If it doesn't work stop doing it then

As we’ve long pointed out some recycling makes excellent sense - if you’re making a profit doing it - and much of the stuff we’re urged to do doesn’t. To add to this the method of recycling used is important too:

Car seat manufacturers urged to launch recycling schemes to stop 90% of them ending up in landfill

“Having to treat child car seats as waste is scandalous and is extremely frustrating for councils and parents."

We don’t in fact want to have recycling schemes for specific products. We most certainly don’t want specific manufacturers to be responsible for recycling specific products.

Car seat manufacturers are being urged to launch recycling schemes to stop almost all of them ending up in landfill.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has today issued a warning calling upon companies to be responsible for the waste created by their own products.

No, this isn’t the sensible way to do it at all.

The LGA, which represents councils in England and Wales, is calling on manufacturers to recycle their own child car seats,

Ludicrous. That would, for example, mean that any new manufacturer cannot launch into the UK market until they’ve built a hugely expensive recycling system. Economic argle bargle.

However Worcestershire-based car seat design firm, JMDA, has also implemented a successful project.

It collected 30 used seats and packed them into scrap cars, which were then put through a recycling firm's industrial shredder.

The seats' different elements were separated into recyclable materials: the metals were sold and reused; the plastics were converted into pellets for reuse in the moulding process, and the fabrics were incinerated to generate electricity.

However attempts to roll out this idea nationally have faced obstacles. It is understood that JMDA approached major brands and retailers for backing but the discussions have stalled due to difficulties over commercial viability.

The lack of commercial viability here means that the cost of the process is greater than the returns to the process. That is, it makes a loss, subtracts value. Or, the same statement, we must use more resources to recycle car seats than we gain by recycling car seats. Thus, if our goal is the saving of resources we must not recycle car seats.

Over and above that though is this idea that we must recycle this, then recycle that. This is not correct. We have a set of resources which are fed into the economic process. We have a set of products which come to the end of their useful lives. The products should be one large pile which is then picked over for the useful - ie, economic - resources that are then fed back into the production process.

The idea of a separate system for the recycling of car seats is as ludicrous as the idea that we have one paper recycling system for napkins and another for office memos. There are, after all, economies of scale to industrial processes.

That is, if we are to recycle then we want to have the one collection system, that one collection system then sorts into what is usable and what is not, the recycling does or does not take place. That is, exactly the opposite of this fragmented and repeated system that is being advocated. Fortunately, we have that one collection system, the one currently run by local councils. We should use it more.