Here is Mike Munger in the latest EconTalk episode, talking about his EconLib essay on recycling. Mike argues that it’s easy to tell garbage from a resource. A resource has a positive value–someone is willing to pay you to take it off your hands. Garbage has a negative value–you have to pay someone to take it off your hands. With a few caveats, it pretty much sums up the problem and virtue of recycling. Some stuff is worth recycling. Some stuff isn’t. In the podcast, we talk about why we feel virtuous recycling stuff that is garbage. But not all garbage produces this warm glow. And Mike has lots of interesting things to say about some of the stranger behaviors in the world of recycling.
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