Forced Recycling Is A Scam

(This is a video presentation of the following analysis)

I wanted to make this report on the problems of the bottle deposit program but I first must make this fact clear:  In Connecticut, and many other places that have this program, you do not earn five cents for returning a can, bottle, or glass, you REDEEM five cents.  This means that you, or whoever bought the drink, had to pay an extra five cents for each bottle at the register, at the time of purchase, and only when you bring back your bottle do you get that five cents back.  It seems as if this is something that shouldn't have to be explained but you would be surprised at how many people still do not understand how this works.

Moving on, earlier this year there were reports that the state of Connecticut wanted to raise the bottle deposit up from five cents to ten cents.  Also this year in relation to the bottle deposit, a bill was introduced in the state legislature that would drop the deposit of five cents and replace it with a non redeemable tax of four cents, as well as a bill that would require beverage distributors to pay a higher handling fee to bottle redemption centers.  Instead of going over the intricacies of these proposals, I think it would be much better to simply explain how the bottle deposit program is just another revenue generating scam by the state.

First it needs to be understood that empty cans, plastic, and glass bottles don't really have any value.  If it was cheaper to create new bottles out of recycled bottles than it was to create them from scratch, bottle manufacturers would be paying you for the empty bottles.  In other words, if you could actually make something of value out of your used bottles, at a profit, the state wouldn't need to force you to recycle, there would be a market for them, people would be offering you money for your empty bottles.  As an example of this, the state doesn't need to force people to recycle copper, or other forms of scrap metal because the cost of recycling these things is currently cheaper than the cost of manufacturing them from scratch.  Because of this people will come and take the metal from a garbage pile on your sidewalk for free, or go into your house uninvited to steal your copper pipes.

The time and money that it takes to collect recycled bottles, truck them to a location, sort them, clean them, and actually begin the recycling process is highly inefficient and cannot be done at a cost that would make this process profitable.  A representative from the Coca Cola Company testifying against one of the proposed bottle bills briefly describes the problem his company faces:

"Though our industry sells tens of millions of dollars in bottle bill scrap from Connecticut, the revenue does not come close to balancing the inherent expense our industry faces in fuel, energy and handling fees … nor does it compensate for the sub-optimization of our delivery routes and warehouse space, as a lot of time and space is required to handle containers for processing."

Of course this is all done under the guise of protecting the environment but when you factor in the fossil fuel used to move these recyclables around, the energy used at these recycle facilities, the water used to clean the empty bottles, and other aspects of the process, it could leave a person questioning whether this is really helping the environment at all.  And while many environmentalists support these forced recycling projects and any project that has the stated goal to conserve resources, they seem to neglect the most important resource of all, the one that we can't make more of; time.  Every moment of the process, from you bringing your bottles to the redemption center to the recycled plastic being turned into something is time lost that could have been used to do something more productive or preferential.


Not only is all of this forced recycling very time consuming, but because it increases the cost of our products, we have to work more to be able to afford the increase in cost, wasting more of our time.

There are also unintended crime-influencing consequences of these forced recycling policies.  One government program, food stamps, gives away free credit for groceries, but that clashes with this bottle deposit government program which gives a person back actual cash for the bottled items that they bought at the grocery store.  This causes some food stamp recipients to engage in water dumping, which is when a person buys water bottles with food stamps and then promptly dumps out the water to redeem the five cent deposit.

Another scheme created as a result of bottle deposit laws is people crossing state lines with truckloads of bottles to get a higher redemption value.  In a case that happened this month, two men were arrested after allegedly smuggling recyclables worth an estimated $20,000 into California from Arizona.  If Connecticut were to pass a ten cent bottle deposit law, what would stop people in surrounding states that have a lower deposit value, like Massachusetts, from crossing the border and depositing their bottles here? Surely more policing would be needed, or added regulations on manufacturers to ensure origin of purchase, or some other governmental policy that would burden true progress and lead to an eventual lowering of our standard of living.

So if it hurts the consumers, hurts the producers, creates crime, and has questionable benefits to the environment, why is this policy in place?  You'll be shocked to learn that it is a massive revenue generating scheme by the state.  For all of the bottles that don't get redeemed, whether thrown in a garbage or recycling bin, the state keeps the leftover cash.  Money accumulated from the unredeemed containers, called escheats, totals $31 million a year in Connecticut.  If the state raises the deposit to ten cents they expect to extract another $12 million annually.

Aside from forced recycling being a massive government revenue generating scheme there does appear to be a more sinister end goal of these programs.  Regular viewers and readers of my site are already aware how the main environmental groups today are pushing an agenda of mass surveillance through smart technology, the reduction of the standard of living in industrialized nations, and a highly regulated collectivist society, all done under the guise of saving the environment.

If these forced recycling policies are allowed to continue to expand we can see a future where we are made to recycle everything and strict policing tactics would have to be enacted to ensure our compliance.  Examples of extreme tactics are already taking place throughout the world.  In some places in England you can get fined for leaving your trash bin slightly open.  The New York Times explained the situation in various places throughout England:

"Many now collect trash every other week, instead of every week. They restrict households to a limited amount of garbage, and refuse to pick up more. They require that garbage be put out only at strict times, reject whole boxes of recyclables that contain the odd nonrecyclable item and employ enforcement officers who issue warnings and impose fines for failure to comply."

This is happening across Europe as the European Union threatens to levy massive fines on nations that don't comply with their strict recycling regulations. Some European nations even deploy garbage bins that are fitted with microchips, enabling local councils to record the weight or volume of garbage per household.

In America, as I exhaustively document, countless organizations that purport themselves to be fighting for the environment are being funded by the various Rockefeller foundations.  These organizations are helping to bring about the ultimate global plan for the world as envisioned by the world's elite, as discussed by the recently deceased David Rockefeller in his autobiography Memiors.

Therefore I couldn't let the opportunity pass to document another Rockefeller funded connection in relation to local politics, and in this case, regarding forced recycling.  There was a news conference held on April 13 by various environmental groups around the state to give their support to the proposal which would require beverage companies to pay a higher handling fee to bottle redemption centers.  One of the women speaking, Kate Cohen, was representing an organization called ConnPIRG, or the Connecticut Public Research Interest Group.  ConnPIRG describe themselves as a "nonprofit, non-partisan watchdog group working on behalf of consumers, the environment, and good government in Connecticut."  ConnPIRG has received funding in the past from the Rockefeller Foundation as well as from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to produce various studies which, shouldn't surprise anyone, concluded global warming caused by human activity is a serious threat to Connecticut and a solution to the problem involves implementing policies that would increase the cost of owning a private motor vehicle, like congestion pricing.

Related Reports:

• Who Wants Toll Roads In Connecticut? Answer: The Rockefellers - March 27, 2017 (link)
• The Problems with Connecticut Climate Change Policy - Part 7: Smart Meters/Smart Grid - January 31, 2017 (link)
• The Problems With Connecticut Climate Change Policy - Part 6: They Want Us Poor - December 29, 2016 (link)
• The Problems with Connecticut Climate Change Policy - Part 3: The War on Cars - November 9, 2015 (link)
• Toll Roads, Gas Tax Increase, and Other Schemes That Connecticut Is Mulling Over To Force You Onto Public Transportation - January 29, 2015 (link)