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I watched an interesting episode of Penn & Tellers show "Bullshit" on recycling. They spent a lot of time talking about a paper (summed up here) called "The Eight Myths of Recycling " which explains how the recycling movement has a ton of bad ideas behind it. Some points I found very interesting:
The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests is more than 20 times the number of trees consumed by the world each year for wood and paper.
In virtually all cases, recycling materials requires more energy and produces more pollution than acquiring new materials and manufacturing with them.
There is exactly one material that is more profitable and environmentally friendly to recycle: aluminum. That's why a homeless guy will pick up aluminum cans and won't take plastic, newspapers, etc.
The recycling industry is supported by an estimated $8 billion in government subsidies.
The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests is more than 20 times the number of trees consumed by the world each year for wood and paper.
In virtually all cases, recycling materials requires more energy and produces more pollution than acquiring new materials and manufacturing with them.
There is exactly one material that is more profitable and environmentally friendly to recycle: aluminum. That's why a homeless guy will pick up aluminum cans and won't take plastic, newspapers, etc.
The recycling industry is supported by an estimated $8 billion in government subsidies.
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Pine warps quickly. It's too soft for support beams. It's too vibratory for decent wall beams, although it's used a LOT for that. Overall, it's a shitty wood for building things with... but it's dirt cheap, so it's used often (because it's not as scarce as old-growth goods).
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I'm not saying the Environmental Lobby's propaganda isn't just that... propaganda... but a trash and manufacture ecology has been studied NUMEROUS times and it's just a dead end.
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Environmentalists piss me off: they so often put the end above the means, you can find them lying and distorting and name-calling every day. And try to get them to worry about problems that aren't 'sexy' or that they can't blame big business for, ha! It's not fun if you can't demonize someone while you're at it, right? Nevermind actually getting anything helpful done.
Mainly I'm frustrated with them because I agree that so many of their goals are important, yet I see that their tactics of hostility, confrontation, and sensationalizing are so counter-productive. So you get an army of college kids wearing hemp and bitching about globalization on Earth Day, but no _results_.
I agree with you that the landfills are a problem, and absolutely that the US lumber industry and regulatory agencies need a lot of work.
The real question though, is whether the energy cost of recycling is worth it when you consider what will happen if you don't recycle. The answer, of course, is sometimes yes, and sometimes no. We get most of our energy from burning things in various ways: do we want to do more of that just so we can recycle? I think a more effective solution is to be able to burn a wider array of fuels in a cleaner manner. It would be nice if we could burn some of our waste, if we're going to be burning stuff anyway. This is where I'd like to see the R&D money go, and the good news is that there has been some progress. Now to get it implemented!
Anyway, I want to make it clear that I don't think you are one of those people, just taking the opportunity to bitch. :-)
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/combustion/fluidizedbed_overview.shtml