Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it.

The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic. Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.”

Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.

Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It set a Times record for hate mail. But what he wrote was true.

“It’s even more true today,” Tierney tells me. “Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less.” //

Putting garbage in landfills is often much cheaper than recycling. My town would save $340 million a year if it just stopped recycling. //

Since most plastic can’t be recycled, what’s the environmentalists’ solution now? “Stop producing it,” says Greenpeace’s John Hocevar. Lots of environmental groups now want to ban plastic.

That’s just silly. Plastic is useful. Using it often creates fewer emissions than its alternatives. Plastic bags create fewer than paper bags. A metal straw has to be used 150 times before it creates less pollution than a plastic straw.