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 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