• Summary
• Who are the Anti-Recyclers?
• Myth #1: The recycling movement is a product of a false "crisis" in landfill space.
• Myth #2: Landfills are innocuous.
• Myth #3: Landfill space is cheap and abundant.
• Myth #4: Recycling should pay for itself.
• Myth #5: There are no markets for recycled materials.
• Myth #6: Recycling doesn't "save trees".
• Myth #7: The environmental harms of manufacturing and using products are incorporated into their prices.
• Myth #8: Manufacturers are compelled by law to make costly changes in their packaging and products.
• Myth #9: Recycling is nearing its maximum potential.
• Myth #10: Recycling is a time-consuming burden on the American public.
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Are Disposables Really Better than Reusables?
• Endnotes

ANTI-RECYCLING MYTHS

The Environmental Defense Fund

Summary

• Recycling cuts pollution and conserves natural resources.
• Recycling conserves energy.
• Recycling programs that are sensibly designed and implemented can be cost-competitive with solid waste landfilling and incineration.
• Recycling creates jobs and reduces costs in manufacturing sectors that are an important part of our economy.

Just like burying trash in landfills or burning it in incinerators, recycling is not free. Given this fact, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) supports a robust, fact-based assessment of the public interest in recycling, waste reduction and composting. Recycling is not a panacea for our environmental problems, nor should it be pursued to the point of diminished returns or at any cost. A full appraisal of the environmental and economic benefits and costs of recycling, in comparison with the one-way consumption and disposal of used products and packaging, is essential to define the appropriate role for recycling.

Recently, the quality of the debate has been undermined by a gravely inaccurate article that appeared in the June 30 issue of the New York Times Magazine. Titled "Recycling is Garbage," this article is anything but a fact-based assessment. Instead, the author unquestioningly repeats the claims of a group of think tanks and consultants that we call "the anti-recyclers."[1]

Using "Recycling is Garbage" as a case study, this paper examines the arguments made by the anti-recyclers, correcting factual errors and over-generalizations, offering additional data and perspective, and acknowledging the few kernels of truth in their arguments.[2]

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Who are the anti-recyclers?

Recycling has always faced detractors, especially municipal curbside recycling collection programs. The early nay-sayers included solid waste officials who were resistant to change, and trash haulers and incinerator builders who resented the new competition.

At first, the argument was that citizens would not go to the trouble to sort recyclable items from their trash. We now know that well-designed and publicized curbside collection programs in typical American suburban communities routinely achieve participation rates of 80% and higher. Skeptics also said that markets for recovered materials would not absorb all the new materials being collected. But since 1985, consumption of recovered metals, glass, plastic and paper by American manufacturers has grown steadily, even as commodity prices for virgin and recycled materials naturally fluctuate.

The nine-page June 30 Times Magazine article did not contain a single quote from a representative of the recycling industry. Instead - ironic for an author who maintains that environmentalists' enthusiasm for recycling is mere religious fervor - the article relied heavily on quotes and information supplied by a group of consultants and think tanks that have strong ideological objections to recycling.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute (both based in Washington DC), the Reason Foundation (based in Santa Monica, CA) and the Waste Policy Center (based in Leesburg, VA) are policy think tanks that tend to oppose government programs of any sort. At least some of these organizations accept funding from companies involved in solid waste collection, landfilling and incineration, the manufacturing of products from virgin materials, and the production and sale of packaging and consumer products. Many of the corporations that fund the anti-recyclers have a direct economic stake in maintaining the waste management status quo and in minimizing consumers' scrutiny of the environmental effects of products and packaging.[3]

An underlying theme of the anti-recyclers is that government bureaucrats have imposed recycling on people against their will, conjuring up an image of Big Brother hiding behind every recycling bin. Yet public opinion polls and consumer research show that recycling enjoys overwhelming public support because people believe it is good for the environment and conserves resources.[4] This overwhelming public support, not a government edict, is a major reason why state and local initiatives in recycling have flourished.

Is the public wrong in its belief that recycling is good for the environment? The answer is a resounding "no."
Let's examine the arguments of the anti-recyclers.

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Anti-recycling myth #1: The modern recycling movement is a product of a false "crisis" in landfill space created by the media and environmentalists.

Fact: Concentrating on landfill space misses the point. The greatest environmental benefits of recycling occur in reducing natural resource damage and pollution that arise when extracting virgin raw materials and manufacturing new products.

Materials collected for recycling have already been refined and processed once, so manufacturing the second time around is usually much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the first. At current recycling levels, for example, the United States is saving enough energy through recycling to provide electricity for 9 million homes.[5] Moreover, recycling-based manufacturing reduces the need for activities like strip-mining and clear-cutting used to acquire virgin raw materials. These themes have been consistently sounded in analyses published by the Environmental Defense Fund over the last decade.

Every recent study that has examined recycling relative to other waste management options supports these conclusions about the benefits of recycling. These studies have examined the full lifecycle of virgin and recycled products, accounting for the pollution and energy use associated with activities such as operating recycling trucks or hauling logs out of the forest. This research shows that the energy and environmental benefits of recycling far outweigh additional environmental burdens resulting from the collection, processing and transport of recyclable materials collected in curbside recycling programs.

EDF provided the author of the Times Magazine article with a review of these studies,[6] which he ignored except for a brief, buried aside near the end of his article. He cited our data indicating that, on average, making recycled newsprint uses 36% more water than making virgin newsprint (5,000 additional gallons of water per ton of newsprint produced). What the author didn't mention, however, was that data from the same study demonstrate major advantages to recycled newsprint in every other category of environmental impact examined: energy use, air emissions and solid waste generation. Moreover, he failed to report that recycling's strong advantages, including lower water use, are even more pronounced for every other major grade of paper recycled in the U.S. today, including corrugated boxes, office paper and boxboard.[7]

Following his perfunctory reference to the environmental benefits of recycling, the author adds a curious and completely unsupported assertion: "... there are much more direct - and cheaper - ways to reduce pollution." Given the fact that the major environmental impacts of producing and using materials and products product occur "upstream" in acquiring raw materials and in manufacturing, what could be more direct than substituting recovered materials for virgin materials, thereby avoiding the need to extract raw materials and intensively processing them? And in most cases manufacturers are finding that recovered materials also provide a less expensive means to meet their need for materials (see below).

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Anti-recycling myth #2: Landfills are innocuous.

Fact: Landfills can be major sources of water and air pollution.

According to "Recycling is Garbage," municipal solid waste landfills "contain small amounts of hazardous lead and mercury, but studies have found that these poisons stay trapped inside the mass of garbage even in the old unlined dumps that were built before today's stringent regulations." This statement is simply wrong. One out of every five sites slated for cleanup under the nation's Superfund program for toxic waste sites is a former municipal solid waste landfill. And there is a lot more than just lead and mercury going into and coming out of ordinary landfills.

Municipal landfill leachate (the liquid that drains from beneath a landfill) contains a host of conventional and toxic pollutants quite similar in composition and concentration to the leachate draining from hazardous waste landfills. In most modern landfills - but not in many older landfills that are still operating, systems are installed to collect some or all of this leachate. Even when it is successfully collected rather than escaping and potentially contaminating groundwater, however, leachate must be treated before it can be discharged - a major expense and a burden on already-encumbered municipal sewage treatment plants.

The decomposition of paper as well as yard waste and other materials in landfills also creates a variety of gaseous emissions. These gases include volatile organic chemicals which add to urban smog, and methane, a "greenhouse gas" that is far more potent per ton emitted than is carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming. Only a small minority of landfills operating today collect these gases. Landfills are responsible for an estimated 36% of all methane emissions in the U.S.[8]

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Anti-recycling myth #3: Landfill space is cheap and abundant.

Fact: Landfill space is a commodity, priced according to supply and demand. The majority of the growth of recycling in the United States has occurred in populated regions where landfills are expensive relative to the U.S. average.

Recycling avoids the cost of disposing of materials in landfills and incinerators. Many communities, especially those in the more densely populated parts of the country, experienced a major escalation in landfill prices in the late 1980's. Of the roughly 40% of the U.S. population served by curbside recycling programs in 1993, almost two-thirds lived in the Northeast, where disposal costs are high, or on the West Coast, which has more moderate disposal costs but offers especially high prices for - and hence higher revenues from the sale of - recyclable materials. Curbside recycling in these areas is a rational response to economic costs and opportunities.

(We agree with the author of "Recycling is Garbage," that "incinerators turned out to be disastrously expensive." Beginning in 1984, the Environmental Defense Fund has published several analyses reaching the same conclusion.[9] Solid waste incinerators, which process about 15% of municipal solid waste, are on average substantially more expensive to build and operate than landfills, and in many cases, recycling collection and processing. The fact remains that more than 170 municipalities in the United States face the comparatively high costs imposed by operating incinerators that have already been built.)

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Anti-recycling myth #4: Recycling should pay for itself.

Fact: We do not expect landfills or incinerators to pay for themselves, nor should we expect this of recycling. The real issue is how the costs that recycling adds to the system over the long term compare to those of alternative methods of waste management. Taking an accounting "snap shot" of recycling costs early in the life of existing programs is misleading, because of substantial efficiencies that are being gained as these programs innovate and mature. Current experience shows that well-run community recycling programs can be cost-competitive with disposal options, as are the vast majority of commercial recycling programs.

Viewed as an alternative to traditional solid waste management, municipal recycling programs gain financial credits by avoiding disposal fees and through the sales of recyclable materials. When market prices for materials are high, as in 1995, they can offset or exceed the costs of recycling collection. Although the Times Magazine article treats low market prices as inevitable ("newsprint prices have since plummeted back to familiar levels"), there in fact have been six cyclical peaks and troughs in prices for used newspapers since 1974.[10]

Recycling incurs financial debits through the costs of collecting and processing recyclable materials. The vast majority of community-based curbside recycling programs are less than ten years old. As a result of their recent implementation, many of these programs are more expensive than they need to be. The main cost of these programs comes from collecting materials, which often initially requires new trucks and equipment that duplicate the function of already-purchased garbage trucks. The keys to lowering the costs of recycling are not only to pick up recyclable materials at the lowest cost possible, but also to take advantage of the reduced amount of garbage that needs to be collected to avoid duplication. Over time, as fewer garbage trucks need to be replaced due to increased recycling, garbage collection costs, and hence total system costs, decrease.

The author ignored the strong empirical evidence that numerous U.S. cities are making their collection systems much more cost-effective by changing truck designs and collection schedules and by increasing the amount of material collected for recycling.[11] For example, Fayetteville, AR added curbside recycling with no increase in residential bills because it cut back waste collection from twice weekly to once. Visalia, CA has developed a truck that collects refuse and recyclable materials simultaneously.

Assessing the costs of recycling over the long term is not just a matter of accounting for recycling's credits and debits, but understanding how recycling affects the costs of the overall system. This subtle but extremely important point was ignored by the author of "Recycling is Garbage."

In its discussion of the costs of curbside recycling collection, "Recycling is Garbage" relies on a study of six cities conducted by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). Even in Seattle, the one city identified in this study where recycling is less expensive than landfilling, city officials identified numerous substantial methodological problems with the study that tend to overstate recycling costs.[12]

Conclusions from a much broader study of recycling costs in 60 randomly selected U.S. cities with populations greater than 25,000 were provided to the author of "Recycling is Garbage," but were again ignored. In this study, the Ecodata, Inc. consulting firm collected detailed information on refuse collection and curbside recycling collection costs.[13] Expressed in terms of what a typical household would pay, the average cost of recycling collection (not factoring in revenues from sales of recyclable materials or avoided disposal costs) averaged a little over $2 per month, or less than the price of a meal at a fast-food restaurant.

More importantly, the study found that in cities with comparatively high recycling rates, per-ton recycling collection costs were much lower than in cities with low recycling rates. Not surprisingly, recycling more material makes collection programs more efficient, in part because the costs of fixed assets are spread over more tons of material collected. In addition, as recycling and composting collection rates rise, there is greater potential to reduce costs by cutting back on regular garbage collection.

Numerous cities have calculated that their per-ton recycling costs are lower than per-ton garbage collection and disposal costs, and not just in times of peaks in recycling markets. These cities include not only Seattle, WA, but also Portland, OR, San Jose, CA, Austin, TX, Cincinnati, OH and Green Bay, WI.[14] For the leading municipalities, the next step is to rationalize recycling and refuse costs in order to reduce overall expenditures. Similar efficiency gains are being explored in commercial recycling programs.

Of course, this assessment of costs and revenues is limited to the perspective of the local program, and does not reflect economic benefits that may accrue elsewhere in the recycling system. For example, we have calculated a dollar value for the manufacturing energy saved by recycling the mix of materials collected in a typical curbside collection program, which amounts to nearly $200 per ton of materials recycled.[15] This figure establishes the value of the energy saved by recycling in contrast to other cost and revenue factors in the recycling system. For example, 1994 landfill disposal fees in the United States ranged from about $10 per ton to $140 per ton.[16]

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Anti-recycling myth #5: There are no markets for recyclable materials.

Fact: Recycling is not just an alternative to traditional solid waste disposal, it is the foundation for large, robust manufacturing industries in the United States that use recyclable materials. These businesses are an important part of our economy and provide the market foundation for the entire recycling process. The volume of the major scrap materials sold in domestic and global markets is growing steadily. As with all commodities, prices fluctuate over time.

Recycling provides manufacturing industries with raw materials that are less expensive than virgin sources, a long-term economic advantage that translates into value for consumers who ultimately spend less on products and packaging. For example, in the area of paper manufacturing, new mills making paper for corrugated boxes, newsprint, commercial tissue products and folding cartons have lower capital and operating costs than new mills using virgin wood.[17] This is why U.S. pulp paper manufacturers have voluntarily built or expanded more than 45 recycled paper mills in the 1990's, and are projected to spend more than $10 billion on such facilities by the end of the decade. Recycling has long been the lower-cost manufacturing option for aluminum smelters, and is essential to the scrap-fired steel "mini mills" that are part of the rebirth of a globally competitive U.S. steel industry.

The following table shows the recent and major growth in utilization of recovered paper by U.S. paper mills from 1975 to 1997. A substantial acceleration in the rate of use of recovered paper by U.S. paper manufacturers began around 1985, coinciding with the expansion of business and community recycling collection programs and increases in landfill.

Source: American Forest & Paper Association, 1994 Statistics; Paper, Paperboard and Wood Pulp, pp. 52-53 (all data except 1993 recovered paper and 1997 recovered paper and total production estimates) and Paper, Paperboard, Pulp Capacity and Fiber Consumption, 35th Annual Survey, p. 12, 24 (1997 data based on 94% utilization of total maximum capacity); Washington, DC: AF&PA, 1994.

The benefits of recycling in increasing industrial competitiveness, reducing manufacturing costs and creating jobs were completely ignored by "Recycling is Garbage." For example, the article discussed the costs of recycling in New York, but did not mention the four 100% recycled paper mills a half-an-hour's drive from Manhattan in northern New Jersey, or the fact that scrap metal and used paper are the largest exports from the Port of New York and New Jersey.

The Times Magazine's myopic view of recycling as merely an alternative to garbage collection caused it to overlook the extraordinary developments in recycling-based manufacturing in New York City as well as across the country. A new 100% recycled paper mill is currently being constructed on Staten Island, a $250 million investment. Another 100% recycled newsprint mill has been proposed for the South Bronx. These facilities are attracted to New York because of the abundance of recovered (and less expensive) raw materials, in spite of high construction and labor costs.[18] In transforming used paper into new finished product, recycled paper mills such as these increase the value of their raw materials roughly 10-15 times.

In a recent study examining ten northeastern states, recycling was found to have added $7.2 billion in value to recovered materials through processing and manufacturing activities. These activities employed approximately 103,000 people, twenty-five percent of them in materials processing and 75% in manufacturing.[19]

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Anti-recycling myth #6: Recycling doesn't "save trees" because we are growing at least as many trees as we cut specifically to make paper.

Fact: Recycling reduces the pressure to turn natural forests into tree farms, creating substantial environmental and economic benefits. This effect is even more pronounced when paper recycling is viewed on a global level.

The article correctly points out that more trees are being planted than cut, but fails to address the severe and continuing loss of natural forests that has accompanied this tree planting. In the U.S. South, for example, where most of the trees used to make paper are grown, pine plantations are replacing natural pine forests at an alarming rate. While pine plantations are excellent at growing wood, they are far less suited than natural forests to provide animal habitat and preserve biodiversity. Since 1950, the portion of Southern pine forest in plantations has grown from 2.5% to more than 40% in 1990, with a concomitant loss in natural pine forest;[20] during this decade the acreage of pine plantations will overtake the area of natural pine forests across the South, and is projected to approach 70% of all pine forest in the next few decades.[21] By extending the overall fiber supply, paper recycling can help to reduce the pressure to convert remaining natural forests to tree farms.[22]

Arguing that there is no shortage of wood, one of the Times Magazine article's sources claimed: "Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption." There is one big difference, of course: One can't eat cornstalks, whereas one can make new paper from recycled paper. But more fundamentally, the claim that we have plenty of wood and have no reason to conserve is wholly unfounded. Every major analysis of the question has concluded that, both domestically and globally, we face enormous pressure on forest resources to provide wood products,[23] not to mention other important "goods" such as wildlife and fisheries, watershed protection, animal habitat, etc.

The Times Magazine article claims that recycling newspaper is a bad idea. It claims that because greater paper recycling will reduce demand for trees, some landowners will sell their land to "condominium developers." This argument is wrong on two counts. First, demand for wood is rising, not declining, even with recycling.[24] Second, the "development value" of land close enough to urban areas to be under development pressure is so much higher than even the highest timber value that a demand-driven change in timber value - up or down - would have vanishingly small effect.

Finally, "Recycling is Garbage" reflects a surprising ignorance of the role of consumption and recycling in the United States within a global context. Since 1982, the majority of the growth in worldwide paper production has been supported by recycled fiber, a major source of which is the United States.[25] Even so, one fifth of all the paper produced in the world still enters trash cans in the United States. According to one projection, demand for paper in Asia, which does not have the extensive wood resources of North America or Scandinavia, will grow from 60 million tons in 1990 to 107 million tons in 2000. Does the author of "Recycling is Garbage" really believe that the growing demand for paper around the world can be sustained without recycling?

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Anti-recycling myth #7: Stringent U.S. regulations ensure that the environmental harms of manufacturing and using products are incorporated into their prices.

Fact: Many of the costs that arise from environmental impacts of virgin materials extraction, manufacturing, consumption and disposal are not included in prices paid when products are bought and sold.

One of the most astonishing assertions in "Recycling is Garbage" is:

When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price. Polystyrene cups are cheap because they require so little energy and material to manufacture - without reading a chemist's analysis, you can deduce from the cup's price that it's an efficient use of natural resources. Similarly, the prices paid for scrap materials are a measure of their environmental value as recyclables.

In fact, market prices for materials like polystyrene are set in the near term by supply and demand forces, underpinned by a host of production cost factors, many of which have nothing to do with environmental impact. An entire sub-discipline of environmental economics has developed to address a range of environmental damages, called externalities, that are not reflected in market prices even in the most regulated industries.

For example, in the United States, major categories of wastes such as oil and gas extraction wastes and mining wastes are exempt from certain federal regulations. Where a coastal wetland in the Carolinas is converted to a pine plantation and results in damage to estuarine fish hatcheries or reduced water quality, such impacts are certainly not captured in the market price of wood taken from the site.

Nor are any of the costs of disposal included in product prices. If someone drains motor oil from a car into the gutter, it may pollute surface water or groundwater. But the price originally paid for the oil does not anticipate its proper or improper disposal. Finally, another major obstacle to incorporating environmental factors into market prices is the difficulty or impossibility of assigning a meaningful economic cost to such "goods," for example, the value of preserving a rare animal or plant species.

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Anti-recycling myth #8: Misguided laws and regulations compel manufacturers to make costly changes in their packaging and products.

Fact: The asserted influence of legislation on the character of production processes, products and packaging is grossly overstated. The vast majority of environmental improvements that manufacturers have made in products and packaging are cost-cutting measures or voluntary responses to customer demand.

According to "Recycling is Garbage:" "Newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash, and they're paying for it now through regulations that force them to buy recycled paper - a costly handicap in their struggle against electronic rivals."

The facts tell a different story. In the late 1980's, newspaper publishers, including the New York Times, negotiated and signed voluntary agreements with the governors of New York and Massachusetts under which they agreed to gradually increase their purchase of recycled-content newsprint. A much-discussed law in passed in Connecticut around the same time that purportedly required such action was largely symbolic; it contained no enforcement provisions. With respect to magazines, we know of no law actually being enforced that requires magazine publishers to use paper with recycled content.

Use and production of recycled newsprint is well-established. The nation's first 100% recycled newsprint mill opened in Garfield, NJ in 1961, followed by a similar mill in Pomona, CA in 1967. Both of these mills are still operating; historically, the market price of recycled newsprint has been less than virgin newsprint. The Los Angeles Times prints the vast majority of its newspapers on recycled paper, for example.

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Anti-recycling myth #9: Recycling is nearing its maximum potential.

Fact: There remains enormous room for growth in recycling - even for the most-recycled materials. Composting also holds strong potential, and we're just getting started on waste reduction, the most important step of all.

In other words, more than half (54%) of even these highly recyclable materials is not recycled.[26]

Additionally, yard trimmings make up about 20% of our waste nationwide, and more than a third in many suburban communities, particularly in the Sunbelt. Less than a quarter of this material is currently recovered for composting. [27] When they find their way into landfills (or incinerators), these materials contribute significantly to the air pollution released by these facilities. Although composting and recycling programs often work best in tandem, the benefits of municipal composting programs are rarely discussed by the anti-recyclers, including the Times Magazine article.

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Anti-recycling myth #10: Recycling is a time-consuming burden on the American public.

Fact: Convenient, well-designed recycling programs allow Americans to take action in their daily lives to reduce the environmental impact of the products they consume. Informing citizens of the costs of their own consumption and disposal activities through "pay as you throw" user fees makes economic and environmental sense - but only if viable recycling and composting programs are in place.

In a bizarre example of "research," the author of "Recycling is Garbage" asked a college student to measure the time he spent separating materials for recycling during one week. The total time spent was eight minutes. The author extrapolates this to a value of $2,000 per ton of materials recycled, by factoring in janitor's wages and the rent for a square foot of kitchen space - as if dropping the newspapers off at the curb on your way downstairs to get a bagel could be equated with going to work at a janitorial job, or as if New Yorkers had the means to turn small, unused increments of apartment floor space into tradable commodities.

Using this logic, the article might have taken the next step of calculating the economic cost to society for the college student to make his bed and do his dishes every day. The only different between recycling and other routine housework - like taking out the trash - is that one makes your immediate environment cleaner while the other one does the same for the broader environment.

We need to be honest about the fact that our consumption of products and services has a significant environmental impact, especially when U.S. consumption levels are seen a global context. Waste reduction, reuse and recycling give us the opportunity to take some responsibility for this impact and reduce its effects, if we so choose.

In addition to the environmental consequences of consumption and disposal, even the full economic costs of these activities has been far from apparent to the individual consumer. The cost of garbage collection and disposal, for example, has long been obscured in most households' property tax bill. Under this system, one family can put three times as much trash out as the family next door; yet typically both families will pay the same for the collection service, and neither will know the actual cost.

In one case where we agree with the author of "Recycling is Garbage," the Environmental Defense Fund has long supported local systems that assess unit prices or fees for the amount of trash set at the curb - the more you throw away, the more you pay. Now in place in a growing number of communities, this accounting practice gives people an incentive to reduce the amount of waste they generate and have to throw away. But such incentives work only if viable recycling and composting programs are in place that give consumers the direct means to reduce their discards. The Times Magazine article failed to mention this essential caveat.

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Conclusion:

Compared to using materials once, then throwing them away and having to replace them, recycling saves energy, dramatically reduces pollution from manufacturing, and avoids the destruction of natural resources that occurs when extracting virgin materials. At the current national rate of about 26%, recycling saves enough energy to supply the needs of 9 million U.S. households. And recycling paper cuts down on air and water pollution while reducing pressure to cut down our remaining forests and convert them into monotonous tree farms.

The greatest economic benefit of recycling is that it provides a base of materials for robust, efficient manufacturing industries. So far this decade, U.S. paper manufacturers have voluntarily built more than 45 recycling-based pulp and paper mills and only a handful that use virgin wood. This is not just because recycling plants are better for the environment, but because they are a less expensive way to increase production, taking advantage of the increasing supplies of used paper collected in business and community recycling programs.

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Appendix: Are Disposables Really Better than Reusables?

The author of "Recycling is Garbage" addresses a number of environmental debates that have no apparent link to recycling but have been pet peeves of the plastics and packaging industries. One of these is the question of the relative merits of disposable and reusable food serviceware.

The author begins by making a massive over-generalization: on the basis of one measure of environmental impact - energy use - taken from one study of a comparison of one specific reusable item (a ceramic mug) with one disposable item (a polystyrene foam cup), he implies that reusables are rarely or never preferable to disposables. If any generalization can be drawn from such studies, it is that the conclusions are highly dependent on the specifics of what is being compared to what, including what assumptions are made, for example, about the manner in which the items being compared are used.

In selectively reporting only the energy use comparison, the author neglects other impacts such as air and water pollution and solid waste. Moreover, even for this one measure, he omits other studies that found dramatically different results. In a recent review of studies similar to the one cited by the author - published, interestingly, by another of the author's most prominent sources[28] - all of the studies reviewed found reusables to consume less energy than disposables after a number of reuses far lower than the 900 reuses cited in the article, and well within the number of uses achieved in practice. Most of the studies found that air pollution and solid waste impacts were lower for reusables, while water pollution impacts were generally higher for the reusables.

All in all, the reports paint a far more favorable picture for reusables than implied by the author through his selective reporting of the available data.

The author also claims that disposables are more sanitary than reusables, based on a comparison of surface bacterial counts on reusable vs. disposable dishware and utensils. This argument, based on a study commissioned by the disposables industry, is a common claim made in the industry's promotional literature. While the study did indeed find higher bacterial counts on reusable than on disposable items, three critical caveats must be added to understand the significance of this finding:

• First, the test used to measure bacteria on the items detects all bacteria, including bacteria commonly found in the environment or even in the human intestinal tract. The test did not measure pathogenic bacteria (i.e., those capable of causing disease).
• Second, even were any of the bacteria detected actually pathogenic, the number of bacteria (on average about 400) found on the reusable items is at least several orders of magnitude below an infectious dose (generally a million or more).
• Third, even under normal circumstances, food itself contains far more bacteria of the same type than were found on the foodservice items. For example, various studies that used the same test procedures as those discussed above report that one-quarter of the fried hamburgers from various North American fast-food outlets had bacterial counts between 100 and 1000 per gram (or 11,000 to 110,000 for a quarter-pound hamburger); lettuce contained bacterial counts ranging from a low of 100,000 per gram to as high as 190 million per gram.[29] These counts mean that food contains hundreds to millions of times more bacteria than are present on the washed plate or utensil used to serve the food.