I was both disappointed and appalled to read Laura Ellermeyer’s column in Tuesday’s edition entitled, “Recycling proves wasteful in long term.” Leaving aside for the moment the fact that a first-year finance student such as Laura is entitled to hold whatever opinion she wants concerning recycling, I find it inexcusable that the Alligator would print such a socially and environmentally irresponsible article. First, it is a fact that recycling our cans, bottles, plastics and paper allows us to reuse our planet’s scarce resources over and over, thereby reducing the impact caused by the extraction of mineral, forest or petroleum products. Does Ellermeyer know that recycling aluminum cans saves 95 percent of the energy used to produce those cans from scratch? That means you can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one can of new material. Energy savings from recycling cans in 1993 alone were enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years. It also takes water — a lot of water — to process raw aluminum into cans. Why should we willfully waste resources when we can easily conserve them?
Second, demand for recycled materials and their consumer products have increased as people realized the importance of recycling. Products made from recycled materials are commercially available in many retail outlets. Plastic bottles may be turned into jacket-filler fibers, shopping bags, plastic lumber for park benches and even speed bumps. More than 400 paper mills in the United States use at least some recovered materials in their manufacturing processes, and more than 200 of those mills use recovered fiber exclusively.
Third, Ellermeyer proposes that because recycling may in some cases cost more money than land disposal, that it is a waste of money. Ignoring her wrongful assertion that landfill space is plentiful (would she like a landfill in her home city or county?), nothing could be more short-sighted or ill-spirited than this sort of penny-wise and pound foolish thinking. Recycling conserves resources, saves energy, helps keep greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and helps us mitigate our impacts upon our only home, the planet Earth. If it costs 6 percent more to recycle than to landfill per Ellermeyer’s example, so be it. It is a worthwhile enterprise and I support it and encourage other readers to as well. It is just one of the everyday things that everyone can do to help our environment.
Editor's note: This letter refers to this column.
