We are good at seeing those things right in front of us. They are easily visible and observable and don't require additional effort beyond what we see immediately. They are seen.
However, every action in life creates a series of effects that are unseen. They emerge subsequently and often result in final effects that are far different than what we thought was seen at the beginning. They are unseen.
Consider the parent that continually lets their child get their way. The action that is seen is of a parent who wants a happy child. Unseen is that this path inevitably leads to a spoiled, self-absorbed, unhappy adult.
Or consider the group of high school students who laugh at the bookworm who never goes out on Saturday nights because they want to study. Who would want to spend their weekends doing that? It is only later that the unseen effects of that extra work is apparent. That hardworking student ends up living on easy street and her friends end up talking about how unfair life is.
I have previously written about the "seen and unseen" dimensions of important political issues such as abortion, immigration, gun control and the minimum wage. I have also observed that Democrats seem to be particularly prone to confining themselves to those things that are "seen".
Democrats generally confine themselves solely to visible effects. They seem to consider only first-level effects and ignore everything else that might flow from that. All of their focus is on what they see in front on them. They ignore the unseen issues. Republicans, on the other hand, are considering both the immediate effects and second-level effects. The seen and the unseen. Especially the unseen effects which should be foreseen.
Recycling is another issue where there are "seen and unseen" effects.
I first started looking into this issue more deeply a few years ago when a friend of mine who was in the Real Estate Facilities business and I ate lunch at a newly-opened fast food restaurant.
As we finished eating and went to dispose of our trash we were confronted with a waste station that looked something like this.
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| Credit: Arete Industries |
As I dutifully sorted my trash between waste and recycling my friend chuckled and opened the door beneath to show me that both depositories were going into just one trash can.
That is how I was introduced to the "seen and unseen" sides of recycling.
Who cannot be in favor of recycling? It is the one positive action each one of us can do to protect and preserve our earth's environment. It is seen and it has to be good.
The image below is a common sight in my neighborhood and many others across the country on trash days. We have been told that recycling is good so we dutifully separate and segregate our trash to be good citizens.
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| Credit: Rumpke Recycling |
In fact, in some progressive cities across the country it actually can get confrontational should a neighbor notice that you are not recycling. You don't care about our environment? You don't care about our children's future? What is wrong with YOU?
Investor's Business Daily took on some of the "unseen" facts about recycling last week in an editorial titled, "Some Inconvenient Truths About Recycling".
It has become an article of faith in the U.S. that recycling is a good thing. But evidence is piling up that recycling is a waste of time and money, and a bit of a fraud.
The New York Times recently reported that, unknown to most families who spend hours separating garbage into little recycling bins, much of the stuff ends up in a landfill anyway.
One big reason: China has essentially shut the door to U.S. recyclables.
The Times notes that about a third of recyclables gets shipped abroad, with China the biggest importer. But starting this year, China imposed strict rules on what it will accept, effectively banning most of it. That, the Times reports, has forced many recycling companies who can't find other takers to dump recyclables into landfills.
Let's put the amount of trash we have been exporting to China in context. In 2016, it amounted to 16 million tons of various amounts of trash and scrap commodities worth more than $5.2 billion. That ranks 6th in the value of anything the U.S. exported to China. It is more than we exported in crude oil. medical equipment, logs and lumber, pharmaceuticals. liquid natural gas and telecommunications equipment.
This insight might also provide some better understanding of why President Trump complains so much about our trade policies with China. We have been exporting more trash to China than oil, drugs and medical equipment? What is wrong with that picture?
However, China doesn't want our trash anymore and the value of all recyclables has crashed as a result. There simply is not enough demand for this stuff anywhere else in the world.
Of course, most recycling efforts were not worth the time and effort even before the Chinese added this additional disrupting factor. You just never heard the real facts on the evening news.
Journalist and New York Times science columnist John Tierney wrote an opinion piece for the paper several years ago detailing many of the "unseen" effects of recycling.
The bottom line--there is not a lot of value in recycling. In fact, for the most part it is far more expensive to recycle than simply trashing it. And it doesn't do much for the environment anyway.
The claim that recycling is essential to avoid running out of landfill space is hogwash, since all the stuff Americans throw away for the next 1,000 years would fit into "one-tenth of 1% of land available for grazing," Tierney says.
Other environmental benefits, he finds, are negligible, and come at an exceedingly high price. Tierney notes, for example, that washing plastics before recycling them, as is the recommended practice, could end up adding to greenhouse gas emissions. And the extra trucks and processing facilities produce CO2 as well.
Since it costs far more to recycle trash than to bury it, governments are wasting money that could be more effectively spent elsewhere.
Another couple of factoids on the "unseen" effects of recycling. In 2015 it cost New York City $300 more per ton to recycle its trash than to bury it. Waste Management also reported that over 2,000 municipalities were paying to dispose of their recyclables rather than getting paid for them in 2015. The situation is undoubtedly even worse today from a cost/benefit analysis than it was then.
Where should you focus your recycling efforts if you want to really help the environment?
The best financial paybacks and environmental benefits from recycling come from aluminum cans, paper and cardboard. In fact, Tierney calculates that 90% of the greenhouse benefits of recycling come from these items.
Recycling glass and plastics is not worthwhile. It is simply too energy intensive and expensive to reprocess these products. They are better placed in the landfill.
Despite the dirty looks, take comfort in the fact that by doing so you are both a good financial and environmental steward.
As IDB points out, however, that means little when recycling has come to be accepted with almost religious conviction by so many---especially on the political Left.
Good luck convincing people of any of this. Recycling is the new religion. And as Tierney put it, "religious rituals don't need any practical justification."
The "seen and unseen" of recycling. Like many issues, the seen is easy to see. The unseen requires some critical thinking and forethought.
Spends some time every day thinking beyond what you see in front you today.
Take time to foresee what for most will always be unseen.
As for me, it's time to take the trash out.
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