There's a critical difference between conforming with common ideas on saving the environment and actually saving the environment. Good intentions can never replace good actions. Good intentions badly executed can even cause direct harm.

Recycling is a popular idea but it takes some care to manage it in a way to get the intended benefits. Wakefield's increased kerbside collections of recyclable waste are a great help. The lesson learned in the article below is that in any system, don't make it hard for people follow.

This look at recycling in Sweden has been edited from an article: “The Recycling Myth” by Per Bylund. It is printed by kind permission of the author, and available in full at the Ludwid Von Mises Institute: www.mises.org/story/2855

Note: In the article, trash refers to recyclable waste.

The Recycling Myth

By Per Bylund, edited by Sam Liddicott
In Sweden, everybody is recycling as the result of government force, not choice. The state's monopolist garbage-collection service no longer accepts garbage: and will only collect leftovers and other bio-degradables. Any other kind of garbage that accidentally finds its way to your garbage bin can result in a fine and the whole neighbourhood could face a larger than normal rise in gargabe collection rates.

Most homes have a number of trash bins for different kinds of trash: batteries, bio-degradables, wood, coloured glass, other glass, aluminium, other metals, newspapers, hard paper, other paper, and plastic each have their own collection bins. Trash generally has to be clean before thrown away, with labels removed.

Cleaning trash before carefully sorting is the future, they say, and supposedly good for the environment. While it can probably be thought of as working, from an environmental point of view, the expected results do not materialize.

The authorities have established trash centres in most neighbourhoods with a different container dedicated for each and every kind of trash and they are all neatly colour-coded to help you find the right one. But it seems people cheat if they believe they are better off doing so, so the authorities responded by making it more difficult to cheat. Their first measure was to redesign all containers so that it is more difficult throwing the “wrong” trash in them. For instance, containers for glass have only small, round holes where you put your bottles, and containers for hard paper and carton materials have only letter-slit shaped holes (you need to flatten all boxes before recycling — that's the law).

People kept on cheating, and the more difficult the authorities made it to cheat, the more difficult it was to get rid of the trash even if you intended to put it in the right place. So people went to these centres and simply put everything next to the containers instead. The authorities responded by appointing salaried “trash collection centre spies” to document who was cheating so that they could be brought to justice. There have been a few court cases where people have been tried for not following recycling laws. After a rather hot-spirited debate in the media, all spying at trash collection centres was abolished.

The structure works: people do sort their trash in different bins – they have no choice. Government garbage collectors do not have to do as much work while getting paid more than before. People are annoyed, but do not really react. Swedes generally complain a lot, but they do not resist; they are used to being pushed around by powerful government and have tolerated this fate ever since 1523.

Consumer “producers” of waste get to do most of the sorting, cleaning, and transporting the trash to collection centres. Government-appointed companies then empty the containers and transport the materials to regional centres where the trash is prepared for recycling. Everything is then transported to central recycling plants where the materials are prepared for reuse or burning. What is left is sold to companies and individuals at subsidized prices so that they can make “environmentally friendly” choices.

It is supposed to be resource efficient, as recycling of the materials is less energy-consuming than mining, or producing paper from wood. The government also makes a profit from selling recycled materials and products made in the recycling process which supposedly costs less than what is earned.

However, the so-called “energy saving” do not take into account the time and energy used by nine million people to clean and sort their trash. Government authorities and researchers don't count the literally millions of times people drive to the recycling centres to empty their trash bins; nor the energy and costs for the extra housing space required for a dozen extra trash bins in every home.

A recent problem with the garbage-collection centres is that the containers aren't emptied very often (government “savings”) and thus remain full, which means that garbage piles up next to the overflowing containers. The government contractors only empty the containers on schedule, and don't pick up the trash sitting next to these containers. The result? Disease and rats. Newspapers have been reporting on a “rat invasion” in Stockholm and in other Swedish cities in recent years.

If we consider the costs in monetary terms, in terms of wasted time, and in terms of increased emissions from cars, this is not environmentally friendly. Adding the annoyance and the increased risk for disease, Swedish recycling is at least as disastrous as any centrally mandated  scheme.