Recycling is Bad?

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> > At the first Midwest Conference of Radical Scholars and Activists a 
> > left geographer from Northwestern read an excellent paper (which I 
> > never got a hard copy of) that demonstrated pretty 
> conclusively that 
> > (a) recycling was essentially just a service to a few 
> corporations and 
> > (b) was a serious energy drain. It takes a good deal more energy to 
> > turn waste paper into paper than to turn wood chips into paper.

The main benefit of recycling is saving landfill space, not trees or
other resources.  That is particularly true of plastics that do not
decompose.  Besides that, it is a form of ritualistic behavior that
leads the middle class to belive that they do something about their
environment without changing their consumption patterns.

Wojtek