It was that article, but not specifically the bit about landfill. He at least attempts to back his opinion up on that in some way, though frankly that seems suspiciously contrived in a similar manner to the "scientists used to argue the earth is cooling," malarkey. But it was the casual way in passing that he praised and linked to the two articles by John Tierney as if they were the last word on the economic and environmental benefits of recycling that staggered me.

The first line of the first article says "recycling could be America's most wasteful activity." Remember this is the source he's using to bust a myth and poke fun at people who believed it as being ridiculous.

The other is introduced with this spectacularly factually incorrect summary by SlateStarCodex:

"Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on".

I don't always agree with what he says but I've always thought he'd done some research before coming to a conclusion. This revealed a blind spot where he was so sure of something that he could mention this in the middle of an article about crazy things people believe about the environment and not even notice the dissonance.

It doesn't help that the articles themselves are almost the antithesis of what I like about slate star codec ("smug, rich people like doing it" and "what we teach preschoolers about this isn't totally correct" are not what I consider a solid economic argument against something).

This totally shattered the SlateStarCodex brand for me, just as if he'd casually linked to a flat earth believer or climate change denier as if everyone knew what they were saying was true.(He had actually linked to climate change deniers in the same piece but I had assumed at that point he was being ironic).

edit: just in case anyone is wandering in from whatever "gray tribe" bubble SlateStarCodex picked up this nonsense from, here's an overview of the recycling conspiracy's talking points. I know it looks like a through review of the academic literature analysing the topic but that's just what they want you to think:

http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Environmental_benefi...

"This report reinforces the key conclusion of the first report that recycling of paper/cardboard, plastics and
biopolymers for most indicators assessed provides more environmental benefits than other waste management
options. For wood and textiles, more studies are needed to be able to make firmer conclusions regarding the
environmental benefits of recycling for these materials.

It is disappointing to note that there are very few LCAs which include an assessment of more innovative
technologies such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion. This probably reflects the requirement for a
lot of process data to model a particular option, which can be sparse in the case of the newer technologies.
However, the results of the few selected studies that included anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis are very
encouraging.

There needs to be a stronger evidence base on certain materials (textiles, biopolymers and wood) and the more
innovative EfW technologies. LCA studies need to focus on a larger set of indicators rather than only on climate
change potential or energy demand. There are also LCA methodological issues that need clarification, such as the
treatment of biogenic carbon and the time period considered for landfill impacts; greater clarity on these matters
will help in the comparison of waste management options."