Summer in Montana is a time to celebrate--and to share with visitors.   We have many and nearly all are environmentally sensitive.  None visit us by accident or advertisement.  Most fish, hike, ride, or bike. 

The vast majority of our guests recycle. So do we. But not everything. That distinction poses the paradox.

Pacific Steel and Recycling provides us with a large steel container on skids.  It's a big heavy box, some four feet by six feet by 42" deep.  We fill it with all manner of metals; aluminum pipe and fittings from irrigation, steel fence posts and old fencing wire, scrap from our welding and repair, old motors, and other metallic scrap. 

When the container is full, I call Tanya at Pacific and she sends a truck to recover the full box and drop off an empty.  It takes a tractor to load and unload them.  These recycle bins are far too heavy for humans, even for the MSU football players who work with us in early summers. And these guys look as though they could bench press a Buick.  I trust this illustrates the serious nature of our recycling. 

The truck takes the container to the Pacific recycling yard where it is weighed.   I don’t know if they sort the aluminum from the iron and copper before or after weighing.  I do know that the ranch account will soon receive a small but welcome check from Pacific.

Some waste and scrap has a positive value.  This generates incentives for individuals to design and implement systems to collect it.  Our scrap has a positive value.  It’s enough to cover the costs of the container, the truck and driver, and our collecting it from around the ranch. Also, we feel good being this shade of Green.  That’s the way recycling should work. 

Some of our guests disagree.  Several have been critical of our failure to recycle plastic and glass.  While our metals go to Pacific, and we take large pieces of cardboard to the Gallatin Gateway recycling station, our plastic and glass go in the blue trash container that’s picked up each Monday and hauled to the Logan landfill. 

“Why don’t you recycle plastic and glass?”  This is a common question, one we hear several times each summer.   Our answer is simple-- it isn’t worth doing.  This scrap has a negative value. 

And this negativity isn't merely money.  Any serious analysis demonstrates that the environmental costs of recycling glass and plastic around Bozeman exceed the benefits of doing so.  It costs fuel, tires, maintenance, and wages to truck this stuff to Salt Lake City or Billings. 

There surely are places where recycling this stuff makes economic and ecological sense--but a Gallatin Gateway ranch isn't one of them.  Recycling plastic and glass on our place is wasteful. To do so may be best understood as a religious act of contrition. 

I understand one may want to indulge his or her conscience by being a recycling purist.  Such behavior may feel good, a gift to Gaia perhaps. Alas, given today's circumstances, recycling glass and plastic is slightly environmentally harmful. Essentially, the resources consumed in the process have negative environmental impacts that swamp the benefits.

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There is an outlying case that I find most interesting, using reclaimed timbers to build expensive homes.  These often have character and patina, for example, holes from old bolts or stains from earlier use.  Using these timbers and boards surely is recycling--but usually it is far more expensive than using new, manufactured material. In addition to being attractive, they send signals.  Displaying them in new construction sometimes resembles the status demonstrations of the potlatch.

I also love big, old beams and have the good fortune to have inexpensive ones.  These are happy reminders of an earlier life working in the woods. I owned a bit of timberland and when we needed lumber I'd haul a load of logs to the old Shadon mill in Gateway.  The mill would saw out the 2 x 8s, 6 x 10s or what ever else the project called for. 

The remaining logs would merely be squared off in odd dimensions 9" x 13" x 18' for example.  We stored them in a barn or shed to cure. When needed for a project, we'd have them cut to required dimensions.  I occasionally use these beams and boards around our ranch, in our pavilion for example (photo, left). It's a joy to work with such material, especially when knowing its historical context.

Here is the key: prices convey distilled information and incentives to act upon that information.  When they indicate that something is worth recycling, it usually makes environmental sense to do so.  When they do not, as is the case with glass and plastic, it rarely does.  Market signals are environmentally important.