End the recycling madness.

I keep going on about this, not because it's a waste of tax money -- God knows there are plenty and more wasteful projects -- but because it is a Big Lie and we're all complicit in it. Recycling garbage is a waste and should be stopped immediately. 

Why am I on this soapbox once again? After all, my investigative reporting revealed that not one single house in the neighborhood was compliant with the government mandated recycling program, and clearly the supply is contaminated. Well, last week I lurched out of the house on recycling day with my paper, glass, and plastic trash just as the truck came down the block. I stood there as the gentleman with the truck threw my stuff inside, then mashed it down, as such trucks do. And I'm telling you, that truck was just as disgusting as any truck in the fleet. Not only was there no difference between this "recycling" truck and a garbage truck, but it's the same truck. The business that contracts with our town for waste removal isn't even pretending to recycle anything anymore; why should we?

It started small in New York, with a five-cent deposit on soda bottles in the early 80's. This annoyed a lot of people, but others were glad that it got a bunch of broken glass off the street. By the end of the decade we were sorting things into bags for pickup. The Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 required municipalities to recycle various post-consumer materials. And now, because there's no market for the crap, it's all going into landfills. But the state loves it, because every deposit bottle that isn't redeemed is a nickel that goes into the state coffers. Then the "reclaimed" materials goes in the garbage.

Lies, damned lies, and recycling.

And we have to pretend to recycle, and they pretend to do it, and this is a Big Lie that we all conform to. Honestly, has there every been as big a lie in this country, with complicity on every level from the top of the government to the merest citizen? Recycling is an expensive and stupid failure, its fake observation enforced by power of law, and no one at any level of government will admit it and demand we stop it. 

For environmentalists, it's all about wishful thinking, control, and money. The wishful thinking is of a piece with the idea that windmills and solar panels can give us all the energy we need with no drawbacks. The control is getting a supine public into the habit of paying tributes to keep Gaia from destroying us, maybe in the hope that one day there will be a market for this contaminated crap. And money speaks for itself. So real solutions go into the landfill along with the precious bottles and cans and waste paper.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the town of New Windsor contracted in 2017 for a waste-to-energy plant with BioHighTech Global, a plant that would take something we hate (garbage) and turn it into something we love (energy). Two years later the town board got its panties in a twist and said it would impact the environment poorly, so BioHighTech pulled out of the agreement. Good job, town board; now 150,000 tons of garbage a year goes in the landfill, and your energy costs remain sky high. 

Another such project by Taylor Biomass is in the works in Montgomery, a project that has been planned for well over a decade, but it will probably have the cord yanked if Montgomery falls into the hands of Nervous Nellies who genuflect at the altar of environmentalism as well. Or if the environmentalists go after it again with lawfare. 

But they need to remember that getting rid of the project doesn't get rid of the garbage, nor does it make recycling effective.