Sierra Pine
2A
12/11/12
Should Recycling Be Mandatory
Recycling is propitious for not only us, but for the environment too. It slows us from consuming our resources, like paper and
plastic. Plus it saves money.... or does it? There would have to be more places to sort all the items being recycled and it would cost
money to build all the machines and maintain them. Then there would have to be people that run the machines and they would need to be
paid.What about the process the paper and plastic goes through in order to be in a good enough shape to be reused again? Wouldn’t that
have a cost too? So the question here is; should recycling be mandatory? Even though there are many reasons to say yes, there are many
other reasons to say no. Some reasons to be against mandatory recycling include: by recycling one resource we are inevitably going to
use other resources, it costs more than what it actually saves us, and in the end if we do end up having to recycle all our trash, there is no
way for the government to know if we did or not, without invading our privacy.
In order to make a place to organize the recyclables and transport them to and from the recycling plant, you need resources
like wood, gas, and metal. You possibly use just as much, maybe even more, making the buildings and gas used for migrating the trash,
than the amount of the recycled items that actually get reused. The energy, electricity, materials and the work put into just recovering the
reusable parts of the trash simply isn’t worth it. We don’t get nearly enough in return to force people to recycle. We would have to get
recycling bins for every house and every business. That not only costs money but supplies to make all the bins and have someone
transport them to all those places that don’t currently have recycling bins.
Recycling is meant to salvage all we can out of used items. While in the process of trying to save these items we ended up
spending more than what the salvageable things were worth. “Daniel K. Benjamin, senior associate of the Property and Environment
Research Center, stated in a report that on average, curbside recycling is 35 to 55 percent more costly nationwide than conventional
disposal" (www.seventeen.com). It costs $28 to put a ton of trash in a landfill while it takes $147 to recycle it (landfills aren’t as bad as
you may think they are; only one in 50 years there is a single report about a landfill causing an individual cancer). It would cost $2,600
for a city to recycle but only save them $600. It’s not really salvaging if we are spending more than we make.
Lastly, let’s say that the U.S. government does decide to make recycling mandatory; imagine how much money they will have
to put into this project. They will have to figure out how to enforce the law without completely destroying our standard of privacy. Many
people in the U.S. would not have the money to buy the things you need in order to recycle such as a large recycling can for the garbage
trucks to pick up. As of July 2012 the United States are 15,874,365,457,260 dollars in debt (www.concordcoalition.org). We’ll just end
up using money that will add on to the debt and just to make more buildings and hire more people to spend even more money recycling.
Although, the recycling business does create many jobs; landfills create six jobs compared to recycling, which creates 36 jobs
(eHow.com). Recycling hasn’t always been useless; it was, of course, beneficial to us at one point in time. When we first started
recycling we used rags and waste paper to make new paper (eHow.com). But that was then and now its a waste of time and money. It
just proves that we are spending even more money considering all those people have to be payed for their service.
In conclusion, the reasons for favoring the side that recycling should not be mandatory are that it has cost more than what is
gained from it, we end up using more of other resources and the government would have a rough time finding a way though all the
obstacles. I believe it would be a better idea if somehow we were able to recycle mandatorily without all the problems listed.
Work Cited
Stillwater, Katherine. "eHow Money." How Much Does it Cost to Recycle Materials?. eHow. Web. 12 Dec 2012.
<http://www.ehow.com/about_5771458_much-cost-recycle-materials_.html>.
Carusco, Laura , Aliza Sajjad, and Kristen O'Gorman. "Face Off: Should Recycling be Mandatory?." Seventeen. Seventeen. Web. 12 Dec
2012. <http://www.seventeen.com/college/advice/face-off-mandatory-recycling>.
. "National Debt." concord coalition. concord coalition. Web. 18 Dec 2012. <http://www.concordcoalition.org/issue-page/nationaldebt?gclid=CKLEpvispbQCFUjZQgod8gcA4A>.