I agree. It's a provocative argument, but the logic seems a bit slippery. For instance, Tierney writes: Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s stil

I agree. It's a provocative argument, but the logic seems a bit slippery. For instance, Tierney writes: Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. But he seems to deliberately confuse what is meant by "more expensive" (using carbon per airplane travel as a unit of measure, for example). Part of the reason why advocates support subsidizing recycling is that it addresses external costs that are not being captured in traditional waste management costs. Tierney brings up the question of environmental externalities later and points out, for example, "Worst of all is yard waste: it takes 20 tons of it to save a single ton of carbon dioxide." But does that 20 tons of yard waste not have economic value in excess of its value dumped in a landfill? And if it does, what does it matter if its saving only 1 ton of carbon dioxide? If it's saving 1 iota of carbon dioxide, it's still a net positive both economically and environmentally. My take away from this is that: yes, perhaps recycling is not as economical and environmentally beneficial as most people believe, and there may be merit in a simpler recycling regime. But recycling is far from wasteful as the articles seems to want to argue.