Detroit Recycles! So what?

In many parts of Detroit, Michigan you can see them today: pretty blue containers which proudly announce, Detroit Recycles! They're very proud of themselves, those blue plastic cans. You can almost smell the conceit.

Yes, conceit. Detroit now has curbside recycling. The city has surely turned itself around. Now it's a part of the modern day feel good trend and underwrites the trash of those who want it so. That's what it is, trash, and nothing more.

It cannot be said enough that what is worth recycling gets recycled. Iron, copper, aluminum, they get recycled. In part, probably, we'll say, in the greatest part, because something tangible can be had from them: cash. The people with old scrap steel can get money for it from the private, unlike the people who get our tin cans and old plastic milk jugs. They only get money because their cause is underwritten by the government. Even then they need massive amount of plastic and glass to get by.

We will say it: we have no problems with incinerators and landfills. We see no verifiable spike in cancers due to burning our garbage and we do not see zombies walking stutter step out of landfills. Who ought to fear zombies anyway? They so slow that it boggles the mind how so many horror show victims fall prey to them. Still, from the cries of the no landfill folks you would think they were a real threat.

There would be little or no recycling without a government somewhere underwriting the process. There is further nothing wrong with individuals expecting something out of it which benefits them directly. If you want to recycle and can find a source for it outside the public sphere, go for it. We don't care. But we're just a bit tired of paying taxes for something simply not worth it. Recycling so far as we're concerned, Michigan, only takes money away from well, let's just say roads. If the state and the cities would spend less on feel good projects and more on what is really in the general interest, we think our roads would be quite fine.