BrianGarst.com

What’s an environmentalist to do when even the epitome of green living – recycling – can’t be depended upon?

California’s State Agency Buy Recycled Campaign grew out of legislation passed in 1989, when times were simpler. Garbage was the enemy. Almost no one talked about global warming.

Now that the state is a leader in the war against climate change and seeking to shrink its carbon footprint, some say it’s time to adapt and measure the effort’s climate impact.

“You can’t automatically assume recycled content is good,” said Robert Tetz, former manager of the state’s environmentally preferable purchasing program at a conference this spring.

“You have to be careful about the energy and environmental impacts we incur in the process of recycling,” he continued. “When we talk about what’s green, a lot of the 100 percent-recycled paper we’re buying in California is not green.”

You know what’s good at informing people about comparative energy use? Prices.  Any time recycling comes up I tell people the same thing: if it were really efficient to do it, someone (excluding government) would be paying you for it.  While that happens for some commonly recycled items (like aluminum cans), it doesn’t for most.

When local and state governments stepped in to subsidize, and in many cases require, the recycling of goods, it was promoting energy inefficiency.  This should have been obvious by the very fact that the state felt a need to force the behavior in the first place.

environmentalists Global Warming