Is Recycling All It's Worth? Bennett Copley - 8

People always say, "Everyone should recycle, its good for the environment," but what about recycling is good for the environment? I mean, recycling is great and all, except its extremely costly and inefficient. Now, after reading that, people will say, well what does trash or any other means of disposal have over recycling? Well here it is, everyone claims recycling is good, because recycling reduces pollution, which is not entirely true, the factories that break down the recycled stuff are just as polluting if not more polluting than... wait, there is no trash factory, and well sealed landfills are extremely non polluting to anything other than the land which they contain... so, actually, recycling pollutes. Also, recycling saves money... still not entirely correct. The processing of the stuff that you recycle requires money, correct? All the factories and the transportation of the recycled stuff, and how much stuff do you really get back from recycling it... not that much. Recycling has the potential to be profitable, if there was a severe lack of raw materials. Actually, as garbage bags decompose, they release methane, and landfill owners have been starting to capture this methane and have begun using it to generate electricity. Though modern incinerators are not considered acceptable in the U.S. yet, they have been accepted by Northern Europe and Japan because they create clean energy. Also, recycling is helping to lessen the amount of jobs there are, causing more people to become unemployed because of there being slightly less need for jobs in the lumber and mining businesses. All in all, recycling is a relic idea that will run itself out of business hopefully for us sometime in the near future.


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html?mabReward=A4&src=rec&recp=7