ABSTRACT
Recent reports in the press have brought to light a new kind of urban theft—the looting of newspapers from curbside recycling routes. Scavengers are pilfering up to a third of all collections in some cities and making a serious dent in municipal revenue by trading directly to recycling processors at prices that have skyrocketed in the last two years. Environmentalists have some reason to rejoice. (No one should shed a tear for haulage companies that have fiercely exploited recycling as a new “racket.”) Unlike the relatively healthy market for plastics and aluminum, paper—the true staple of the landfill monster—has taken a long time to rise to a level of profitability, but is now trading at well over $150 a ton. It remains to be seen whether a black market in recyclable trash will come to flourish, and what effect it will have on the precarious moral attachment of the public to recycling. For the time being, we might reflect on the meaning of garbage theft in the United States in the age of resource scarcity.
