Why do we throw some many things away and prodice so much garbage?
State produced Channel One wants to know.
And usually, whatever channel one talks about, I eventually see politicians talk about.
I don’t get what you’re saying in your second two sentences. But if recycling really were valuable, then there would be incentives in place for people to recycle more. If recycling were more efficient than using new resources, then companies would be willing to buy old goods in order to recycle them. Thus, more Americans would recycle given the incentive of making money on their trash.
The answer is easy:
On the purchasing end, the Federal Reserve run financial system through the chronic debasement of the currency gives the people in the USA a huge incentive to purchase new things now as 1. Interest rates on loans will be higher in the future or 2. THe currency will buy less. For example, I can get a 5% 30 year mortgage on my home that is mostly paid off and then go hog wild with the extra cash now because if I wait the interest rates on the mortage will certainly be higher. Also, I can purchase a nice shiny slightly used Mustang Convertible now at $20,000 or wait for it to be $30000 later.
On the recycling end, it is regulations like minimum wage and the volumes of EPA regulations that add so much cost that disposal and recycling practices that do not harm other folks are either too expensive or banned outright. For example, I can not just start my own landfil to compete with the existing ones even if I am miles out in the country in an area that has been polluted already. And even if I could, I would have paid so much in bribes (Licenses and Usage Fees) that I would not be able to pay a workforce the minimum wage to run the place.
Bogart brings up some good points. The Fed and the government in general have been trying to boost “demand” and consumer spending for decades. Many of the economic incentives for saving and capital preservation are highly distorted.
“I don’t get what you’re saying in your second two sentences.”
I’m a teacher, and we watch channel one everyday in the mornings. They were talking about this on channel one this morning.
I don’t mean to be a pest, but that doesn’t really tell me what the OP is talking about, specifically. 
I remember watching channel one when I was in school. Perhaps you could give a better explanation as to what was being discussed on the show?
Didn’t the federal government think it was a good idea for everyone to get rid of their perfectly good old cars to buy shiny new ones that no one can really afford?
“what was being discussed on the show?”
they were asking, why american’s wer a throwaway society…and how terrible it was, and how we need to recycle more and pollute less…
i wanted to know how government contributes to us being a throwaway society. since channel one would never talk about that.
Ayn Rand, for all her weird flaws, rightly said that pollution was a technological problem, not a political one.
Probably the biggest hinderance to “solving” pollution is general governmental interference with the free market, which would solve the pollution problem by itself through innovation and increased efficiency. This is assuming pollution really is something most consumers would consider a problem if the government wasn’t finger-wagging about it.
As for something specific…I don’t know.
The cost of disposal is universalized. Therefore, demand for disposable products is unlimited by that consideration.
There are many chapters about this exact phenomenon in The Economics of Liberty where it’s explained how the government made recycling certain materials and everything less profitable, so people stopped.