Recycling Dilemma: Reduce, reuse, retarded

I may have lived in Oregon, but I am not a hippy. Nor do I agree with anything that has ever stemmed from their little tree-hugging thoughts. In fact, suffice it to say, I would venture a speculation that hippies may cause cancer: cancerous, drum circle, pot-smoking sores on society.

Indeed, their idyllic philosophies on all things American are in sharp contrast to what any educated human being would - and should - believe. But there remains one breadth of their tie-dyed spectrum in which the general population has been duped: paper recycling.

I admit that I turn the lights off when I leave a room. Hell, I'll even recycle a beer can or two. But when it comes to recycling paper, I simply must cease.

It's not that I'm against reusing things to save our environment. I'll reuse a Styrofoam container for leftovers, and plastic cups for beer pong to make them last much more than just a few rounds. If something can be reused in the form it was produced, then by all means, we should reuse it.

But recycling paper? Mother of God, why?

Paper comes from trees, which are one of everybody's favorite things. They give us oxygen, forests, homes for wildlife and something for hippies to hug. Undoubtedly, everything concerning trees is grandiose. Except for the myths.

Hippies want you to believe that we are losing huge forests for the sole purpose of making paper. That we have far less wooded area than we did 100 years ago. And worst of all, it is much better for people, animals and the environment to simply recycle paper.

Sure thing, Cheech, just like it's good for your lungs to smoke weed.

You see, most people believe that when trees are cut down to make paper products, a logging company starts plowing through a forest with no regard for wildlife habitat or the surroundings in general. They believe that beauteous red oaks, maples and oak trees that stood the test of Mother Nature's fury over the past century are being decimated simply for card board boxes.

Like their patchouli oil stinging your nostrils, once more the flower children have clouded your mind with fallacious decay.

Rather than just blindly clear-cutting forests, did you realize that paper companies have specific plots of land where they grow their own trees for the sole fact of harvesting them to make paper? These are called tree farms. Much like pumpkin farms. And nobody complains about pumpkin farms. Moreover, North America has more trees now than we did a century ago; two trees were planted every time one was cut - you do the math.

Ultimately, the hippies praise how recycling paper is so much better for the environment.

I wonder if they factor in the sole process of recycling paper: huge diesel trucks driving all over to pick up the paper, consequently emitting toxic emissions and just adding to the greenhouse effect. Not to mention, the process by which they boil down the paper with huge vats of chemicals, emitting more toxic fumes. And where do all the chemicals go when it's been used? The hippies never seem to mention that part.

So if recycling paper does nothing in the way of saving trees and is potentially worse for the environment than just tossing it in the old landfill, it surely must be cheaper, right?

Damn hippy logic, wrong again.

The only reason that recycled paper is sometimes cheaper for the consumer is because the companies who sell it are given monumental tax breaks. Think about the costs associated with collecting, separating and boiling down all that recycled paper. In all actuality, recycled paper costs well more than using virgin tree pulp.

Oh, dear hippies. All that marijuana may have seeped a little too deep. Do me a favor, please. The only recycling that should involve this newspaper is by handing it to somebody else.

And when all have read what needs to be read, toss it in the trash.