The worst recycling is better than the best mining (and forestry).
I've been both convinced and constantly aware of this since I was a teenager reading Lester Brown's State of the World, searching for statistics for high school debate.
Sure, I moved from Arkansas where MSW cost $16 a yard (could take a year) to dispose and came to Boston where waste was $65 per ton before I got an MBA. I always explain the move into "waste management" as a strategy to gain the advantage lost to raw material subsidies like the General Mining Act of 1872 and the defense budget focused on the Persian Gulf.
But my biggest gripe today is that the environmental movement is completely focused on waste and completely ignored major events in raw material recapture policy. Last year, on the 150th anniversary of the General Mining Act of 1872, the Biden Administration Interior Department (headed by Native American Secretary Deb Haaland of the Pueblo de Laguna) made a major effort to reform the 1872 subsidy. I sponsored a MassRecycle Podcast on it to interview the new Earthworks Action Director Aaron Mintzes.
