Isn't MORE Recycling the Whole Point?
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's a crime to recycle in some major U.S.
cities. Or it soon will be. With the market prices for recycled goods
actually reaching a level that makes recycling profitable, bands of entrepreneurs have rushed onto the scene
to make a buck by "stealing" recyclable materials from trash cans. A
few major cities are cracking down on these trash thieves, in a bid to
ensure that recycling remains a government monopoly.
"California
lawmakers are also considering legislation that would make large-scale,
anonymous recycling more difficult by forcing scrap and paper recyclers
to require picture identification for anyone bringing in more than $50
worth of cans, bottles or newspapers and to pay such individuals with
checks rather than cash."
So,
let me get this straight...state and city governments supposedly want
people to recycle, right? Most people believe that recycling is a good
thing, which is not untrue. The problem with recycling to date has been
that it wasn't profitable, so the only way it could be sustained was if
it was subsidized by taxes. Now, suddenly it's profitable to recycle,
so more people are doing it. You would think this is a good thing,
right?
Well, the government obviously doesn't think so, and
neither do their monopoly contract holders. Why not? You might think
that a waste collection company could care less, and may even be
thrilled that private individuals are doing a portion of their work for
them. After all, refuse theft means less they have to pick up and less
they have to dump into a landfill. It would save space, time, and
money. So why would they condemn the practice and lobby for laws
prohibiting it? Because it threatens their monopoly on
recycling...plain and simple. If private recycling becomes a profitable
enterprise, the subsidized government bureaucracy loses its raison
d'etre, since its only reason to exist is to provide a service that
supposedly couldn't or wouldn't be provided by a free market.
Now,
I certainly am not one to advocate theft, and you could make the
argument that refuse left by the curb to be picked up by a collection
company belongs to either the producer (the resident disposing of the
refuse) or the company. And, of course, stealing newspapers out of the
rack in order to recycle them would rightly be considered
theft...except that we're talking about "free" newspapers.
"The free
weekly The East Bay Express, which covers Oakland, Berkeley and other
Bay Area cities, hired an ex-police detective to stake out thieves and
began retrofitting curbside newspaper racks to make them
theft-resistant because thousands of fresh copies go missing some weeks.
"We
don't want to be spending all our energy printing papers that people
take directly to the recyclers," said Hal Brody, the paper's president.
Mike Costello, vice president of circulation at the free San Francisco daily, The Examiner, has taken to doing stakeouts of his own." (emphasis added)
These
newspapers are probably free because they're paid for by advertisers,
so the argument could definitely be made that the recyclers are
stealing from the advertisers themselves. However, the fact that
they're being stolen specifically for recycling would seem to indicate
that they're more valuable as recycled material than as actual
newspapers, which should probably inspire the advertisers to rethink
that particular marketing choice.
But why should a homeowner care who takes possession of his or her trash once they place it next to the curb for pick-up?
"Every
Wednesday night, Bruce Johnson dutifully puts his garbage and recycling
on the curb for pickup, and every week he fumes as small trucks idle in
front of his home and strangers dig through his bins stealing trash
they aim to turn into treasure."
In
most cases, residents don't pay for their trash pick-up directly.
Rather, it's paid for via taxes or homeowners' dues. The same is often
true of recycling (although in some rural areas homeowners must
actually pay to have recyclables picked up separately). One would think
that if someone was willing to pick up a portion of a homeowners'
garbage for free it would spur competition among waste collection
companies for contracts. This is, of course, precisely what the
government monopolists don't want.
So here we are, at a
point where one can actually turn an honest profit while "saving the
planet", but rather than embracing the benefits that this newfound
profitably would bring in a free market, bureaucracy is fighting it
tooth and nail, as it threatens its very existence. Surely we all see
the irony herein. Government wants you to recycle, but only so long as
you use government to do it. All else is verboten. Honestly, were I a
homeowner who witnessed my garbage being ransacked for recyclables I
would probably feel more inclined to sort the recyclable items into a
separate container to speed up the process of undermining the
government monopoly on recycling, thereby doing my part to save the
planet by encouraging the free recycling market to flourish.