Recycling has been an environmental mantra for quite some time. There is a compelling ethical argument to be made for the virtue of carefully husbanding our resources instead of just using them once and disposing of them in landfills or through combustion. But there is a strong economic argument for recycling as well. Recycling saves money.

Every year Bostonians dispose of 247,000 tons of trash, hauled from city streets and shipped off to disposal sites where it is buried or burned. It’s an expensive proposition. Boston spends $20.7 million a year. $6.8 million of this is to pick up the trash, the remainder is to dispose of it. If the trash we are disposing of is recycled material, it costs us $20 a ton; if it’s your everyday, non-recycled trash, the cost is much higher at $74 a ton.

Plainly, it makes sense to recycle. The more we recycle, the less we spend to dispose of our trash. Indeed, many experts in the field believe that the gulf between recyclables and regular trash will widen in coming years. Some see the day when it costs nothing to dispose of recyclables, or when companies actually pay the city for its recyclables. Meanwhile, as environmental regulations tighten up on trash disposal, the costs of dumping regular trash will rise.

It may make economic sense, but Boston is not taking advantage of recycling. Our recycling rate (the percent of total trash that is actually recycled) is an appallingly low 12%. Indeed, Boston’s recycling rate is so low that our savings from recycling are actually outweighed by the costs of an additional pickup. At 12%, we shouldn’t even bother.

How well should we be doing? The state Office of Environmental Affairs has set a statewide goal for the year 2000 at 46%. Some Massachusetts cities and towns are now recycling more than half of their trash. Worcester, for example, has a recycling rate of 55%. If Boston were to recycle at the same rate as Worcester, we would be saving about $3 million annually, at today’s disposal prices. (If those prices were to change, as many suspect, the amount saved would increase.)

How do we boost our recycling rate? There are three basic options available.

One strategy would be through education. But while education is a necessary component of any recycling strategy, few believe it can improve recycling rates by more than a few percent. Certainly it cannot deliver the 55% recycling rate Worcester has achieved.

A second strategy is mandatory recycling. Pass a law requiring people to recycle. All recyclable materials have to be put out in blue boxes. If that’s not done, fine people. High levels of enforcement coupled with high fines will compel people to recycle.

Mandatory recycling can work. But it is an expensive system that requires hiring new inspectors. It is also intrusive — offensively so — because the only way to enforce is to unleash the trash police across the city tearing into people’s bags to see what they have been throwing away. One mistake and — boom! — you’re fined.

Mandatory schemes also have a more, subtle problem. Compelling someone to do something they don’t want to do creates resistance. That resistance emerges in a variety of ways — political pressure to change the law, efforts to circumvent the rules and resentment. The environmental movement nationwide has seen that resistance emerge, particularly of late, where political pressure to soften mandatory schemes has succeeded.

A third strategy. is called unit pricing. Unit pricing is how Worcester achieved a 55% recycling rate. It’s a seemly radical approach that cuts costs, boosts recycling, reduces overall trash disposal and enjoys remarkably strong support in the communities in which it’s been adopted. It’s an approach Boston needs to consider, and it’s examined in my article in the Beacon Hill Paper’s next issue.