Does washing your Recyclables, take a job away from...?

Question

someone, because you did their work of cleaning it out!? A friend of mine saw me washing out a speghetti jar before I tossed it into the recycling, and said 'WHY are you doing that?...."Don't you know, you're taking work away from someone who needs the job bad?!!!? What's your opinion?

Answer 1

I don't know whether there are people paid to wash that stuff out, but I think I can still contribute.

I think the way to look at it is not how to create jobs for people, but how to make a more efficient society. I mean, why shouldn't we just pay people to dig holes and then fill them all day long? The answer is that there are more useful things that they could be doing. Economies are just about finding jobs for people, they're about finding the most productive thing that everyone could be doing. So if you wash your recyclables and that puts someone out of a job, they will be free to do something more productive.

Another way to say this is that the best thing for poor people is a healthy economy, and the healthiest economy is the one that has the least amount of wasted labor.

Answer 2

Washing the jar is to keep bugs away from your house the recycled glass is sorted by colour then crushed  and then washed.

So your doing a fine job of keeping the bugs away from your House.