Comments (26)

• Per Frajkor

• Hi, excellent article.

  Here in Canada the recycling rules vary by municipality.

  I've coined the term "nazi municipality" to describe the attitude related to recent edicts/debates in my area (mississauga, ontario). Believe or not there was some discussion about abolishing the use of plastic grocery bags to contain garbage. (I suspect that someone finally realized we weren't prepared to stand on the street with our loose garbage in hand). We are rapidly advancing down the path you have described.

  Why aren't we dealing with the problem at source (get the manufacturers involved) and eliminate/reduce excess packaging ?

  
  Thanks
  Per

• Published: February 4, 2008 9:40 AM

• Inquisitor

• Haha I love the socialist's plea for more "market incentives". Maybe they realize what a failure the system is.

• Published: February 4, 2008 9:42 AM

• Charlie Keith

• Thanks for the great article.

  When the time comes for its necessity (i.e. when it becomes profitable) people will assuredly mine the landfills. What are needed are well (privately) managed landfills and collection services. The proprietors of such a business will have to provide the best possible service at the cheapest rates. Also, if property rights were well protected, people would not have to worry about things like toxic leakage into water systems. Property right enforcement will insure that those responsible are liable, thus eliminating the so-called "market failures" caused by negative "externalities."

  One could imagine such a business neatly sorting and separating various types of garbage based on their expectation of future profits by reduced costs of recovering the materials.

  I read somewhere once that practically all of the copper ever mined is still in use. This result is of course not the result of coercive "conservation" programs.

• Published: February 4, 2008 10:51 AM

• Person

• When am I going to see an article about the "there-is-enforced-private-property-in-all-related-factors-which-therefore-allows-costs-to-be-internalized myth"?

• Published: February 4, 2008 11:54 AM

• pairunoyd

• Very good article, very good indeed. Thank you.

• Published: February 4, 2008 12:39 PM

• Kakugo

• My father grew up in post-WWII Lombardy. There was great misery, people were still litterally starving to death and the whole country was trying to recover after the Nazi occupation, the British bombardments and, worst of all, twenty years of Fascism.
  You would imagine that in such a situation people would be recycling everything.
  You could not be more wrong: the only thing that got recycled was scarp metal, non-ferrous ones (aluminium, copper etc) being particulary prized.
  You would go to a scrapyard and the owner would throw your scrap metal on a scale and pay you cash. He would later resell it for a profit to local smelting facilities.
  Nobody, despite the unimaginable misery, was attempting to recycle wood, paper, fabric etc.
  Today we are one of the richest and most heavily industrialized areas in Europe and the government is desperately trying to get us to imitate our good Swedish and Danish mates and recycle everything. At least in my municipality junk should be conferred to the appointed areas but, thank God, there are still "generic" containers.
  In the past two years I took notice of the dedicated containers and noticed that, while paper, plastic, glass etc are taken away only when the containers are overflowing, scrap metal is weekly removed.
  Why is that? Because scrap metal gets paid good money by local scrap merchants, while "normal" junk is to be conferred to officially-sanctioned and taxpayers-sponsored firms that will "give them new life".
  To cut a long way short the municipality is profitting from cohercion or, as Vladimir Ilich Lenin said "useful idiots".
  But they ain't getting me.
  The only thing I am recycling is scrap metal but I am not giving it as a present to the State. Following in my father's footsteps I toss it in a wooden crate near my workshop. When it's full I ring a scrap merchant and have him take it away. It's not big money but at least it's enough to buy me a couple fo good dinners... not to mention the satisfaction of thumbing my nose to the ecozealots.

• Published: February 4, 2008 3:14 PM

• Walt D.

• Check out Penn and Teller on Recycling

  
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1444391672891013193

• Published: February 4, 2008 5:04 PM

• Jeffrey

• This is about to hit the front page of Digg

• Published: February 4, 2008 6:06 PM

• Green Swede

• Some truth in this. But when you write: .."The state's monopolist garbage-collection"..you are way off the mark. There is no monopoly, the whole system has been deregulated in accordance with EU law. The deregulation is in fact the main cause of the present problem. In order to be profitable the competing garbage collectors no longer accept separated waste.

• Published: February 5, 2008 5:52 AM

• Do you know where sweden is ?

• Hi,

  Are you sure you talk about sweden ? Is this something you've seen ?

  What you describe seems closer than, say, Switzerland or Belgium than Sweden.

• Published: February 5, 2008 10:27 AM

• Inquisitor

• Yes, if ever there is a problem deregulation is there to blame. :)

• Published: February 5, 2008 10:37 AM

• Chaos Motor

• Nice article, Per. I don't understand why more municipalities don't install Thermal Depolymerization plants at their garbage dumps. Using this technology, you can transform your garbage into useful raw materials, including oil and gas! These plants create enough energy to power themselves, the resultant materials can be sold for a profit, and the energy can be supplied to the grid. In fact, if your TD plant is bigger than your garbage load, you can use the excess capacity to transform old garbage into useful materials. TD really is the way to go - turning garbage into something useful again. I think the only reason it isn't more common is because it undermines the disposable, planned obsolescence, buy more and throw it away consumer culture that large, wasteful, Earth-killing corporations benefit so much from.

• Published: February 5, 2008 10:44 AM

• peatey

• So why not force packagers to own up to their externalities? Tax packaging types by cost of disposal, and give rebates for efficiency gains in recycling. The aluminum soda can recycling model works.

• Published: February 5, 2008 11:18 AM

• v

• Societies are faced with a problem: the self-interest of individuals does not always lead to the behaviors that make societies sustainable. There are probably many ways to improve the program there, perhaps more frequent pickup would reduce some of problems. The main issue here is that some people resent doing things that benefit the public more than they benefit the individual. The next generation will see these sustainable activities as more acceptable that the current generation, unless there is a loud reaction to return to unsustainable, self-focused behavior. Perhaps the greatest problem with the plan is that it does not include adequate education to explain to individuals that their behavior affects other people and the behavior of other people affects them--and that the behavior of past generations affects us just as our behavior affects future generations.

  Those with strong self-interest will focus extensively on their own inconvenience as opposed to exploring the many ways that people are interconnected and mutually dependent. Intellectually it is easier to adopt a self-focused ideology because then you don't have to think about how actions of this generation affect the lives of the next generation. If you spend some time to make a list of all the things in your life that came from the past generations, it might help you to have a more thorough understanding of how society works.

• Published: February 5, 2008 11:23 AM

• Inquisitor

• Intellectually it is generally easier to say 'government should fix it'. Of course, a narrow, petty self-interest will tend to be counterproductive, even to the individual in question.

• Published: February 5, 2008 11:29 AM

• Peter

• Have you ever done this? You complain about the vast wasted resources but what you fail to realize is that it takes very little effort.

  I live Georgia in a county where you can recycle but you have to pay for the right to do so. I do and I sort my trash. I have about 1 bag every 3 weeks of actual trash and everything else is recycled. It takes very little effort. I stand over the paper bins as I'm going through junk mail and just drop it in the correct bins. Most labels are only glued at one point to cans and bottles and it takes two swipes of a scissor edge or knife to remove them.

  Most of my sorting occurs as the container is emptied, if it needs cleaning then it's tossed with the dirty dishes and thrown in the washer or rinsed at the sink.

  It does not consume a great amount of time at all. Admittedly there is a learning curve to knowing what goes in which bin but it takes less than a week to get a handle on and after that it's very simple.

  You play it out as if there is a tremendous amount of energy expelled sorting this trash and that's simply false. It's quick and easy. This oversight brings into question your motives and the validity of any points in this article.

• Published: February 5, 2008 12:47 PM

• roman

• In live in a condominium (Toronto, Canada) and I used to recyle. It was a hassle, but I had the satisfaction of knowing I was doing the right thing. Until...

  I found out that if some inappropriate material ended up in the wrong bin, the whole bin would go to the landfill. Given the complex rules of what could and could not go into what bin, I'm sure this happened most of the time. So my efforts were usually for naught.

  I' m sure the technology exists to efficiently sort through recyclables en masse, it would just mean slightly higher costs and lower profits. Perhaps that's why the city goverment was "persuaded" to mandate that citizens sort their own waste. Isn't enough that I'm giving away for free, materials that I paid for, that someone will be able to resell, without being required to sort it and deliver it personally on a silver platter???

  You can bet that politicans will always find the least efficient, most taxing solution to a problem.

• Published: February 5, 2008 12:56 PM

• JLuc

• @Per Bylund.

  Great article. I tend towards free markets and environmentalism both. I think recycling is a good idea, but like many green activities nowadays, real critical thinking needs to be applied to it. People wasting their time is silly (that leftover milk could be removed at the processing stage, at a lower cost than the lost time). And driving around to bring things to a recycling depot is no win for the environment. Same for banning plastic grocery bags - it sounds great in theory but can be hassle in practice and doesn't really save much CO2 in reality.

  The real challenge is to change behavior in the least economically damaging ways - hence my vote for politicians who will propose CO2 taxes or those who will tax jet fuel like other fuels.

  @Per Frajkor

  It is idiotic to use the term 'nazi' for trivial things you don't agree with, including something like garbage collection. Constant, inane, repetition blunts the infamy which is rightfully attached to nazism.

• Published: February 5, 2008 2:19 PM

• Inquisitor

• I think some people are missing the point here, i.e. that there is little choice in the matter. We're not talking about individuals voluntarily recycling... although I suppose it could be brought into question whether recycling actually functions well or not.

• Published: February 5, 2008 2:49 PM

• JW Deming

• Dear "v"
  RE
  "Those with strong self-interest will focus extensively on their own inconvenience as opposed to exploring the many ways that people are interconnected and mutually dependent. Intellectually it is easier to adopt a self-focused ideology because then you don't have to think about how actions of this generation affect the lives of the next generation. If you spend some time to make a list of all the things in your life that came from the past generations, it might help you to have a more thorough understanding of how society works."

  V, if you find a community of the enlightened saints you describe above, let me know. I want to avoid it like the plague. Like the Scotsman Adam Smith, I never found those out to do "good" ever did much good. In fact, they're the ones who always seem to do the really bad stuff, like forcing the rest of us at the end of a gun to do "good" as they define it. In my dictionary they're called tyrants. And, as Per's article illustrates, usually end up creating the very conditions they claim to be preventing, i.e., an unsanitary, rat-infested environment overflowing with garbage.

  I'll stick with the self-interested, profit-seeking guys who built Silicon Valley and provided me with the computer I'm writing this msg on. And, speaking of the past, I'm ever mindful of the 19th century entrepreneurs and scientists who built the modern, industrialized society that has given us such a wonderful, convenient and relatively long & healthy lifespan. At least those of us who have the privilege of living in societies with a more capitalist history.

  Thanks, Per, for a wonderfully clear article about the reality of coercive recycling: rats, filth and eons of wasted time & effort. The Eco-Fools never seem to take into account the scarcest resource of all: the little window of time that is our life. Well, except that they always want to seize it for their own ends.

  
  

• Published: February 5, 2008 4:13 PM

• Pawel Krzywulski

• I live in England and so far neither the local authority forces us to recycle ( nor do they provide framework for community services or private enterprise to take care of it unfortunately)... yet.

  I completelty don't agree with the point made on LRC.com that "recycling is evil". Obviously typically ignorant Americans can't comprehend that recycling IS good and it CAN be done in an efficient way. For example the local authority of Vienna in Austria runs an waste incinerator right in the middle of a city! And no, it does not pollute everything around. Same with plastic and metal tins and glass and so on, and so on. Having to clean the trash is ridiculous. Sorting it however helps a lot! Not only for the environment - you get rid of stench, rodents and bugs. And it can be a profitable bussiness.

  And unfortunately people at Mises.org way too often rely on their typically American (lack of) understanding. They (seem to) understand how come oil is 'cheap' and cars are 'affordable' but simply seem to be unable to comprehend that the environment never belongs to a particular generation of people. Therefore it needs to be spoken outloud and legal framework should encourage caring for environment and punishing polluters but using property rights and private enterprise...

  
  

• Published: February 5, 2008 6:07 PM

• cipher

• Dear Mr. Bylund,

  You inhabit a hyper-feminized land (as do all of us in the dilapidating West) these days. As such your best bet is to formulate a counter-strategy that is mindful of your opponent's two immutable characteristics: fickleness and an abject refusal to admit to wrong.

  Your best bet is to organize and encourage women who find themselves sorting trash when they could be doing other, more productive things. Set their hearts against the very women (and girly men) who've captured Sweden's kitchens and re-made them into an extension of the State!

  cipher

• Published: February 5, 2008 7:18 PM

• tame the planet

• That's an excellent article which I agree with 100 percent, however (and I mean this very sweetly) perhaps because of the Swedish author's yet imperfect mastery of English syntax, it's not quite written hard-hitting enough. The arguments he draws are strong, but not strong or clear enough. I think what he means to say (but doesn't say clearly enough) is that us consumers (ie citizens) are doing all the work and expending all the energy that the government claims is being saved by government and city contractors not having to do it. In other words, we are being conned into providing our labour free for civic services that our taxation should cover, and government is declaring the savings as increased GNP, that is, a lie to cover up totalitarian extortion of us citizens. So government gets richer, while we as citizens have to literally get our hands dirty. The government is stealing from you. And anyone who complains is censured as being 'anti-community' and an 'enemy of the planet', with "self-focused behaviour" (as 'v' puts it). But I'm with Brian Aldiss on this, who wrote "A civilisation is measured by the distance it has managed to create between itself and its own excrement".

  Anyone who thinks wallowing in their own trash for an hour a day is progress, needs a brain swap. The only way they can justify so-called 'recycling' as a worthy form of "sustainable activity" is by clinging to apocalyptic modern myths and new libertine faith-sytems such as Imminent Human Extinction By Global Warming (and for more about that, see below).

  I've been turning off lights and heating in unoccupied rooms and recycling my trash all my life, and will continue to do it, but not to save the planet - I did it to save me money. It's called prudent living. Frugality, economy, temperance, restraint, investment, non-wastefulness, asset management, all qualities inspired and instilled by the tenets of a nominally Christian upbringing and host-culture, a culture that's now being exchanged for a humanistic lie about the planet (like some big stupid soggy animal) needing your help. Not true. Next time a tornado tears your house into fragments, ask yourself if it needs your help. Sure, right. Like Joe Jackson said, "Y'know, The Force, it's gotta lotta power, but what makes you think it gives a sh*t about you?) So, forget about the planet. It doesn't need you. Wanna be a good citizen of the world? Here's the method: It's stewardship of your valuables (not the stuff you throw away) that matters. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  But anyone who thinks they're a useful human being for sorting their trash into tidy piles is only slightly further up the tree of reasoned human worthiness than the Nazis who sorted the extracted gold teeth and spectacles of Jews sent to the death camps. That also was a tedious and dirty trash-sorting job performed by political idealists who thought they'd got things about right, at least in principle.

  We have this recycling crap in Italy now too - I have little sorted piles of stinking trash all over my kitchen floor at the moment, waiting to be taken down the road to the trash, no longer a two-second operation thanks to the strictures laid down by the Green Nazis. The collection bin for bottles and tins only has bottle-sized holes in it, so each item has to be fed in one at a time - Takes several minutes and leaves my hands dirty - The Nazis of course don't think to supply a water tap near the bins for people to rinse their hands on. The whole thing stinks, literally!

  On another (yet really the same) matter, I've just bought myself this:
  http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/dvd.html

  Highly recommended viewing which exposes the hysterical claims of the global warming crowd as self-serving lies with an underlying leftie political agenda founded on incorrect and twisted science. I've already known this for forty years, but it's great to finally have a very watchable, professionally made, and credible DVD of the facts in my hand which totally vindicates my suspicions.

  Its format is PAL though, not NTSC, so you'd probably need a multi-system DVD player to watch it on.
  

• Published: February 6, 2008 5:08 AM

• Scott D

• Pawel Krzywulski:

  I completelty don't agree with the point made on LRC.com that "recycling is evil". Obviously typically ignorant Americans can't comprehend that recycling IS good and it CAN be done in an efficient way.

  Sir,

  First, allow me to point out that characterizing a large and diverse population of people as "ignorant" based upon their residence within the political boundaries of a particular ruling state strikes me as. . . well, ignorant. The moment you demonstrate such a gross lapse in logic is the same moment you lose all ability to credibly argue a case. Please consider this tiny caveat in the future when seeking to claim the moral high ground in an argument.

  One question an Austrian economist never stops asking is, "What are the hidden costs?" That is what Mr. Bylund's article is asking about Sweden's recycling program. Many are too eager to disregard the extra time spent in cleaning and sorting garbage, deeming it a small price to pay for a better environment. This is a monumental mistake. It is the exact mistake that governments make every day when they allocate labor and capital with no means for rationally analyzing the outcome.

  The market does recycle waste, but usually not to the extent that local, state and federal governments will go. The difference between these and government-mandated or subsidized programs is that they are productive. They actually create value. Government programs must compel compliance BECAUSE they are not productive. They output LESS value than is input.

  This may seem like a bold statement to make, but it is demonstrably true. If the value is there, an entrepreneur will soon be along to discover and claim it as profit. If there is no market for recyclables, it is because it is too wasteful, in terms of labor and capital, to do so.

• Published: February 6, 2008 11:40 AM

• Wyatt Champion

• As an environmental engineering student studying in Sweden, I feel almost obligated to comment on this article. Your opinion is quite ridiculous and often based on exaggerations which you yourself impose. I did not comment on this to focus on you however, I just feel the need to put in my two cents and hopefully give the readers of this article a more educated view.

  It seems you have a big problem with having a country's population put effort towards protecting the future. Is it not better to have each person spend a mere few minutes a day sorting their waste than burn barrel after barrel of oil having machinery do this simple task? I have lived like a Swede since I have gotten here (going on 3 months), eating fish and potatoes and all, and trust me I do not mind washing and sorting my cans, jars, boxes, and whatever else I use. It seems like no one else does either. You also mention how people are forced to drive around to deposit their waste. From the areas I have seen there is usually a waste collection center within walking distance. Unlike America, people are willing to walk a few blocks rather than hop in their cars. Also, when the distance is a little too far, there is a well established and always reliable public transportation system.

  Between Sweden's commitment to recycling, great public transportation, and goals for energy usage for the future, they truly are the nation to watch. America is the greatest country on earth but we admittedly have our problems. As long as people are not as stubborn as you we will make headway and improve the issues looming over us. Energy consumption is a major issue but I know that an increase in attention to renewable resources will lead to the technological and lifestyle changes needed to ensure human existence forever.

• Published: March 21, 2008 2:32 PM

• Inquisitor

• Ah, so long as you like the results, it's fine to force people to act however you please I guess.

• Published: March 21, 2008 9:09 PM