Someone is wrong. Landfills produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as the trash decays. Recycling reduces the methane produced at the landfill and further reduces the need to mine and/or refine more resources which also creates greenhouse gases. The energy required to recycle a soda can into another soda can is only about 7% of what it takes to produce primary aluminum. Your someone just fed you a pile of manure.

Another thing to consider is that landfills have limited capacity. Do you want to pay to have another landfill near your home? No, neither does anyone else.

Final thought: you have confused the ozone layer with greenhouse gases. These are separate issues. Ozone is in fact a greenhouse gas but creating more methane or CO2 does not affect the ozone hole. Separate problems, separate causes, separate effects, separate solutions.

"Does recycling make more greenhouse gases than it saves?"

No. Recycling saves having to devote more fossil fuels to the production of new materials to replace what is in landfills, and to power vehicles to bring people from farther away... people that have to drive around them.

"Someone told me when we recycle, it takes more greenhouse gases for the recycling process than if the trash just went to the landfill."

Did they try and sell you swampland too? It seems you bought this line, so they may actually have taken your money too.

"Seems like bigger landfills would be better than losing our ozone layer."

In general, organic matter that rots, releases chloromethane, which *directly* attacks the ozone layer. I cannot see how this can "seem" a reasonable solution to you.

Anything you throw away becomes a problem for your children to solve. Do a favor for the future, and handle your problems *now*.

While just dumping trash into landfill would release less greenhouse gases, this doesn't take into account the emissions from making a new product.

so for example recycling paper saves greenhouse gas emissions from cutting down and processing trees

also it has nothing to do with the ozone layer XD

In many cases, probably yes.

You can measure the amount of energy something takes by looking at the cost.... as long as markets are efficient and not manipulated this works. (As soon as the government subsidizes something, the energy measured by costs give incorrect readings.)

As they charge you for doing recycling, you can be assured that it consumes more energy than it saves. As cities often require you to recycle and then also charge you to do it... you can be assured that it takes a LOT more energy than it saves.

My apologies to all the alarmists for not having an emotionally charged "save the world you dummy" answer.

Plant a friggin tree, it'll do more good.

Someone told me when we recycle, it takes more greenhouse gases for the recycling process than if the trash just went to the landfill. Seems like bigger landfills would be better than losing our ozone layer.