Some Types of Recycling are Good for Nothing

Everyone agrees that waste is bad. But recently San Diego’s approved that “zero waste” policy will not omit waste. In fact, it is probable to increase waste. California Legislature passed a bill in 2011 requiring each city to recycle 75 percent of its waste by 2020.

Nearly every human doings generates “waste.”

We exhale around 4 percent carbon dioxide as waste while breathing. Businesses produce waste both when they produce goods and when they move them to other businesses or our homes.

New technologies even also reduce waste. Packaging, a common target of environmental activists, can shrink waste by enabling more use of raw materials and condensed emissions, injure and spoilage during transportation and storage. But new technologies will not get rid of waste. So the question is how to manage it.

Recycling is not a thrilling solution: When waste material is picked up for recycling, it must then be arranged, cleaned, reprocessed and then sent to plants. All of this includes the use of energy and free of waste emissions.

Recycling makes sense for easy products made of high-value materials that are simple to recycle, such as cans and paper products; it makes less sense for compound products made of mixed materials that are hard and costly to recycle, such as computers.

So how should cities manage their solid waste? Preferably, businesses and households should pay the cost of waste management. Recycling feels good. The end result is wasted resources. And that outcome doesn’t benefit the environment or the economy.