Recycling is a religious practice, not a scientific or economic one

What would you say if someone told you an employer or the government asking you to recycle something as simple as glass or paper was a violation of your First Amendment right regarding freedom of religion?

Most would probably see no connection between religious freedom and being told to recycle. However, there is a huge connection. If recycling is truly evaluated for what it is, then it is clearly a religious practice, not a scientific or economic one.

First it must be clarified — there are two types of recycling, the first being resource recycling where consumers turn in used goods for a price. These goods are actual resources since they have value. Examples are aluminum, copper or corrugated cardboard. These resources are recycled because they have value and there is an economic incentive to recycle them.

The second type of recycling involves recycling used items that have no value. Simply put, if the first group could be titled “recycling resources,” the second group could be titled “recycling garbage.” Items in this group would be like green and brown glass or certain types of paper.

The question for the “recycling garbage” group then is: Why recycle it? The first group is recycled for economic incentive, but the second is recycled for a net loss to the economy. It is inefficient and in many cases worse for the environment to recycle garbage. 

Dr. Mike Munger, head of Duke’s political science department, says “claims for recycling rest on an assumed … moral imperative rather than on trade-offs or costs. But underlying this claim … is some murky idea that recycling ‘uses up’ fewer resources than making things from scratch.”

If recycling did use fewer resources, then our sophisticated economy would have lower prices for goods made from recycled garbage.

In fact, the less paper we recycle, the fewer trees there are on Earth. The paper pulp industry has become highly organized and turned into a farming practice and not a pillaging practice, as green believers have us think. It is in their best interest to have as many easily accessible trees as possible. When they use up arborous resources, they immediately replace them in order to keep costs of production down. However, the more paper that is bleached inefficiently and recycled, the fewer new trees that get planted. 

Some green believers may concede on the point of prices telling us recycling many things is inefficient, worse for the environment and done so religiously. However, many would counter with the notion it conserves landfill space.  This too is just a belief and not a rationale practice.

Environmental economist Dan Benjamin found that “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Mont., could handle all of America’s trash for the next century — with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.” Clearly, space is not a major issue except in incredibly densely populated areas such as New York City.

It should also be noted landfill pollution has never been a danger to public safety or health. A representative of the EPA even said “the EPA doesn’t regulate risks from these sites [landfills] because the risks, if any, are undeserving of regulation.”

It seems most recycling is violating basic rational economic and scientific practice by substituting inefficient resources for efficient ones. The economics show we are. Therefore, recycling is an inefficient practice of religious faith.

This is not to say believing in recycling in wrong, but it is to point out recycling is not the scientific, ecological practice it is made out to be. It is a religious practice that makes its followers feel as though they are doing the right thing.

Richardson’s column runs each Wednesday. He is a teacher at Floyd T. Binns Middle School.