Many moons ago, when we lived in Chula Vista, I made a discovery that outraged me – but I was very alone in that reaction. My discovery? The city's waste collection system required us to sort aluminum, plastic, and paper trash into a blue recycling bin. We were charged extra for these bins. The contents of those bins went to a facility where the aluminum cans were picked out and sold – for slightly less than it cost to run the facility. The remaining plastic and paper trash was then trucked – at extra cost to the taxpayers – to a separate landfill in Mexico. The rest of the trash went into a landfill in San Diego County. The overall result was that taxpayers were subsidizing a completely ineffective recycling industry that ended up not only costing more, but using more energy and disposing of a large quantity of paper and plastic in an unregulated Mexican landfill.
Before recycling was imposed legislatively, the vast majority of aluminum cans were recycled – by armies of people picking through the trash to make some money. The proportion of aluminum cans that were recycled actually went down after recycling was imposed, simply because some people didn't recycle, but nobody picked through the trash any more. The rest of the trash used to go all into a nice, safe San Diego County landfill, costing the taxpayers much less than trucking a bunch of it to Mexico.
When I shared my discovery with others, I was surprised that basically nobody shared my outrage. It's a peculiar situation, where logic and common sense seem to be inoperative in the face of the “feel-good” aspects of recycling. The entire multi-billion dollar industry seems to be one gigantic scam, a scheme to milk abundant tax dollars. I'm sure you will not be a bit surprised to learn that the recycling companies are huge political campaign contributors...
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