Ever since the inception of recycling, opponents have insisted that ordinary citizens would never take the time to sort recyclable items from their trash. But despite such dour predictions, household recycling has flourished. From 1988 to 1996, the number of municipal curbside recycling collection programs climbed from about 1,000 to 8,817, according to BioCycle magazine. Such programs now serve 51 percent of the population. Facilities for composting yard trimmings grew from about 700 to 3,260 over the same period. These efforts complement more than 9,000 recycling drop-off centers and tens of thousands of workplace collection programs. According to the EPA, the nation recycled or composted 27 percent of its municipal solid waste in 1995, up from 9.6 percent in 1980.

Depsite these trends, a number of think tanks, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute (both in Washington, D.C.), the Reason Foundation (in Santa Monica, Calif.), and the Waste Policy Center (in Leesburg, Va.), have jumped on the anti-recycling bandwagon. These organizations are funded in part by companies in the packaging, consumer products, and waste-management industries, who fear consumers' scrutiny of the environmental impacts of their products. The anti-recyclers maintain that government bureaucrats have imposed recycling on people against their will-conjuring up an image of Big Brother hiding behind every recycling bin. Yet several consumer researchers, such as the Rowland Company in New York, have found that recycling enjoys strong support because people believe it is good for the environment and conserves resources, not because of government edict.

Richard A. Denison is a senior scientist and John F. Ruston is an economic analyst with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. and New York City, respectively.

Alas, the debate over recycling rages on. The most prominent example was an article that appeared last year in the New York Times Magazine, titled "Recycling Is Garbage," whose author, John Tierney, relied primarily on information supplied by groups ideologically opposed to recycling. Here we address the myths he and other recycling opponents promote.