Zero-Waste, except for the money of course

Visited BFD and scanned through the posts. There was one about zero-waste in Seattle and how nice it would be if Cleveland would emulate their goal. I am all for minimizing garbage. Taxing the manufactures for packaging waste might work a lot better than recycling. Reuse, like returnable bottles seems like a good idea, but who knows what kind of hidden costs are associated with that. At least they would be the responsibility of the manufacturer and consumer, not the citizenry. Recycling is a nice idea, but I am not sure it has worked out very well. When Penn & Teller called bullshit on recycling they pointed out one fact that I found fairly telling. The only thing you can get money for recycling is aluminum. I understand that cheaper is not better. However, I would rather see garbage thrown down a well-engineered hole than my tax money. From what I can tell, recycling costs governments a lot of money and appears to do little more than make people feel good about themselves for doing something for the environment. I commented that Cleveland has better things to spend its money on. Things like schools, police, firefighters, etc. Ironically the very next post on BFD was about crime problems in Ohio City with an outcry for improved city services.