Should Recycling Be Mandatory?

Is cycle legitimately passage squirt with the environment? Or is recycle entirely a way to go for green material cognize as dollars? recycle is a method in which materials that ar non used anymore by passel are processed in differentiate to transform them in useful products. In the juvenile years, cycle has caused a lot of contr all oversies whether if it is a good way to go green and help artificial satellites health or if it is just a big misconception driven by the media and the presidential term.Some experts in the foreshorten affirm that this practice is still running because cycle was transformed into a political issue that helps government and environmentalists to win bullion and create jobs. Many battalion, politicians and non-profit organizations support recycling, generally based on misconceptions spot at that place are another(prenominal) mickle that do non support it based on facts. recycle should not be mandatory because it is very expensive, it volition not economise the planets environment and it does not save natural resources.Recycling is a method that appeared as a solution for the problems that environmentalists were having with landfills capacity and contamination of scraps around 1980s. match to Christopher Douglass (2003), dramatic predictions of landfill closings created a crisis mentality in America. He in like manner informs that the in 1988 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported to Congress that one-third of all landfills in the United States would close by 1994 and that by 2008 nearly 80 percent of landfills would be shut pass (Douglass, 2003).The emplacement that the EPA presented to the Congress in 1988 seemed to be disastrous but fortunately those predictions were all wrong. The problem with these predictions was that the government and environmentalists turned on red lights in prepare to solve this issue in a exacting way that could help the planets environment. As a result, state and loc al anesthetic governments had the idea of implementing a method that was supposed to reduce food waste, taint and save resources the government implemented recycling. Forty-four states established recycling goals in the late 1980s (Douglass, 2003).Recycling seemed to be a great process that was supposed to save resources, clean the environment and also make silver. Local governments had the idea of making money by interchange recovered household ware. The process of recycling, as explained by the government, looked like a miraculous way in which all problems of drool would be solved and that not enough with it, it will also make money for the government. Recycling was a great Idea it was the hope of the government and also for the citizens of the United States. The recycling gesture was amazing and successful at motivating action.In 1989 most Americans chose the environment as their top precedency for more government sp hold oning, ahead of even crime and health care, accord ing to a National discernment Research Center poll (Douglass, 2003). The only problem with this movement was that its foundational notions were, in large part, misconceptions. Despite what the EPA said, at that place was no landfill crisis in the 1980s. The impudent landfills opening in the 1990s were much larger in assure to offset the towering fixed costs of the new rules and today landfill capacity is more than adequate (Douglass, 2003).The line of descent of this custom that is still practiced in our city is based in misconceptions and myths. On the other hand, more environmentalists and experts on the issue affirm that recycling is still a great process that contributes to conserve the planets environment and to save money. Many non-profit organizations and even schools interested in the wellness of the community, much(prenominal) as Joy Christian School, supports recycling and make ads in cabaret to persuade people to recycle for a healthier humankind.harmonize to th e National Recycling Coalition (NRC), well-run recycling programs cost less to conk out than waste collection, landfilling, and incineration. They also argue that the more people recycle, the cheaper it gets (Recycling Benefits, 2010). Organizations that support recycling usually discuss that recycling is not a waste of money and that some judgment of convictions it helps to save and earn more money. According to the NRC recycling creates 1. 1 million U. S. jobs. For every job collecting recyclables, there are 26 jobs in processing the materials and manufacturing them into new products (Recycling Benefits, 2010).Even thought these facts seem to be a very good support for recycling, they are not. According to Douglass (2003), the cost of collecting and sorting recyclables has exceeded their market prices in most parts of America, forcing most recycling programs to lick at a deficit. It is more expensive to collect a long gross ton of recyclables that a ton of landfill garbage. M any local government call for been in the necessity of cancelling their recycling programs because after all, those programs perpetually end operating at a deficit.In addition, councilman Paul Thurman of Chillicothe, Ohio, a city that dropped its recycling program because of its high cost and little profit said, To me, its the recycling program just a waste of tax money (as cited in Douglass, 2003). Recycling also creates many jobs, just as the NRC said, but the problem is that in many cases the local governments do not become the enough money to pay for all those new jobs created by recycling and that is another reason why recycling programs usually operate at a deficit. Recycling is a very expensive method.Recycling is not the solution to save natural resources actually, in some cases it is trustworthy for wasting more resources. The idea that recycling will save all natural resources of the earth is just a myth truly, in some cases the recycling processes waste more resources than the manufacturing process. Making recyclables generates waste. According to stopcock Werbe (2003), all the water bottles are supposed to be recycled but truly, just the ones with the number 1 or 2 printed at the bottom of the bottle can be recycled.He also states that recycling these bottles are only slightly better than letting them go into a landfill. Actually, he is being generous because if people compute the energy needed to ship a leftover designer water bottle to mainland China along with millions of others to be reprocessed, manufactured into a new item, then shipped back to the U. S. , transported to a mall, purchased, used, and finally landfilled whitethornbe it would be worse to recycle (Werbe, 2003). Even one of the best eccentrics that environmentalist use to persuade people to recycle has had problems with the environment.Recycling water bottles does not always helps the environment or saves recourses actually, sometimes it produces more taint due to the ene rgy used to transport the bottles and process them. Recycling sometimes could be even baneful than beneficial. In addition, there is another factor to consider when people think about saving resources the scarcity. til now there is no environmental reason to recycle trash because resources are not scarce. For example, another example that environmentalist usually use trying to persuade people to recycle is account. They argue that if people ecycle radical sheets or newsprint, the beautiful trees that maintain our jungles and landscapes gorgeous will be saved instead of converted into newsprint but the reality is that those arguments are false. In fact, much newsprint comes from trees grown for that specific purpose (Bandow, 2006). Considering this factor, when people recycle paper they are not saving our beautiful landscapes, they are just saving trees that were deep-seated for that specific purpose and also saving the money of the big companies that need to plant trees in orde r to produce paper to sell.Another reason of why recycling should not be mandatory is because garbage is not harmful for people and recycling not always protects ecosystems. muckle should know one highly important thing folks recycle because they think it is a good thing to do, but what is the real point of being a green person? Are people really saving the worlds health by recycling stuff? The rectitude is that garbage will not change the society and recycling is not the miraculous method that will save the ecosystems in the earth.As time goes by through the past of the years, garbage accumulates, but also disappears thanks to they new technologies created in order to have a solution for garbage problems. The arguments that establish that our garbage will bury us and that it will also poison us are totally false. According to Daniel K. Benjamin (2006), since the 1980s, people repeatedly have claimed that the United States faces a landfill crisis. The United States today has mor e landfill capacity than ever before.In 2001, the nations landfills could accommodate 18 years worth of rubbish, an amount 25 percent greater than a decade before. Nowadays is pretty sack up that we are not going to be full of garbage in the future. The myths that stated that in a few years there would be no more landfill spaces for garbage in the United States were completely false, but the good new is that nowadays the mentioned misconception is completely denied. In addition, there were many people who argued that the garbage sent to landfills could produce deaths in the country.They think that the toxic substances produces by the garbage could r for each one cities and cause insecure diseases to people. Again the good new is that they were wrong. According to Benjamin (2006), the Environmental Protection Agency itself acknowledges that the risks to humans from redbrick landfills are virtually nonexistent Modern landfills can be expected to cause 5. 7 cancer-related deaths ove r the next 300 years. To put this in perspective, cancer kills over 560,000 people every year in the United States.In a few haggling, there is technically no risk for humans to back up because of the accumulation of toxic substances produced by the trash that is in landfills. In addition, it is interesting to know how garbage and not going green sometimes deal with different kind of subjects that apparently people did not have idea about before. Recycling is a process that in a good point of views cuts pollution but that is not always. Recycling can reduce pollution but when is time to recycle things it produces around the same pollution it prevented before.So what is it the point of recycle? The EPA has examined both virgin paper processing and recycled paper processing for toxic substances and found that toxins often are more prevalent in the recycling processes (Benjamin, 2006). People should know that in occasions recycling produces more pollution than the ones that it is sup posed to save. If people think that recycling is supposed to save the environment, how can it cause more pollution than the normal garbage process? The react again is misconceptions. Finally, recycling needs more money than people think.When we hear recycling, one of the first words that come to our mind right away is save save money, save resources, save the world. All this since there is as well many people who assume that recycling is a right thing to do. Experts have been doing inquiry about recycling and its expenses, is it really worth to invest those big amounts of money in just going green? We all would like to have a yes answer to that interrogatory unfortunately we obtain a different answer, an opposing one. The reality is that collecting recyclable items is more expensive than collecting just garbage to landfills.John Tierney (2006), a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, points out that collecting a ton of recyclable items is three times more expensive than c ollecting a ton of garbage because the crews excerption up less material at each stop. For every ton of glass, plastic and metal that the truck delivers to a private recycler, the city currently spends $200 more than it would spend to bury the material in a landfill. All of this because when people want to recycle they have to separate all stuff depending on how is it classified. It takes a lot of time to classify, but also transport to go back and forward for each thing.Instead if people collect all the garbage at once, they would save time and money, but also carbon dioxide would be less produced by the trucks used to pick up the garbage. It is unbelievable the amount of money that is invested on recycling. All green products are more expensive than products that are not recycled, and that is because it costs too much to recycle. Another important fact is that recycling programs usually operate in a deficit. According to Douglass (2003), the cost of collecting recyclables is abo ut $139 per ton for programs that recycle old newsprint and magazines.The cost of sorting these recyclables averages $86 per ton, and the benefits from avoiding land-filling fees is typically $27 per ton, for a net cost of $198 per ton. The majority of recyclables collected yield less than $198 per ton at 1998 prices. This is a great problem. How does recycling is supposed to be mandatory if recycling programs usually operate in a deficit? It is very difficult for local government to maintain these recycling programs because sometimes the local budget is limited and waste money in a program that operates in a deficit is a very bad idea.For example, in 1998 Chillicothe, Ohio dropped its $220,00 recycling program because the money that the government was put in recycling could be better used in more important city needs, such as a new aerial ladder truck for their fire department. Accordant to this problem, Chillicothe councilman Paul Thurman said, To me, its the recycling program ju st a waste of tax money (as cited in Douglass, 2003). The government of that city has already the consider needed to know the truth about recycling programs and the only cause that they produce waste of money.Recycling seems to be useful just for people who still believe all the myths about it and have not yet discovered the truth about this method. Nowadays, recycling should not be mandatory because it is very expensive, and in the big majority of the occasions the recycling programs operate in a deficit that produces financial problems in local governments. In addition, the myth about landfill spaces is completely false because nowadays there are a lot of landfills with great technology that eliminates the risk of poison people because of the garbage.Finally, it is proved that recycling does not always save resources and in some cases, it wastes more energy or water than the normal garbage process. The question now is how can such a wasteful practice persist? John Tierney (2006) answered this question reason out that this practice persists by turning garbage into a political issue, where environmentalists have created jobs for themselves as lawyers, lobbyists, researchers, educators and moral guardians. Environmentalists may enuinely believe theyre helping the Earth, but they have been hurting the common good while profiting personally. Tierney issue a great response for such a controversial question. The politicians who feel pressure by environmentalists are the ones who still support recycling in order to maintain their good political status. On the other hand, environmentalist may think that they are really helping the health of the world, but something that is really truth is that they are being directly beneficiated because of the continuity of recycling.Do they really want to go green or do they prefer to go for the green material named dollars? The real intention of environmentalists is something that only they know. People may feel confortable wit h recycling because they could think that they are helping and if they feel good about themselves they are waive to continue with this wasteful practice, but the government should reveal the truth about recycling in order to clarify the misconceptions about this topic.If after that people still want to recycle they are still lax to do so. As Tierney (2006) states, it is time for an environmental reformation, in which lawmakers change public policy to reflect the barren of recycling. All the citizens that trust in recycling have the right to know the real situation that involves their miraculous method and to clarify their misconceptions. After people know the real pros and cons about recycling it would be very easy for the majority to know if recycling should be mandatory or not.