Garbage in.

• Position: New York Times Sunday Magazine writer John Tierney is assailed for his attack on recycling - Column

On the cover of The New York Times Sunday Magazine not long ago was a story entitled, "What a Waste: Recycling squanders money and good will, and doesn't do much for the environment, either."

It was one of the most unbalanced stories in recent years, but it must have been comforting for The New York Times, which by the author's own admission, cuts down 75,000 trees each week for its mammoth Sunday edition. Indeed, the author, John Tierney, a Times staffer, sucks up to his bosses by saying "newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash....It's the first time that an industry has conducted a mass-media campaign informing customers that its own product is a menace to society."

Not to worry, fellas, says Tierney. It's not a menace after all. To support his theory, he quotes heavily from libertarian organs like the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He also leans on industry sources like the Waste Policy Center and the Solid Waste Association of North America.

Tierney and his sources sing a hymn to the free market. "When consumers follow their preferences, they are guided by the simplest, and often the best, measure of a product's environmental impact: its price."

He uses this point of faith to argue that disposable polystyrene cups are better for the environment than ceramic mugs. "You would have to use the mug 1,000 times before its energy-consumption-per-use is equal to the cup," he writes, citing a study by a chemist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Tierney, however, does not address the problem of disposing of polystyrene cups. To hom, the problem is nonexistent. Throwing garbage into landfills does...