Recycling. I don't and neither should you.

I don't recycle and I resent the fact people want to make me do it. You could view what follows as an elaborate series of justifications for my lazy, deviant behavior. But if you view it that way, you still have to prove me wrong before I start recycling. So here is a list of things the State or Tree Huggers or whomever would have to clear up before I start recycling.

First I need to know that recycling and other environmental efforts at reducing energy consumption do more good than harm. The Government is constantly working to mandate those shitty spiral bulbs that last a long time and use less energy. But they are filled with mercury, so much mercury that a broken bulb can force the evacuation of a house.

Is saving electricity worth the cost of dealing with the mercury? Not to mention those bulbs suck, they give off crappy light. The human cost of dealing with poor lighting seems to outweigh marginal environmental gains. Don't infringe on my freedom by trying to force me to use certain products. If the bulbs save money I'll buy them if they are worth the cost. Right now, they aren't.

I refuse to recycle paper until someone explains to me why we shouldn't be making as much paper as possible. Making paper is good for the economy, I'm talking jobs and capital all over the place. I don't believe in the Theory of Global Warming, thats a different column, but if you do, it would behoove you to use as much paper as possible. Every tree you cut down is replaced by another tree, and as that new tree grows it takes in more Carbon Dioxide. An older tree, the type harvested for paper, has already taken in most of the carbon required for its life cycle. Sure, making paper has an environmental cost in terms of pollution, but so does recycling.

I read a sign that said it takes a million years for glass to decompose in a landfill so we should recycle. You know what takes longer than glass to decompose? Sand. In fact, I don't think sand decomposes, it just becomes smaller sand. I don't see the problem in turning as much sand as we want into glass and then having a bunch of glass sitting around instead of a bunch of sand.

The same goes for any product. Before you ask me to recycle something, presumably to keep it out of a land fill or to reduce the costs, both environmental and economic, of making a new one, you need to convince me its worth it. There is no intrinsic value in recycling, especially since it takes work for the individual to recycle as well as money and effort to set up the process. It doesn't matter if we have a ton of raw materials sitting someplace or a ton of manufactured products sitting somewhere else.

Recycling has a negative impact on human invention as well. If we keep recycling everything there is no incentive, or at least delayed incentive, to come up with solutions for used up resources or overflowing landfills. Recycling will delay the necessity of dealing with these problems, but whether we recycle or not is immaterial. We will find new solutions for trash regardless of what I do with the crap I use in my daily life. If we run out of something, whatever it may be, we will just find ways to survive without it.

Recycling is societies reaction to fears about resource depletion and environmental costs. But recycling creates just as many problems, not the least of which is wasted human effort. Recycling simply delays the natural adaptations humanity undergoes as our environment changes. I'm willing to adapt to used up resources by thinking of alternatives, but I'm not willing to recycle just because someone tells me to.

I will admit that some recycling could be worthwhile. But nobody bothers to tell us why its worthwhile, they just skip that step and jump right to forcing us to do it. Not acceptable, not effective.

I represent the apathetic public who isn't scared of change. We are willing to adapt when we have to, but we aren't going to install shitty light bulbs and expend tons of effort recycling just to put off adaption. Go ahead, convince us we are are wrong. Until then we are going to keep using as much of the commons as we can.