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Comment by mcknz | Hacker News Reader

The Foundation for Economic Education is listed as a partner organization of the Charles Koch Institute.

The tone of it ("recycling always sucked but now we're finally over it") is definitely different than what you'd read in a liberal paper, but the general facts of it are not much in dispute. I'm all about saving the environment, but recycling programs for years have been more about feeling green than being green.

Hopefully we don't all decide to keep going the way we have, except throw more in the dump, and instead focus more on the reduce/reuse/repair side of things and find ways to make the economics line up with the desired outcomes.

I disagree. While some of the statements in the article are factual, the conclusions are not supported by those facts.

They took the wrong conclusion from the PopSci article, and have few other outside sources that don't link from sister sites.

If people don't read the sources cited, they'll come away with the wrong conclusion.

Case in point, PopSci argued economically valuable materials are heading to the dump instead of being used in other ways, not that recycling isn't economically viable.

That's not an argument

Correct. It simply provides context. The article should be judged on its own merits, but it's important to know when a given source leans one way or another. Especially when the organization uses ostensibly general/objective words in its name (see: Center for Immigration Studies).

That is not a counter-argument.

That's tautological. You can't make a counter-argument to a non-argument.

You're on the internet, this is kind of our specialty.

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