The Recycling of the obvious and why economies of scale fail in the new economic reality

How strange it is that where a resource is most plentiful, it may be the resource that is most likely to be recycled. The logic would seem to be that if local production facilities exist that can use a resource it will be recycled because there is a demand from the producing end of the production cycle. However, what is strange is that the recycled resource is at these points relatively more plentiful, thus one is seeing coal shipped, as it were, to Newcastle which already has coal coming out of it's ears!

What's missing from this logic is the relocation of the resource to be recycled in sufficient quantity to be useful in a productive process where it is most needed. Thus, if a recyclable is shipped back to where it is plentiful the intuitive shipment cost is doubled. Were the availability of a recyclable in a new location to lead to a productive process then the reshipment back would be unnecessary to the use of a resource.

A good example of what I mean is the refusal in parts of Devon to collect paper, while there is an enthusiasm to collect farm waste. The reality is that of introducing new industry to recycle farm waste which is plentiful, not back into the farm, but into producing electricity. The danger is that economies of scale in the electricity sector will destroy the agricultural sector as profits from energy production outstrip those of farming by a huge factor. End result is a negative when a positive environmental impact was intended. It's how profitability in production can distort the economics of the environment. Additionally, the negative externalities of production are not costed. Pollution is after all a free good and rarely accounted for. One can accumulate as much pollution as one's domicile and activities allow. People will even pay one to absorb their pollution but rarely enough to cover the costs of being polluted! We can see that recycling is not the process introduced but further pollution based on neglect of the true economic, environment and social cost. All is done because a profit can be obtained. Money making rules rather than judgement and good sense.

So what happens to paper where there is a paper shortage. There the paper is burned because there is no production facility that can use it! Paper is recycled in Canada and burned in Britain! Not wholly true but real enough that we can see that the problem is production for profit as distorted by economies of scale that arise when something is plentiful. It's technology use that is at fault. Technology is used to make profit and not a better local environment. Why should we lie about this reality rather than tackling it's true costs of pollution and unemployment?

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