When I was a kid, in the early seventies, a lot of people were nay-saying the future of industrialism, and advocating a new concept- recycling.  The idea was that you could do several good things at once:

You could reduce the embarrassing amount of material being piled up and buried in garbage dumps (now aka landfills) You could lower our dependence on raw materials for metals, plastics, and paper, and, most attractively... YOU COULD SAVE MONEY.  It's cheaper to remelt steel than to produce it anew, so recycled steel would be a lower-cost commodity than 'new' steel. Likewise with paper- mashing up old newspapers is cheaper than cutting down trees,so recycled products, in addition to being morally satisfying, are cheaper.

RIGHT?

Well, not these days, kids. Now that recycling is a mainstream, politically-correct policy, cultural demand is driving the prices of recycled materials skyward.  At the corporate grocery-store right down the street, recycled-paper products are displayed on their own end-caps, like premium brands.  And they cost about half again what the premium brands cost.  They have nice names like 'one planet' or some shit, I don't know, and they rob us fucking blind, charging more for a product that is cheaper to produce. Is it that the hippie-activists of yore are now running recycling plants, selling out, and cashing in?  Or are we so stupid that we just buy whatever's cool today?  I think it's the latter. It's infuriating and embarrassing at the same time.  BOYCOTT RECYCLED PRODUCTS!

My personal recycling note- even though my city has a recycling program, I rinse my beer bottles and bag 'em up neatly next to the trash in the alley.  Homeless people pick them up, and turn them in, two-for-a-nickel.  Everybody's happy, and a good weekend at my place can feed a homeless guy for several days.

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