That's why you have to pay someone to come pick up anything you want to recycle. Tree-huggers don't get this, but they're usually socialists anyway, so they have no qualms about empowering the government to force you to recycle and they're no fans of capitalism, so if it doesn't make sense financially, then that's no great burden either.

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