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Dr. Alan Hershkowitz, director of the National Resources Defense Council, thinks it is. "Everything costs money," he cautions, "including incinerators and landfills." The difference, he explains, is that recycling is designed to ease the impact we have on our environments and alleviate the burden our waste has on our communities. "So yes," Hershkowitz says, "it is worth it."

Since tax money is at the root of any waste solution, the question remains: How can we use the money to deal with our waste most effectively, decrease risks to human health, and foster a healthy environment to live in? It seems that, compared to landfilling, recycling is the economic and environmental favorite by a long shot.

Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail a year - 44% is never opened. Every day, U.S. businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times. • In 1960, Americans disposed of 2.7 pounds of waste per person per day. By 1990, the number had risen to 4.3 pounds per person per day. • Every ton of paper recycled saves approximately 17 trees.

CLOSING THE LOOP ON LANDFILLS

If done right, landfills can be a viable disposal option. If done wrong, they can be an environmental and economic disaster.

The main problem with landfills is that they are complicated structures that are difficult to maintain. Of particular concern is the wastewater created inside landfills as leachate. In order to keep the toxic material from leaking into the local drinking water, these football stadium-sized holes require a combination of liners made from clay, high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic or composite membranes. But according to the Environmental Research Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, clay will dry and crack over time, HDPE will degrade with household chemicals, and composite liners made from clay and plastic will leak somewhere between 0.2 and 10 gallons a day after ten years. Even with complex leachate collection plumbing built into landfills, none of these solutions is 100% foolproof (collection pipes tend to clog and back up).

"The EPA technicians that currently oversee landfill design and regulation have said that their own engineering standards would not last," warns Will Ferretti, executive director of the National Recycling Coalition. "They're saying that they could break down in a 30-year time frame. It's clearly a concern and we have asked the EPA to revisit their regulations in that light."

To be fair, however, recycling doesn't clear every environmental hurdle either. Products remade from recycled waste such as paper and plastic go through a chemical process. In the case of newsprint, there are a dozen or so supposedly nonhazardous chemicals used in the remanufacturing process, including a water/hydrogen peroxide solution to remove ink from the used paper. Paper recycling also uses thousands of gallons of water.

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