Americans seems to have fallen under the spell over another fad trend. No longer do people see the lone garage bin by the curb of neighborhood households without seeing the recycling bin within arms reach. All over the United States, when it's time to take out the garbage, millions of people take out carefully sorted bundles of newspapers and cardboard, bags of aluminum and steel cans, and plastic containers--all destined for recycling. It has become a routine of our daily lifestyle, for most, to throw away empty soda bottles or cardboard cereal boxes directly into the recycling bin instead of the garbage pale. While it may seem to some that recycling is beneficial to the environment, it is actually true that recycling does exactly the opposite in cleansing the world of unwanted debris.
One cannot disregard that recycling has made incredible innovations in disposing and reusing recyclable materials all over the world. But, today’s recycling is not effective and efficient enough to be given “garbage” and to come out with recycled materials without negative effects to the environment or rise in cost to the general tax payers. The general public should be aware of the environmental effects of recycling, and to challenge the image, shared by the public, industry, media and government, of recycling as the “good guy”; in turn distracting people from the truth of environmental protection and reduced consumption. The health of the environment cannot be seen as a whole, but as in parts. What is good and beneficial in one aspect of the world may be harmful and insufficient in another aspect. Conservation of resources, energy, air and water pollution, and psychological aspects are all often competitive when dealing with the health chart of the American environment. In Atlantic County, New Jersey, for the first six months of 1995, “recycling brought in $2.45 million”, says