NPR Recycled

Among the various NPR offerings, This American Life has always been a little funky and offbeat, plus they have occasional pieces by Sarah Vowell. This afternoon, driving home from a group meeting at school, I caught the tail end of Ira Glass's report from a city garbage crew. In-between, he talked about landfills and recycling.

To hear NPR admit that there's plenty of landfill space almost ran me off the road. Glass then went on to look at specific recycling issues. It turns out that while the enviros still argue in favor of recyclying paper and plastic on practical ground, there are other, more marginal items such as glass, where almost no energy or resources are saved. Glass was incredulous to hear some hard-core enviros argue that we should recycle anyway, to prevent new landfills, for aesthetic reasons. I'm not insensible to aesthetic arguments, but the fact that a) that's what they're down to, and b) that NPR finds them less than convincing, are both heartening developments.