Is recycling really useful? A frank conversation.

In any cases, accusations of bias are a moot point, since both sides of this issue are going to have biases of their own. Going by the arguments I've seen in that episode, I'd say aluminum recycling makes sense and that paper recycling does not.

But recycling is an alternative and an increase in material efficiency. There seems to be too much closed system fallacy. Why do we have to wait for this supply-demand reaction to occur? Who said that's most efficient? Do you think human ingenuity is cheap? Isn't the cost of that to be considered? What about the cost of change over?

Either someone gives me a crappy source ignorant of better ones or they give me a crappy source with the intention that I then have to go around digging up the better ones and filtering out bias mysef? So they're either ignorant or jerking me around? Why would I dignify such actions with time and thought?

edited 4th Mar '12 7:21:39 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

Also, subsidies muck everything up. If petroleum weren't subsidized, people wouldn't be so free and easy with the plastic bags.

And why can't recycling count as "efficiency"? It increases the longevity of the resources. I'm not talking about the optimal aggregate cost-effective choice. Overly high prices due to reduced supply is itself inefficient. I'm referring to efficiency strictly in terms of the resource itself, and that's the whole point of recycling.

I only drew my modification that way instead of riding up the limit to raise a point. My point is that supply and demand curve has to be modified if quantity can't increase forever. (By the way, it's possible that the supply might not approach infinity as quantity approaches that limit, because of some other reason there's a price cap.) And as mentioned elsewhere, real-life prices don't always accurately reflect the ideal worth.

Your whole economic argument doesn't work if it misses the simple fact that resources are not infinite. Some things simply do not have substitutes. Like water. You want to substitute that with some synthetic sustenance based on water? That's essentially recycling water anyway. Either way, you're taking something initially unusable and salvaging something usable from it.

But the dwindling supply is causing prices to go up. You can't see it because the United States government, for political reasons, is keeping the price of petrol artificially low because they don't want to lose votes

Told you I was against fat-cat subsidies, Whale. >)

@Hidden Faced Matt: I don't give a fuck which sources Penn and Teller cited, they're not the ones presenting me with this argument currently. They're the ones being used as a source Greedyspectator is the one that is doing it, and he said he had other sources. I want him to cite those sources that he supposedly has.

@ Greedyspectator; recycling helps increase efficiency, in the sense that it gives the materials we already have a longer life of use. Oil is running out; unlike trees oil is a finite source and recycling plastics that are made out of it just makes sense. Especially since we can't exactly recycle the oil itself. Oil is going up because it's a finite resource, and the only reason it's cheap as it is in America is because we're generally obsessed with the auto industry. You haven't actually given any figures that say that it's less efficient to just throw all our stuff away.

All this other stuff you're saying about efficiency? That assumes that people act rationally all the time and make LONG TERM plans. No, our very recent history itself says that businesses will make short term plans to make as much profit as possible, and this includes fucking over the environment in any way possible because doing it the green way involves time and cost. (And is usually a good deal more complicated than mere recycling.) You're basically assuming a behavior model that doesn't actually seem to be acted out on that often in real life.

I agree with that.

Sure, maybe in a perfect world were everyone acted rationally, a shortage of a substance would always cause price to rise. But we don't live in that perfect world. Human emotions and irrationality get in the way, as well as just plain ignorance.

Every scientific theory or model assumes perfect conditions. That is why models are never 100% correct. Every scientist will tell you this.

To say that recycling is somehow economically efficient is to ignore the fact that recycling is subsidized. The US alone uses $8 billion dollars to subsidize their recycling industry. Something which is efficient can survive on the market on its own without subsidies, thus recycling is currently, at least, economically inefficient. The problem is recycling is still an infant industry, and showering it with subsidies isn't going to make it grow more efficient, just like how showering subsidies at Solyandra did not prevent them from bankruptcy. Since, yes, sooner or later recycling is going to be a cheaper option compared to making stuff from scratch, but as of right now recycling is still woefully wasteful, it is far more efficient for the government to invest in researching newer and more efficient recycling technologies rather than wastefully recycling now. Once the technology is developed and has reached maturity, in can be released to the public and private enterprises are going to use recycling to profit. As of right now, most recycling is not profitable, so really, more investment in research is more wise.

By the way, can someone tell me why the heck is it very difficult to access TV Tropes from Indonesia?

Research doesn't automatically produce results like recycling does. It's a potential, not a guarantee.

You're still missing the real point of recycling: resources are not infinite. It's not whether recycling is cheaper than making from scratch. It's whether you can make it from scratch.

Dude.

edited 5th Mar '12 4:57:39 AM by abstractematics

And also, I don't understand how something inherently inefficient (recycling) can increase economic efficiency. Maybe it can increase materials efficiency, but materials efficiency will automatically increase over time anyway. But no, recycling does not create a downward pressure on prices, at least generally speaking. Heck, even the subsidized recycling crap is more expensive and has much less quality than making stuff from scratch.

And yes, subsidies do hide costs. The reason why recycling seems economically acceptable (although still woefully inefficient) is because of an $8 billion subsidy. Funny how the US government subsidizes recycling for ecological benefits while subsidizing oil which encourages wastefulness in using oil, which creates pollution. Isn't that rather self-defeating? Somehow I just can't wrap my mind around such idiocy.

You are missing the point entirely. It's not about prices. Nobody here is talking about prices except you. We don't care if it's more expensive; we care that eventually recycling will be the only source of some things, because the original source will be mined out.

Price is immaterial. Nobody here is discussing it.

I know this is rather weird, but economics does not obey the conservation of mass. Economic value can be created from practically nothing, and economic value of products can change over time. I know this seems counter intuitive, but it is possible to create economic value and expand GDP without manufacturing by expanding the service sector alone. Heck, most of the economic growth of First World Countries have been through the service sector, which in my opinion is great since the service sector generally creates less pollution.

Now, I know it seems rather improbable, but yes, resources are limited but at the same time, no, we are never going to run out of resources. Assuming subsidies are non-existent (alas, my perfect libertarian world does not exist), stuff which gets rarer will get more expensive, as long as demand is held constant or increased. This will encourage resource efficiency and alternatives, until perhaps one day recycling is the only alternative left. The point is, because wealth is inherently subjective, it is possible to use limited resources indefinitely as long as the price mechanism is allowed to work (again, I concede that subsidies are a problem). Rising prices, however, are an indication of depleting stocks, but prices always fluctuate, because an increase in price will always push for an increase in efficiency and alternatives. This has happened to both copper (replaced by fiber optic cable) and aluminum (increased production efficiency), and in general applies to all commodity goods.

Please do not confuse economic theory with physical science. Economic growth ultimately does not depend on physical resources, and indeed most growth in the US has been in the service sector, which uses less resources for comparatively more value.

Just when will you shut up about worth, economy and subsidies, to be blunt? Either your answer to the thread 'Is recycling really useful' is a Yes or a No. Don't derail this topic by implying that money works for anything

edited 5th Mar '12 5:11:24 AM by Cassie

And again you miss the point. Recycling resources is not about economics; it's about those resources themselves. It is physical science.

Tell me how someone can consume apples forever if there are only a 100 in the world.

edited 5th Mar '12 5:12:06 AM by abstractematics

Two problems with your argument, first is that you assume Earth is the only source of resources that we have. Second is that recycling cannot crop up naturally in the free market. My entire argument is that recycling now is useless because it is expensive, and that we should either let the price mechanism function or invest in newer recycling technologies so that when the technologies mature, it can be released to the free market.

Yes, I've read your arguements. I understand them. I just disagree with with them.

Economics and physical sciences are not the same, yes, it's good you realise this. The world runs according to physical science.

Regarding greedyspectator's statement that recycled products are inevitably expensive and inferior quality: for a lot of low grade products, recycling is actually cheaper and perfectly adequate. Cardboard, packaging and whatnot don't need to be from brand new forest and we use a hell of a lot of that. Glass recycles very easily. Drink bottles are fairly easy to make into plastic chairs etc.

You have a more substantial argument about turning, eg. food containers back into food containers, but that is correspondingly much rarer.

To add an international angle to this, many places recycle because they haven't got the resources to make much from scratch. Apparently China is importing millions of tons of newspaper because their country is a poor place to grow paper forests. Indeed they got into a fight with Finland over this precious resource!

Regarding paper, trees are a vital part of the ecosystem. You can't just cut down a hundred year old one, plant a new one and expect that to be even steven.

greedyspectator said:Two problems with your argument, first is that you assume Earth is the only source of resources that we have.

No, your problem is that you assume that we will be able to "mine in space" as if it was our backyard or something. We won't. You're thinking of space as something exploitable. It isn't.

Well, hopefully one day it will be, but since it doesn't look like we're going to reach that point any time soon, we have to treat Earth as our only resource.

The day it is economically feasible to mine in space, we'll likely won't have a lot of problems with recycling or even scarcity.

That's assuming it'll happen within your lifetime, which you shouldn't.

edited 5th Mar '12 9:16:03 AM by Quoth

Hundred-year-old trees aren't really the kind you use for paper. See?

The day it is economically feasible to mine in space will be one of the most awesome days of my life.

edited 5th Mar '12 9:14:07 AM by DomaDoma

That's assuming you live long enough to see that happen. I doubt that you will, and that I will, but I agree that it would be pretty awesome.

Greedyspectator: You just contradicted yourself with "yes we have finite resources, but at the same time we'll never run out of resources." That's a fallacious statement. You have to, you know, actually point out which resources are more or less wasteful. You're also making the rather ridiculous statement that oil prices going up is going to result automatically in searching for other fuel sources, which leads into the problem that hey, that's not going to happen overnight anyway. They're already going up, people are already looking for other fuel sources, and given that this is science it's taking a really long time, and is being hampered by oil companies that are also getting subsidies and huge breaks from the government. Also, we use that oil to make plastics (this information was given to me by Flyboy whose parents are involved in the industry. Anymore and you'd have to pm him as he's apparently not allowed to post here anymore) And we're still going to run out of oil eventually, so recycling plastics makes a lot of sense. Just about everything you're saying about the oil industry is pretty much ignorant of what people and companies are actually doing.

As for the paper industry; that just indicates to me that the paper industry needs research better ways to to do it, if they're that interested in saving trees.

Also, government subsidies are pretty much a neutral thing. It's not bad that they're involved in the recycling industry, as opposed to the farming industry which has a lot of people growing corn we don't need.