"

 

 Steel 

Added a section on steel, as it seemed (oddly to me as the worlds most recycled material) not to get a mention at all.
Andy 22/8

 criticisms is US-centric 

A lot of the points in the criticisms section is very US centric, especially regarding cost of landfills being cheap in the US.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.51.104  04:24, August 29, 2007 (UTC) 

 Comment 

This article, in general, is very slanted as fore mentionedan objective, non philosophical read should be the goal of this article. Encyclopedias are supposed to be objective and present hard facts. This article needs to show more hard facts rather than soft facts, and have a more neutral point of view.the preceding comment added by 199.216.216.1, 11:29, 5 March 2008

 The 'recycling bin' image? 

The image on the right certainly doesn't look like a bin at park in northern California.  Would anybody replace the image with the correct one, or remove it from the article?

 Useful Links for Recycled Lumber   Nina 

http://www.yankinsreclaimedwood.com/

 Diminishing returns from recycling? 

I propose that Steven Landsburg's arguments be either removed or shown to be refuted by the below logic. I personally think that the argument below, no matter how logical, would be too large to include. Similarly, Landsburg's arguments are provably illogical, and should not be included.

""Economist Steven Landsburg has claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish the forests they own, large demands for paper lead to large forests. Conversely, reduced demand for paper leads to fewer ""farmed"" forests.[34] Similar arguments were expressed in a 1995 article for The Free Market.[35]""

If the variable of incentive to plant new trees is taken to be proportionate to the number of trees required for paper, as this scenario suggests, then the only way that the scenario is true is if it not only assumes that the paper companies are planting fewer trees than they cut, but that more trees are cut down than exist. 

The simplest refutation of the scenario is the model where lumber companies plant as many trees as they cut down. In this case, the number of trees not cut down, due to less paper being required, is immaterial, as the lumber companies would simply plant a number equal to what had been cut. In addition, more old trees would stand.

However, let us pursue the other, and in my opinion more likely, scenario. Companies cut down more trees than they plant. For the sake of simplicity, consider this hypothetical starting state. Forestry companies cut down half existing trees, and replant half of the difference between what stood and and what has been felled, or 25%, for a total of 75% of the original number, if not the original quality, the new trees being young growth. Let us say recycled paper amounts to one half of the trees cut, 12.5%, which would bring the total in terms of usable resource to 87.5%. If it were not added, the next cycle would see the 75% cut, literally, in half, for 37.5%; half is replanted, for a total of 56.25%. If it were added, the 87.5% would be halved to 43.75%, and the company replanting half of that would make a total of 65.625%, almost 10% more trees.

It does not matter whether the companies plant as many as were cut, if they are induced by the remaining forest amount, or a percentage, or induced by the paper supply, or a percentage; it always ends up with less forest cut down. If Landsburg is a notable economist, it speaks ill of economists; he has not exhibited logical reasoning or the capacity o