I, like most Americans, do believe that we are helping the environment when we recycle. The notion has been repeated and ingrained in our heads by the media that recycling is good; how are we to know any different? Even as kids, we are taught to reduce, reuse, and recycle. But there is no reason to make recycling mandatory. Tierney even describes it as the most wasteful activity in modern America that only benefits in short term, politicians and environmental organizations. However, in the 1990s, recycling was all the rave, and the EPA set rigid laws nationwide regarding trash disposal that many states only made these laws much stricter.
Thus, states put in great amounts of work to recycle materials but were left with tons of recycled material that no one wanted to buy. Through taxes and requiring companies to use recyclable materials, the nation could reach its goal of 25% recycled material. The problem was that it was very expensive and difficult for Americans to reach this goal. Thus, recycling goals have been lowered, and fewer materials from trash are recycled. The rave over recycling began with the belief that our landfills were overflowing when in fact, they are not. Today, there are many regulations to make landfills safer and thinner plastics have taken up l...
