It's OK to Throw it Away: Tell Your Kids

'The moral status of recycling has reached that of honoring the flag or respecting your mom. How many of us have been embarrassed by our kids' friends who, upon finishing a Coke, have asked, "do you recycle?" We, of course, sheepishly answer, "no, but we really should." It's time for non-recyclers to come out of the closet.

Rule number one, don't be intimidated by your kids. They have a misplaced sense of moral superiority on environmental issues. Polls show that most information adults get about the environment comes from their kids, who in turn get their views from school and children's television. One poll concluded that 63 percent of school children have lobbied their parents to recycle. Don't roll over. The kids, their teachers, and Captain Planet are wrong.

Much of what kids learn is grounded in advocacy, not fact. For example, one common argument claims we are running out of landfill space. A recent public service ad on Nickelodeon hyperbolically shows images of a city being completely buried in its own trash. This claim is also made in textbooks and popular children's resource books, such as 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth.

According to a study by Resources for the Future, if all of the solid waste that America will generate for the next ten centuries were put into a single place, it would require a hole that is 44 miles on each side and 120 feet deep. This is a mere one-tenth of 1 percent of the land area of the continental United States. As the report concludes, "there is sufficient land available to continue [our] reliance on landfills."

How about the claim that recycling paper saves trees? Paper is made from trees; if we made new paper from old paper, fewer trees would be cut down. Hence, recycling saves trees. That sounds reasonable, right? Think again. If tomorrow we suddenly stopped making bread from wheat, would you expect there to be more wheat in the world in a year? Or if everyone stopped eating chicken, would we expect the chicken population to increase? Of course not. Farmers plant wheat because it is used to make bread. And if we stopped eating chicken, fewer chickens would be raised and the chicken population would fall.

This same logic applies to the relationship between paper and trees. If we stopped making paper from trees, there would be fewer trees. Eighty-seven percent of the trees that are used for manufacturing paper are planted for that purpose. That implies that for every 13 trees "saved" by paper recycling, there will be 87 that never get planted. This is why, contrary to popular belief, both the amount of forest land and the number of trees in this country have been increasing for the last 50 years. Increased demand for paper has led to more, not fewer, trees.

The claim that recycling saves resources has not been proven. In fact, the market suggests otherwise. A former EPA official, J. Winston Porter, has candidly acknowledged, "trash management is becoming much more costly due to . . . the generally high cost of recycling." If recycling saved resources, it should cost less, not more, than other methods of trash disposal. Costs are a reflection of the value we place on resources. If recycling truly saved resources relative to landfilling and making products from virgin materials, people would not need to be exhorted, and in some cases forced, to recycle. Manufacturers would be willing to pay trash collection agencies (public or private) or consumers an amount sufficient to induce them to voluntarily separate their trash. For the most part (aluminum being a possible exception), this is not the case.

Our children are also told that recycling reduces pollution. But the recycling process itself generates pollution. For example, newspaper recycling requires that the old ink be stripped and the paper be bleached. This is a chemically intensive process that generates chemical waste, as opposed to the benign waste that would result from throwing the paper away. Also, curbside recycling programs require more trash pickups per week. This means more trucks on the road generating more air pollution. The Wall Street Journal reported that, due to mandatory recycling, New York City had to add two additional pickups per week, and Los Angeles had to double its fleet of trash trucks. There is no evidence to support the claim that people who recycle are better citizens or even care more about the environment than people who don't. For too long, the claims of environmental propagandists, which have trickled up from children to parents, have gone unchallenged. Consequently, we are wasting resources and even generating pollution in the name of saving the environment. So the next time you get the urge to throw that old stack of newspapers into the garbage can, go ahead--guilt free.

Roy E. Cordato is Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy at Campbell University. This essay is based on one that appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of The Campbell Entrepreneur.