MYTH 8: WITHOUT FORCED RECYCLING MANDATES, THERE WOULDN’T BE RECYCLING.Â
This view reflects ignorance about the extent of recycling in the private sector, which is as old as trash itself. Scavenging may, in fact, be the oldest profession. In the 19th century, people bid for the right to scavenge New York City’s rubbish, and Winslow Homer’s 1859 etching, Scene on the Back Bay Lands (see cover of this issue), reveals adults and children digging through the detritus of the Boston city dump. Rag dealers were a constant of American life until driven out of business by the federal Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939, which stigmatized products made of recycled wool and cotton. And long before state or local governments had even contemplated the word recycling, makers of steel, aluminum, and many other products were recycling manufacturing scraps, and some were even operating post-consumer drop-off centers.
I spoke of metals recycling yesterday, and I really should have waited until today, but the point remains; if it is easier to use recyclable materials to manufacture new ones, there will be a financial incentive give so that people will do so.
If it takes more energy, time and resources to use recycled materials to manufacture new ones, there will not.
The recycle-at-all-costs dweebies then can only fall back on the line of “But at least we’re keeping things like plastics out of the landfills.”
Unfortunately, that excuse for recycling is not up to date with the current trends in technology.
In these United States, there are over 100 “Trash to Energy” plants. They are essentially incinerators hooked to steam turbines, however, you have never seen an incinerator burn this clean, nor have you ever even thought about getting paid to throw out your trash.
That will be the future. Unless the eco-socialists get their way.
You will get paid by the pound for you garbage, either up front or in electricity credits. There is even a strong possibility that one day not too far, you will be able to buy one of these via your “Homeowners Association” and be able to power your neighborhood with the trash you all generate.
But the eco-socialists, who don’t like your garbage, and who don’t like nuclear power, and who don’t like coal power, and who don’t like CNG or methane powered plants, and who don’t like hydro-electric dams, and who, essentially, don’t want you to use electricity at all, will do their damnedest to make sure nothing like this ever happens.
One of these plants is not too far from where I live. Before I started blogging I watched these Gaia worshipping assholes fight and fight and fight said power plant. They used every BS line they could think of; from “It’ll poison the land and rivers” to “It’ll make our children get cancer”. When their negative PR campaign didn’t work, they went to court with every damned scientist they could find to testify.
Thankfully, they lost. Even better, nearly a decade on and nothing they’ve said turned out to be true in even the slightest variation. They’ve been shown to be the control freaks and the liars we always knew they were.