Recycling: Argument against

In a free market, technological progress naturallyregulations, comes from arbitrary, bureaucratic
drives society towards more efficient fuels and moregovernment dictates, that cannot be objectively
efficient fuels produce less waste. Waste reduction isdefined.
a net benefit to business, because it is the flip side ofThe insanity of the environmental movement, has
efficiency, the less waste one produces, the moredriven us to a recycling frenzy, which has grown to
efficient the output... that increase in efficiency, alsoinsane proportions.
leads to reduced prices. It is free market competition,The cure for genuine environmental problems, will not
that drives business toward efficiency and advancescome from government, it will come from and grow
in technology.naturally out of science and technology, driven
Ironically, the recycling regulations forced onforward by business and consumer demand.
businesses, have the opposite effects to that whichQUOTE... "First, we are told that recycling will help
is proclaimed. Businesses, that are forced to spendpreserve scarce landfill space. We are not, however,
much of their time focused on recycling, become lesseven remotely close to running out of space for our
efficient and that reduction in efficiency producesgarbage. Despite the "garbage trucks could ring the
more waste... Thus, recycling ends up beingMilky Way galaxy" rhetoric, all of the trash America
counter-productive.will produce over the next 1,000 years could fit into a
The burden on that advance in technological progresslandfill 15 square miles in size." -'Recycling is Not the
today, comes from over regulation by bigAnswer, by Jerry Taylor, The Cato Institute ...END
government, which has created a recyclingQUOTE
boondoggle, that is eating into economic growth andCraig Secularman
making it very difficult for business start ups, to driveSecular-man Blog...
from red to black... and much of those rules and