What You Think About Landfill and Recycling Is Probably Totally Wrong

But politicians and environmentalists have other ideas. They’re doubling down on their mistakes by banning more plastic products and demanding alternatives that are more expensive, less convenient, and worse for the environment. Even experts familiar with the facts succumb to magical thinking. Yes, they acknowledge, we shouldn’t be exporting our pl... See more

Much like paper straws or canvas totes, though, well-meaning small changes miss the forest of structural change for the trees of lifestyle tweaking. The object of thrown-away food bears scrutiny, even though it is the way we dispose of food — mostly dumping it in landfills — that generates methane emissions. Large-scale composting or biogas generat... See more

If people believe they can buy aluminum coffee capsules, plastic water bottles or even new cars expecting that everything will be recycled and reused, it allows them to consume with a clean conscience.

“The positive emotions associated with recycling can overpower the negative emotions associated with wasting” — Monic Sun and Remi Trudel, professors

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without a market demand, those recyclables are almost useless; placing them in the recycling bin won’t make a difference if you can’t make money off of them. If the demand isn’t there, or the quality of the materials post-use is incurably dirty, they end up in landfill or incinerators.

This creative accounting suggests that wasting less food would somehow undo all of the harms of food production. But the nutrient cycle does not care whether or not you clean your plate. All the environmental impacts that brought that meal into being are done deals; in the parlance of introductory economics, they are “sunk costs.” In focusing so mu... See more