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Business-Managed Democracy »Environment » Think Tanks » Casting Doubt » Recycling |
Cato Institute, claimed that recycling was unnecessary as resources are infinite and there is no problem burying 1000 years of US garbage: “We have 10 times as much oil as we did in 1950, three times as much forest land as we did in 1920...As price incentives increase to find more sources, we will.” Recycling, he says, should only be carried out where there is an economic reason to do it; “recycling is the biggest hoax perpetuated on the American public since the synthetic fuels debacle of the early ‘80s”
Similarly the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 1996 Environmental Briefing Book for Congressional Candidates stated: “Recycling can also be a wasteful use of energy, time and money... Whether or not to recycle a particular material or product should be determined by the market place, not by government fiat.”
In its magazine Facts, the Australia Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) also attacked recycling. Drawing on an Industry Commission report it argued that packaging only accounts for one tenth of the waste stream ‘by weight’ and that recycling can be costly and produce pollution problems.
Richard Wellings, Deputy Editorial Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) argued that "it is difficult to identify any benefits of recycling", that "modern landfill sites have few negative environmental impacts" and there is no practical limite on how much waste can be landfilled. He claimed: "Recycling both reduces the income of poor countries that rely on raw material exports and reduces economic growth in industrialised countries burdened with additional taxation and red tape."
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