Doug Bandow

Doug Bandow maintains in the following viewpoint that mandatory recycling programs are expensive and wasteful. Moreover, he contends that recycling is unnecessary because natural resources and sites to dispose of garbage are plentiful. Bandow argues that industry—which pays the greatest recycling costs—should pressure the federal government to eliminate mandatory recycling. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy research foundation.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. How does Bandow explain the moral fervor behind recycling?
2. According to the author, how much more does it cost New York City to collect recyclables than it would cost to bury them?
3. What recycling regulations have resulted from industry’s failure to confront the government about the wastefulness of recycling, as stated by Bandow"

The Earth. It’s hard not to...