Jay, I'd like to know where you heard that.
According to
this site, recycling glass takes less energy than producing it from scratch. The
accompanying page cites other good reasons to recycle glass, not the least of which is that recycling (of any material) cuts down on waste disposal costs.
Plastic is almost cheaper than dirt, but it's the same as glass in that it's cheaper (energy-wise) to melt down and reuse existing, refined plastic than it is to create it from scratch. The trouble with plastic is that it doesn't recycle nearly as well as glass. Once a plastic is formulated for a particular purpose, it can't just be thrown into a large vat, melted, and used for a different purpose. You know how you can't unscramble an egg? Well, with plastics, you can't re-scramble a previously unscrambled egg. Weird, huh? But with new techniques, it can be done with enough economy to beat producing it from scratch. Plus, recycled plastic finds it way into products other than milk jugs and water bottles. Most significantly, It's used extensively in lumber products, reducing our demand for forested materials.
Paper recycling is effective, but only to a point. Some products, like ink-jet photo paper, simply can't use recycled paper. Most products can use some recycled paper, but you won't find much of anything besides brown and gray stationery that is produced from 100% recycled paper. Also, paper can't be recycled indefinitely. The thing that makes paper what it is is the wood fiber. Every time paper is broken down and recycled, its fibers are broken, which makes them shorter and less suitable for paper products. Eventually what you end up with is cellulose dust, instead of fibers, that can't be bound into a sheet of anything, much less paper. But industry is finding a use for this as fuel for power plants, Duraflame (-like) logs, and even more lumber products like press-board and MDF. If we don't recycle paper, these products and industries will have to get more of their raw materials from forested products, with all the downsides (expense, demand on environment, etc.) that entails.
I'm glad you recycle. You should be proud, and I encourage you to keep it up.
