The whole concept of recycling only has any meaning as a governmentally or socially ordained activity (proceeding from environmentalist/statist premises). In fact, in a free society one wouldn’t distinguish recycling from other kinds of for-profit exchanges. That is, just as today when you re-sell your car or your house, you don’t think of it as “recycling”, so too in a free market you wouldn’t distinguish returning bottles or newsprint for credit from other types of trade — provided that these actions were taken because it was in your own economic interest, not because the government was compelling or haranguing you in to doing so.
In other words, in a truly free society the issue of recycling would disappear because deciding whether it is best to re-use an item represents just another allocation of resources that the free market routinely (and silently) takes care of in its normal course.
So, just as when you buy a jug of milk, it’s not necessary for you to consider whether the farmer is using each square foot of his farm most efficiently in feeding and raising the cows, nor whether the route that the dairy collection truck uses to pick up the milk follows the shortest path, nor whether the refrigeration is at the most efficient temperature to minimize spoilage yet not waste energy, nor whether your local store is using the minimum amount of advertising necessary to make you aware that they have the product and that it’s reasonably priced, nor to the millions of other similar issues and decisions that go into that simple purchase of milk
