“We just assume recycling is always better,” said J. Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center, an environmental consulting and policy organization. “But there’s a point at which you shouldn’t just recycle for recycling’s sake.”

By: Markham Heid at Washington Examiner

Experts: Cash wasted hitting dubious targets

Governments across the Washington region spend millions of dollars on recycling each year, but national recycling experts say a lot of that taxpayer cash is going to waste.

Maryland, Virginia and the District require residents and businesses to recycle, and localities pay millions of dollars to enforce those laws and hit recycling targets.

But some national recycling experts have begun calling for government restraint in trash recycling, which can be more costly and environmentally damaging than dumping.

“We just assume recycling is always better,” said J. Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center, an environmental consulting and policy organization. “But there’s a point at which you shouldn’t just recycle for recycling’s sake.”

Porter is a former policy administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency who helped set the federal government’s first nationwide recycling targets.

Montgomery County recycles 44.2 percent of its waste, with a “formal goal” to recycle 50 percent, said Eileen Kao, Montgomery’s recycling chief.

Similar targets are common in counties around the Washington area — buoyed by constituent demand and sheer achievability — although the EPA calls for 35 percent waste-recycling targets, which is near the current national rate of 33 percent.

FULL STORY

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