After battling the teacher’s union in Wisconsin, that state’s governor, Scott Walker, proposed a state budget that would have eliminated mandatory recycling. The outrage came fast and furious. An editorial at TheJournalTimes.com began with
Recycling has developed into a service too valuable to toss on the scrap heap.
Some officials worry Wisconsin communities will revert to a sort of Wild West dumping ground if Gov. Scott Walker’s budget passes as is. Under the plan, subsidies for local recycling programs would end and municipalities would no longer be required to run those programs.
The editorial went on to say recycling is cleaner than garbage, trims energy use, creates jobs, and keeps tons of waste from ending up in landfills.
The governor quickly folded his plan when he failed to get the backing of key Republican lawmakers, who said his plan goes too far. So Wisconsin residents can look forward to sorting and separating their paper, plastic, and cans under the thumb of Wisconsin authorities. It’s now radical to believe that people should just throw unwanted items away. To allow people to do this is “going too far.”
Forcing people to spend time separating garbage turns the division of labor on its head. . . . Plus, the government mandate gives no consideration to which materials have value in the scrap market.
So while in certain cities of the United States, people are forced to sort through their own garbage, in a number of places in the world, residents throw away their trash with no worries. The trash will be sorted and removed by the estimated 15 million waste pickers in the world.
Spend any time in Istanbul and you see (mostly) men pulling what look to be large canvas bags strapped to steel frames on two wheels. They are everywhere — residential and commercial areas. . . .
Waste pickers collect materials for hours and then take them to depots where junk dealers buy and sell the thrown-away goods. Emir Altıngöller deals in recyclables by the kilogram, buying for 40 kuruÅŸ and selling for 60 kuruÅŸ. On the worst of days he makes 10 lira, while on the best of days it’s ten times that. “He is thankful and content with his lot because he says he appreciates being self-employed,” writes Fatma Turan for Today’s Zaman.
Americans who are forced to recycle receive nothing for separating their glass and plastic and must pay a monthly fee to hand over their recyclables free of charge in the proper bins, on the appointed days, to employees making union wages and working for the local monopoly-protected waste companies.
(Read more)