Is recycling worth it?

Laralyn Murphy
San Francisco Chronicle
May. 27, 2010

When it comes to absolving your conscience and saving the planet, recycling is a quintessential penance. For anyone suffering from eco-apathy, many jurisdictions make the choice for you, with mandatory recycling and other regulations. Such mandates, however, keep us from knowing whether recycling is cost effective.

Environmentalists claim that recycling consumes less energy and destroys fewer natural resources than original production. For example, recycling aluminum supposedly requires 95 percent less energy than virgin production.

Studies that produce such statistics, though, make many assumptions about human behavior. Government-mandated recycling programs hide costs, rendering the net economic and environmental benefits unknowable. How much energy, for example, was consumed in the collection and handling of the used materials?

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