I’m confused by your claim that it doesn’t help, and would like some evidence other than Tierney’s motivated reasoning, who claims that recycling is bad because it’s annoying, that the impact is small, and that we try to recycle more than is economically optimal. That last one is probably true, and the first is subjective, and most people don’t seem to mind.
The claim that resource costs are low, so it’s a bad idea ignores the fact that they are low because they mostly come from countries with no pollution restrictions, and almost all don’t have GHG priced in.
I’m confused by your claim that it doesn’t help, and would like some evidence other than Tierney’s motivated reasoning, who claims that recycling is bad because it’s annoying, that the impact is small, and that we try to recycle more than is economically optimal. That last one is probably true, and the first is subjective, and most people don’t seem to mind.
But he says that excluding most recycling, the impacts are minor. Yes, excluding glass, plastic, and cardboard. Really: ” Once you exclude paper products and metals...” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html
The claim that resource costs are low, so it’s a bad idea ignores the fact that they are low because they mostly come from countries with no pollution restrictions, and almost all don’t have GHG priced in.
In contrast, it usually costs nothing more than solid waste disposal, and when it is more expensive it isn’t by a large margin—https://www.jstor.org/stable/3110116 and it reduces GHG emissions a tremendous amount—https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.2002.10470843