This is the first in a five-part editorial series (under the “Environmental Riposte” tag) commenting on Kevin Liblin’s recent series for the National Post (and syndicated in the Vancouver Sun). This first entry is in response to Blue Bin Blues. Please help with my analysis, pro or con, as my environmental-fu is not strong.

Unfortunately, recycling plastic often doesn’t make much more sense. Germany has stockpiled millions of tonnes of recyclable plastics in rural fields, like above-ground dumps. “These cheap plastic bottles, it depends on the price of oil, but the market is not worth much,” says Daniel Benjamin, an economist at South Carolina’s Clemson University who studies recycling.

This degenerates into a peak oil argument. The tar sands, for example, occasionally become economically inviable for the same reason: when the price of oil is high, alternative forms are more attractive. As we run out of oil alternative sources of plastic will become economically viable.

Similarly, the argument that recycling programs are inefficient relies on the idea that they will never become efficient. Arguing against economies of scope and scale is an odd position for the National Post to take, especially given the later posts in this series where Kevin argues for economies of scale and scope in food production.

That’s why curbside recycling requires, wherever it’s implemented, millions of tax dollars to stay afloat: the inputs required are greater than the savings. Even in New York City, where area land is some of the most expensive on the continent, it costs $240 to deal with a ton of recyclables, compared to the $130 a ton of landfills, says Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy at Washington’s Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This is why I like it when environmentalists try to put a price on the environment itself. The numbers Kevin cites ignore externalities — they’re based entirely on a failed market, one where landfill operators (in this case) free ride on future generations’ economic valuation of the environment. The $130 figure likely ignores an extra $110 in environmental costs, assuming the $240 figure is for neutral eco-cost recycling (which I doubt — $240 is probably low as well).

Often the effects of aggressive residential recycling programs harm environmental goals. Citywide blue box programs typically mean a whole new fleet of trucks: Calgary now has 64 more diesel-burning rigs retracing the same tracks its garbage trucks did just a few days earlier, roughly doubling carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants.

Agreed — it’s too bad GM killed the electric car. If they hadn’t sabotaged science and their own markets to prop up the oil companies then we’d have low-emission trucks (and the money from bailing them out). Still, let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Electric trucks will come.

In 2002, two of Sweden’s leading environmental authorities argued that recycling’s benefits were usually undone by the resources required to collect and process it.

Agreed — centralized recycling is preferable to blue-box programs.

First, cities should drop the ridiculously high targets to recycle 70, 80 or 90% of waste. And instead, have homeowners bundle their paper, cardboard and aluminum — the worthwhile stuff — into special coloured bags alongside their regular trash pickup. Those bags can then be separated at the landfill, and the rest trashed.

Or, you know, we could use all these handy blue bins everyone has lying around…