The author, Susan Hill, has a blog which I visit from time to time. She has just written a piece which touches on the subject of recycling.
I was in the process of launching into a major lecture on the evils of recycling in the comments, when I thought the better of it - it was becoming rather too long and possibly a bit of a rant. I've therefore put down my thoughts, such as they are, here.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, recycling is rubbish.
Firstly, there is no shortage of landfill space. We are quarrying a larger volume of stone each year than we produce of landfill. The reason we seem to have a shortage is that the EU has decreed that we should close most of our landfill down. Why they have done this is anyone's guess, but I imagine corruption has something to do with it. (I'm cynical like that.)
Secondly, packaging has very little to do with landfill anyway. According to Friends of the Earth, if you analyse landfill by type, packaging isn't even in the top ten. The biggest culprit is building waste.
Thirdly, packaging is your friend. If I recall correctly 40% of American rubbish is packaging. 40% of Mexican rubbish is food that's gone off because it wasn't adequately packaged - similar conclusions are reached here. The real waste of precious resources is throwing away food, not packaging, most of which is plastic - a by-product of the oil refining industry that would have to be burnt if it wasn't used. Put it another way: why do the rapacious capitalists who run the supermarkets spend all that money wrapping up cucumbers (which annoys their customers) if there isn't some benefit to them? The answer turns out to be very simple: it keeps fungal spores off the cucumber and so doubles the shelf-life. That's saving resources, that is.
Fourthly, recycling is a tremendous waste of resources, on the whole. We know this, because it requires subsidies to get anyone to recycle most materials. Commercial businesses will not produce, say, recycled paper without subsidy, because all the resources required to bleach and reprocess it outweigh the value of the end product. There are exceptions, like aluminium and some other waste metals. We have a long-standing, subsidy-free recycling industry (called scrapyards) for these things.
Lastly, a modern landfill is a rather marvellous thing. It is lined with clay and plastic liners so there is no leaching of pollution into the water table. Any leachate is collected and metals can be extracted from it. The methane given off is collected too and can be used as a fuel. (Source).This is real, commercially viable recycling, as opposed to the woolly tree-hugging, spend-and-be-damned type that ruins the environment and impoverishes us all.
If you have a dull afternoon, try looking on the internet for scientific evidence to support the concept of recycling. There is nearly nothing, and what little there is appears to be outdated and conceptually flawed.
/rant