John Tierney wrote an article on recycling, and how it's mostly a wasted effort. Although long, I found it a very interesting read, because I believed (like most people still do, I presune) that recycling is a "good thing". Tierney argues that many people recycle for the sake of recycling, rather than the to improve the environment. The gives several example of how recycling actually hurts the environment more than simply burrying the garbage in landfill. For example, producing recycled paper produces more water pollution than producing new paper, and paper is a renewable resource, so there really is no real need to recycle it.

He also points out that the government spends a lot of money on policing and enforcing recycling regulations. He suggests eliminating a governmentally controlled recycling program entirely, and diverting these funds directly into environment preserving programs (where the tax dollars can be used more efficiently to reduce pollution); simulataneously, let the recycling industry become a private one, so that when it makes sense to recycle something, the price the companies will pay for your scrap will reflect that fact. "Scrap aluminum fetches a high price because recycling it consumes so much less energy than manufacturing new aluminum. The low price paid for scrap tinted glass tells you that you won't be conserving valuable resources by recycling it." Consumers will naturally have more incentive to recycle when it actually makes sense.