A couple of things on recycling, motivated by this on WWII scrap drives. At least they weren't as bad as the backyard furnaces of the Great Leap Forward. (insert here obligatory rant on government stupidity in times of war--although technically the Chicoms weren't at war during the Greap Leap.)
I remembered Cecil also had one on recycling, which seemed a little simplistic to me. Basically he said we must participate in the grand experiment: there's no opting out. (insert here obligatory rant on government stupidity) This one seems far more convincing to me:

Recycling is neither "good" nor "bad"; solid waste is neither trash nor treasure. Like all other activities, recycling makes economic and environmental sense in some cases and not in others.

Forcing specific, arbitrary levels of recycling may be counterproductive.

We already have a way of figuring out when particular uses of resources make sense and when they don't, and this method doesn't involve mandates or government micromanagement. It's called market pricing.

Prices emerge as a result of scarcity. When a resource becomes scarcer, its price increases; consumers, responding to this market signal, cut down on their use of the resource. When a resource becomes more abundant, its price drops, signaling to consumers that they can use more of it. The price of a product, in a competitive economy, is, all in all, a pretty good indication of its resource-intensiveness.