Save the cows, eat more beef

The other day I threw away a stack of paper. Someone near by suggested I recycle it. "No thanks, I don't recycle" was my reply. She was shocked others in the room seemed to be panicking, perhaps they were looking for a child so they could cover their ears. A few people in the room nervously laughed and asked if I was kidding. No one could believe that I would not recycle. But it is true I don't (at least I don't recycle paper). Ever since captain planet swooped down and saved the universe our country has been on the recycling ban wagon. Anyone who isn't on said bandwagon, by nature must be evil and therefore should be shunned.

So before you commence your shunning of me for the next 7 years. Let me explain why I don't recycle, and if you are a tree hugging hippie then you shouldn't either.

Imagine for a minute it is possible to recycle cows or meat (yeah, I know it's disgusting, but just imagine). You would be able to eat a steak and then by recycling you could get 2/3 of the steak back to make another stake. Now assuming everyone doesn't instantly loose their appetite this would seem like a victory for the cows after the steak had been recycled until there was nothing left you would get 3 steaks for every original steak. That means you would be "saving" the life of 2 cows for every cow killed. But, in reality we would be killing off the cows. Cattle ranchers would quickly cut the size of their ranches as the demand for cows would decrease. In fact the cow population would decrease by 2/3.

The same argument follows for trees if we are able to reduce the amount of trees we cut down by 2/3 then it won't be long before we have 2/3 fewer trees. Paper companies will have less incentive to replace cut down trees because the demand for new trees will decrease. By not recycling you are actually increasing the demand for trees so trees become more valuable and therefore more people will want to grow trees. If you want to save the trees start throwing that paper in the garbage.

Next time you get that warm fuzzy feeling after saving a stack full of paper from the evil garbage can just keep in mind that you are NOT saving any tree, the only thing your helping is your environmentalist ego.