Taking out the trash and separating recyclables is a typical household chore for many Michigan school children. It’s also an opportunity to teach them valuable lessons about economic principles and environmental policy.
Conventional wisdom says that recycling is good because we’re running out of landfill space, that landfills are serious health hazards, and that recycling saves natural resources. Economic and scientific evidence seriously challenge this conventional wisdom.
Landfill space is growing, not shrinking, and landfill dumping fees are declining, which is the market’s way of saying we’re not running out of space.
Landfills are a safe way to manage waste. All currently operating landfills present only one cancer risk every 13 years.
It can make sense to recycle some things, such as aluminum cans, but landfilling the trash often saves more natural resources than recycling does. That’s because more energy and natural resources are consumed at every step of the recycling process: collecting, sorting, transporting, and energy-intensive remanufacturing of recycled products.
Recycling is too often a solution in search of a problem. It’s a good way to manage solid waste in some situations, but it’s not automatically the best approach in every situation.
For the Mackinac Center, this is Catherine Martin.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a nonprofit research and educational institute that advances the principles of free markets and limited government. Through our research and education programs, we challenge government overreach and advocate for a free-market approach to public policy that frees people to realize their potential and dreams.
Please consider contributing to our work to advance a freer and more prosperous state.
