I was listening to an environmental initiatives leader describing a contest to encourage groups to recycle. A prize would be awarded to the group that recycled the most tonnage of waste. Everyone in the room seemed to think it was great to create a competition to recycle more than everyone else...Yay, recycling! What could be better for the environmental than to make recycling seem like fun?
But it occurred to me that this prize could be something of an embarrassment. Just because we recycle more tonnage than other people doesn't necessarily mean we are greener...what if it just means that other people produce less waste overall, so they have less need to recycle it? A contest based on the tonnage of recycled waste could actual encourage people to produce waste for the sheer purpose of increasing one's overall tonnage of recycling. For example, if my apartment complex offered a prize for recycling, I might be encouraged to drink bottled water rather than put water from a spigot into a glass (recycling the glass in my dishwasher wouldn't count). Plus, when buying bottles of water, I would be encouraged to buy the thickest plastic, unless I could earn bonus credit for buying those flimsy new eco-bottles so many companies are pushing. Of course, the prize would have to be worth more to me than the cost of buying bottled water, but I think you can see the point.
An environmental prize for the group that recycles the most stuff is sort of like a prize for healthiness based on the number of times a person recovers from illness in a year rather than on the number of days a person remains free of illness (to say nothing of the degree of illness).
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