Recycling Is Essential - Not Inefficient

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In “Time to Recycle Recycling?” Ian Murray expresses skepticism at the widely popular and revered environmental movement, claiming that the way recycling is currently being conducted is inefficient, ineffective, and is doing more harm to the environment than good. Ian Murray is the Director of Projects and Senior Fellow in Energy, Science and Technology at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is also a conservative media commentator on science and global warming. In his article Murray attacks the efficiency of recycling, insisting that the actual process of recycling produces more carbon emissions than the initial “waste” of virgin resources. Murray also states that the convenient curbside pick-up for recycling is counterproductive due to the air emissions produced by the trucks, and the energy, labor, and water expended in the actual recycling process. He says such consequences are counterproductive to the goals of recycling and contradict environmentalist claims and intentions. Murray further claims that re-recycling time after time produces ineffective and weakened products, yet expends the same energy and carbon emission that it would take for initial production. Murray offers plenty of snarky commentary in his editorial but no solutions or proposals to the issues he raises, and seems particularly concerned with issues of consumerism and capitalism rather than conservation and environmentalism. We need to re-shift our focus and return to the true intentions of the environmental movement, and to seek solutions. Murray weakens his argument with his bias and personal agenda, and his snarky, sarcastic, and patronizing tone is extremely off putting to readers, especially those who endorse the environmental movement. Murray’s bias as a “conservative commentator on global warming” immediately stereotypes him as hostile to the green movement and to conservation,

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