Curley celebrates the downfall of recycling

Stressing the importance of recycling to the point of brainwashing might all be for naught, and John Curley couldn’t be more pleased.

Now, when someone yells at the KIRO Radio show host for not washing out a can before placing it in the recycling, he can confidently tell them it isn’t going to happen.

“If it costs more money than it saves, stop doing it folks,” he exclaimed.

According to an opinion column by John Tierney in the New York Times, much of the recycling being done in the United States is wasteful. Except for a few basic items, the energy and resources used is just not worth it. Glass, for example, is a “big mistake,” because it shatters and ruins machinery.

Tierney says the country has a “weird obsession” with recycling. Most garbage being tossed out is just that: garbage.

That means no more waiting for people to figure out which can to throw trash in at Whole Foods. No more people asking, “Are you really not going to recycle that?”

KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney admits recycling enthusiasts have oversold their position. Recycling, he says, is not cost-effective.

Even rinsing cans and bottles out before recycling is a waste of resources, according to Tierney. The energy it takes to pump the water into the sink is worse for the environment than tossing a can of tuna without rinsing it.

Here’s how much difference recycling makes, per Tierney’s column: Someone would have to recycle 40,000 plastic bottles to offset the impact of one person’s round-trip flight from New York to London and back.

But maybe it’s just the right thing to do? That doesn’t hold up in this country, Curley says. There’s plenty of landfill space.

Maybe the City of Seattle can completely forget about its idea of fining people for having too much recyclable and compostable material in their trash.