[sbuttgereit]

Hear, hear!

I once read a study from a major state university, commissioned by the state government, that argued that it was more economic to recycle plastic bottles than to landfill them.

BUT... when you dug into the details of the report (something the journalists and general public were unlikely to do), you found the calculations didn't correct for taxation (landfills) and subsidies (recyclers) as regulatory distortion. The report simply treated them as natural economic components; itemized, yes, but not removed from the conclusion.

When I saw that I have to admit I became rather more cynical about the intersection of politics and academics. It just wasn't right.

[Asbostos]

Hilariously, by ignoring such subsidies, they're effectively "discovering" something every street cleaner in some countries already knows - you get paid for collecting plastic bottles and you don't get paid for leaving them in the rubbish bin!