When Folk Sayings Are Ignored; D. McInnis

346 When Folk Sayings Are Ignored by Daniel F: McInnis "y.oucan'tmakeasilkPu. rseout ofasow's ear" was one of my grandmother's favorite sayings. Grandma, however, had never seen the likes of modern chemistry. Increasingly,entrepreneurs are able to transform anythinginto somethingelse. Out of oil, we make nylonsand perfume,plasticdishesand fertilizers. Our trees become buildingsor methyl alcoholor newspapers.Evengarbagecantake on newlife,as paper,glass,and metalsare reused. Nonetheless,Grandma had a point.Ifyouwant to makesilkpurses,it'sa lot easierifyoustart with silk. Proponentsof government-mandatedrecycling have forgotten this simpleinsight.Recyclinghas become a battle cry for the environmentalmove ment,a callto armsthat can often makelittleeco nomicor environmentalsense. Your daily newspaper is a perfect example. Accordingto the EnvironmentalProtectionAgen cy (EPA),newsprintmakesup almost20percentof allgarbage,paperas awhole,40 percent.Currently, onlyone-thirdofallnewspapersarereused,leaving ninemilliontonsofwastepapera year.A mountain ofgarbage,screamtheenvironmentalists.Needless destructionof trees, they quicklyadd. Legislators are listening.Californiawill require a 25 percent recycled-fibercontent in newspapersby next year andConnecticut20percentby 1993.Some16other Daniel F. McInnis is an environmental policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-market public interest group.

statesare consideringsimilarlegislation.NewYork is supposedto be ableto recyclea quarter of all its trash by mid-1994. But what happens when states mandate recy cling?The New York CitySanitationDepartment saysit is meetingthe collectiongoalsmandatedby law, but may have to end up dumpingthe sorted waste into the Fresh Kills landfill.Moreover,the city now pays paper collectors $25 a ton to haul away newsprint. The market simply collapsed when the supplyof waste paper far exceededthe limiteddemandfor moreexpensiveand oftenlow er qualityrecycledpaper. Washington, D.C., faced a similar problem when it began mandating paper recycling. The solution:instead of dumpingpaper into a landfill as it had in the past, the waste is now stored in a warehouse. In both cases,governmentinterventionhad an unintended result. Less paper was recycled because markets were glutted, and it became unprofitable for anyone to collect and recycle trash.

The DiaperDebate The environmentalists'recYcle-at-all-costscam paignnot onlyis drivingpeopleout ofthe recycling business,but it often has dubiousbenefitsfor the environment as well. This is best seen in the dis posable versuscloth diaper debate. When finally discarded,cloth diapers in sum take up consider347 To choosebetweendisposableand cloth diapersis to pick betweenless spacein landfillsandgreater airand waterpollution.There is no clearwinneror loser. ably less space in landfills than disposables, but along the way they use twice as much energy, cause four times the water pollution, and create twice the amount of air pollution according to a "cradle-to grave" analysis by Franklin Associates, a leading supplier of data to the EPA. These environmental costs are largely hidden since they don't end up in the form of a pile of soiled diapers. Instead they are transformed into the emissions of trucks deliv ering and picking up diapers, the sewage from washing machines, and the depleted soil from the intensively cultivated cotton crop.

Moreover, new mothers have been made to feel needlessly guilty when they use disposable diapers for their children. Some environmentalists seem less than sympathetic. "Parents who simply prefer the co~venience of disposables should feel guilty," says Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council. While crusading against convenience may seem noble, the actual environmental costs don't bear the critics out. To choose between disposable and cloth diapers is to pick between less space in land fills and greater air and water pollution. There is no clear winner or loser. One hundred percent recycling almost never makes economic sense-or environmental for that matter-when the extremely high energy needs are factored in. Unfortunately, many environmen tal activists won't settle for less. Some recycling, of course, does make sense. After all, it's cheaper to wash your clothes than throw them away and buy new ones. This simple economic test should be applied to anything that we may consider recycling, especially since the price tag is a strong indicator of environmental effects. Products that use fewer resources through out their existence generally have less impact on the environment. Absent cost-distorting govern ment subsidies and regulations, prices tell con sumers which product is environmentally superior.

Now that's a bargain even my grandmother would love. After all, another of her favorite sayings was that a penny saved is a penny earned. D 348 Corporate Social Responsibility: A Dialogue by T. Franklin Harris, Jr. I magine if you will that ancient Greece's two greatest philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, are alive today and debating philosophical sub jects much as they did in Plato's Academy. The subject at hand is the moral responsibility of cor porations to the whole of society. Plato:The debate over the social responsibilities of corporations is perhaps the most crucial, and certainly one of the hottest in the field of business ethics. Corporations, as the largest and most visi ble members of the business community, stand at the center of any discussion of the role of business in society. Of course, as in any debate, there are different views; thus, there is some contention as to what that social responsibility actually is.