To the Editor:

While I appreciate the sentiment behind Emily O’Keefe’s March 29 letter to The University News, I wonder how people have critically interrogated the accepted thinking about recycling’s perceived benefits. ?Certainly, humans should leave as small a footprint on nature as possible, but, despite the claims of both well-meaning and self-interested environmentalists, recycling does nothing to reduce energy use or keep our environment clean.

First, I ask students to consider that recycling is a labor- and energy-intensive process. ?When you recycle, someone has to collect what you gathered, always separately from your normal trash collection. ?That’s another large truck on the road making the same rounds, fully doubling the total amount of fossil fuels used in the collection of waste. ?And the reprocessing of these materials is not a natural process but a heavily industrial one, generating much the same industrial waste and chemicals that environmentalists fear, though this fact does not seem to ever make it into the public discourse about recycling. ?I’m willing to bet that most of that waste ends up in landfills anyway (which, by the way, are beautifully engineered, spacious and environmentally friendly).

I would argue that the only material it makes sense to recycle is the aluminum can: It is more efficient to recycle aluminum than it is to mine the bauxite to make it. ?Your street urchins already know this: Nobody picks through your garbage for paper products, because they are without real value.

Recycling paper is perhaps the biggest sham. ?Have you ever heard of a paper crisis, one like the gas crises we periodically experience? ?Nor are you likely to. Trees are a crop, just like potatoes or soybeans, and business treats it as such.?The logging industry is highly regulated, and as with any other useful renewable resource, loggers replant what they take. ?If you want more trees, use more paper.

Our national forests have actually grown in size since the beginning of the last century. ?Of course, the depletion of the rainforests is a problem, but one that is caused by poverty, not big business.

Because recycling is so economically unrewarding, recycling programs are largely funded by taxpayers, who subsidize this colossal waste of time and resources. ?It seems unfair to me that I should be forced to fund a largely useless industry.

?I encourage Emily and the other students of Just Earth! to re-examine their thinking about this issue and divert their efforts to more productive forms of informed environmentalism, and to perhaps seek the expertise of SLU business, political science and environmental science professors as they plan their activities.

Bob Blaskiewicz

Graduate Student, Department of English