Oregon State (USA) has had recycling laws since the late 80′s and they seem to work rather well, without the need to terrorise householders.

To acquire tokens the various participants will have to work, scheme, cheat, invest, inherit or similar.

Then the garbage producers, recyclers and landowners can exchange these tokens as they wish. Eventually we’ll find out what people really want by watching who has the most tokens.

How many BullShits will be equal to one land token? Who knows.

Is this not an interesting and clever idea?

For shorthand we’ll call the tokens all ‘money’ and the process the ‘market’.

Voila, a perfect measure of what people really want.

Again you make the point that we collect methane from landfill. In fact it is estimated that we only capture around 85% of methane emissions. We would have to capture 95%+ for landfill to be a comparable option to alternative treatment + disposal methods from a climate change perspective.

According to the European Environment Agency the waste sector in the EU-15 reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 32% 1990-2003. This was primarily due to landfill diversion. That is why we are being asked to do it. It may be a blunt policy response, but that is a perfectly reasonable base rationale.

Tim adds: Jacob, I’ve read the WRAP report too. I’ve no doubt that some recycling is economically efficient. Heck, I’ve done enough of it myself, buying up scrap metal for it to be reprocessed. I’m also fully aware that there are recycling processes which don’t make sense in purely market terms, but which do when we add in the costs of the externalities.

However, there’s something of a shell game going on here. People are (like you, quoting 1990-2003 figures) looking at the benefits of some recycling and then insisting that more recycling will bring further such benefits.

This ain’t necessarily so. Sure, if recycling some aluminium cans brings benefits then recycling more of them will bring more. But it doesn’t follow that if recycling Al cans brings benefits, that composting food waste does. Or nappies, or glass bottles, whatever.

I’m not at all saying that recycling is a bad idea. Only that recycling some things is a good one, recycling others is a bad one. And unfortunately, we’re in the middle of a mania that insists that recycling everything is a good idea. It isn’t.

Tim adds: the latter is a fee for a service, not a tax.

Anyway, this gives me a golden opportunity to link to the MW waste manifesto, the upshot being it is stupid charging people for waste collection – the cost of waste collection should be added to the cost of new goods as they are sold (in place of VAT).