Doug Bandow

In the following viewpoint, Doug Bandow contends that most trash is not worth the time or money spent to recycle it. Recycling programs frequently lose money because it costs more to transform recycled materials into products than it does to produce the item using virgin materials, he asserts. Moreover, Bandow concludes, recycling trash and newspapers usually generates more pollution and consumes more energy than it saves. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. How does putting packaging on food products reduce waste, according to Tierney as cited by Bandow?
2. How big of a landfill would be necessary to contain all the expected trash generated by Americans over the next 1,000 years, in A. Clark Wiseman&rsquo...