Arguably it would cost more, except in the case of metals/aluminum. My understanding is that everything else costs more to recycle than to throw away.

Now that doesn’t make it right to throw it away – there are plenty of other costs, such as passing on all this crap to the next generation – but it does mean that this infographic is a bit dishonest, in that by highlighting dollar figures, it implies that doing something different would cost less.

The reality is that this is simply the law of large numbers – there are over 300 million people in this country, so that at $10.5 billion/year, means that it costs a whopping $35 per person per year to dispose of our trash. Actually, that sounds surprisingly not bad.

The points about per capita production being 37% below average in the “Trashiest City”, and total production being in the bottom half of states in one of the least populated states still stand.

It’s probably 11,000 tons/day from NYC, which would make it only 0.502 tons/person/year, which is still well below the national average. It’s been shown several times that urban dwellers have a smaller environmental footprint per capita than suburban/rural residents.

Also makes it sound silly to call NY the biggest trash producing city in the country. Maybe that has something to do with it being the biggest city in the country (2x population of LA), ya think?? Also, duh Alaska ranks in the bottom 50% of trash producing states, who the hell lives in Alaska? No offence to residents of Alaska.

http://bradley.chattablogs.com/archives/2008/08/recycling-myth.html

Also, recycling facilities are just as much of a contributor to pollution from the dangerous chemicals given off from the energy it takes to run them as any other plant.

Finally, more and more landfills are being equipped with the ability to create, rather than use, energy! Natural gas is being used to power households and is a good, clean source of energy.

The money is not “lost” (unlike aluminium) since the 5 cents was a deposit and is going to be spent by the local government.