Recycle Recycling

In Time to Recycle Recycling (1), an article written in the Washington Times author, Iain Murray, pleas libertarian viewpoints on government funded recycling mandates. Murray, aligning himself with conservative views, feels that recycling only belongs effective and efficient if private industry finds this the case. Murray sneeringly targets environmentalists and claims they use their strong recycling beliefs as "a sacred cow" before getting the facts. He hammers on the process of recycling paper and how it is inefficient and is carbon positive. This lack of efficiency, Murray asserts, is lost from having separate recycling trucks and the de-ink process of actually recycling paper and making pulp. Throughout the article, the author makes a strong effort to derail environmental policy on government mandated recycling, which leads the reader to believe that environmentalists are in favor of these policies come to pass as foolish and trendy. I think the politically stimulating effort in this article poorly claims negative focus on the impact of the de-ink process of recycling paper, fiscal costs, and the pickup method of recyclables. All the way through the reader is given poor backup for his claim. He makes vague references like, "one environmental group lists" while giving examples of goals for environmental groups to argue against them. Murray has a history of getting rejected for some of his anti government mandates on recycling from opposing colleagues. An interesting fact is that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the author's employer, is partially subsidized by the Koch brothers company who moderately own some subsidiaries that are in the paper producing industry such as the bath tissue Angel Soft. Recalling in the article, Iain Murray specifically identifies Seventh Generation bath tissue, environmentally friendly bath tissue, as costly and inefficient. In an article, The Koch Brothers' Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy, seen on Mother Jones by Kate Sheppard, an independent online news organization, in the course of the years from 2005 to 2011 the Koch brothers spent $31.3 million on organizations that deny or downplay climate change. Specifically, they spent $700,000 of the 31.3 million was offered to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (2). In the article he directly identifies Seventh Generation bath tissue as costly and inefficient. These claimants of Libertarian private companies is driven to portray the environmentalists as destroying private industry and as trendy people who fall in love with the process and have no logic on business and fiscal policy.

Iain Murray writes about very controversial environmental topics that are usually divided in a political partisan fashion. With advancements in technology, science and even environmental research, I can see Iain Murray still is convinced that Global Warming does not exist. Tim Lambert from Scienceblogs.com (3) wrote an article titled Iain Murray, at it again, responds to his attack on claims of trending USSR weather station reporting temperature graphs on global warming due to the fall of Communism and resulting in false global warming trends according to his calculations. A blogger from Sceinceblogs.com, Louis Hissink (4), states "So what Murray "actually did" is quite inaccurate." Several other bloggers also rejoiced the fact that the reduction of weather stations had nothing to do with communism. In an off topic article about epidemiology, the study of health risks and patterns, Iain Murray discusses studies about health risks pertaining to tobacco and in the article he was padding a bogus principle about tobacco risk factors of only 2 and even citing that Epidemiologists agreed with him. Murray's article prompted a response from an Epidemiologist arguing against Murray's claim about the tobacco and even the claim that his industry agrees. Murray's writings seem to discuss the attachment of liberal leanings to environmentalism.

Readers of Time to Recycle Recycling will leave the article feeling as if environmentalists are trendy and foolish. Throughout the article Murray makes claim that environmentalists don't really understand recycling and really could be concerned less about other implications as long as they feel good about themselves and claiming virtue to "recycling is a sacred cow."(1) It is apparent that Murray makes many false accusations of these so called trendy ways. He makes note and claim that environmentally friendly offices that call themselves "paperless" have "green" recycling containers full of paper waiting to get recycled. I feel the point he is trying to state is that the recycling mandates are a joke and that companies do not take it serious. Offices have a "green", notice green, container out of habit just because. In the place of my employment, The United States Air Force, I've noticed a huge change since mandatory recycling laws in 2003 that started with this foolish wasteful paper. In the beginning paper was the only thing that was recycled and now we recycle everything in a single source "blue" recycling bin not "green." Since the single source recycling effort took off in 2008 we have adjusted garbage and recycling pick up frequencies to basically even out the cost. I find that recycling should be a trend everyone should jump on. However, this trend does not have to be associated with a hippy tree hugger or Al Gore as the reader would make you believe. Recycling, however, is usually associated with political ties. I have a libertarian friend, Tony, who refuses to recycle because he thinks the government, should not tell him what to do; he doesn't believe we can change the course of the earth, and recycling is for people who are wussies. Tony, like Murray, claims that they don't understand recycling and that recycling is a nonsense gobbledygook that costs a lot of money and uses more energy than recycling.

As municipalities collect recycled paper such as magazines they have to go through a process called de-ink, which is the removal of ink from paper like magazines. The process ultimately ends with the results of the process called sludge. Many conservative viewpoints like Murray's view