Posted on 04/24/2019 12:12:43 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I was taught in elementary school.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote learning.
The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. It has been ingrained into the American psyche over several decades. On a recent trip to the Caribbean, my friend’s wife exhibited nervous guilt while collecting empty soda, water, and beer bottles destined for the trash since our resort offered no recycling bins.
“I feel terrible throwing these into garbage,” she said, wearing a pained look on her face.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was a good chance the bottles she was recycling back in the States were ending up just like the ones on the Caribbean island we were visiting.
Difficult Implementation
As Discover magazine pointed out a decade ago, recycling is tricky business. A 2010 Columbia University study found that just 16.5 percent of the plastic collected by the New York Department of Sanitation was “recyclable.”
“This results in nearly half of the plastics collected being landfilled,” researchers concluded.
Since that time, things have only gotten worse. Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a story detailing how hundreds of cities across the country are abandoning recycling efforts.
(Excerpt) Read more at fee.org ...
In the 60’s in CA most everybody had a concrete trash incinerator in the back yard. Dumps burned waste too.
‘If home schooling produces kids as judgmental as you are that tells me all that I want to know about it.’
That’s really up to the parents and what values they instill into their kids. Pretty much impossible, though, if they go to public schools...as the schools almost always win.
Unless you are in a condo association with a liberal who insists on reprimanding other owners who don't bother to recycle. This woman would go through the dumpster identifying things that someone didn't recycle and then complain at the board meetings.
It wasn't the most disruptive thing she did.
They should focus exclusively on metal. Paper, plastic, and virtually everything else other than glass are carbon based. We’re better off putting carbon in the landfills. It’s really a form of carbon sequestration.
for later
Yes, I’m sure there are folks out there like that. No doubt about it, and I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
I think that’s where we are headed with the Climate Change folks too.
There are many YouTube videos addressing electric vehicles, solar and wind energy. The people who put those out are many times folks who have gone over the cliff with regard to Climate Change.
Boy, if you aren’t on board yet, you’re like the scum of humanity.
These are otherwise decent people (well maybe not, just giving them the benefit of the doubt), but they are just Loony Tunes on this issue.
During my childhood up until after college we would collect those bottle from the bar-ditches take them to any store get 2 to 5 cents from the cashier then buy candy and later gas.
>>Any person DEMENTED enough to sent their kids to public schools is not worth my time, as they obviously don’t care about what their kids become.<<
That is a deeply unfair statement. Few people, including FReepers, have the wherewithal to home school or send to private schools.
The best bulwark people have against the indoctrination centers known as publik skool is to instill good values into their children and be actively engaged in their lives while LIVING those values.
Bookmarking your books for later.
Yep, didn’t we all...
This^^^
No kidding. What an arrogant, elitist thing to say. You should loan him your FReep name.
The stuff that is actually valuable to recycle should be easy to sort out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBcnp37VjY8
Shred the load, then sort by ferrous metals, then go for a density sort to get the non-ferrous metal and/ or glass. Burn the rest.
Holier than thou home schooling attitudes sound like liberal elitist crap.
When we had the ranch, we had a square hole in the ground about 14’ by 14’ and about 12’ deep, with a narrow sloping chute from ground level to the bottom of the pit, for makeup air.
On the bottom we layered old logs, limbs, crap that burned and then filled it with trash/garbage, old paint cans, old AL furniture, anything that would either burn or melt. Before the match was applied, we’d stack another wood layer on top, apply a little diesel, and light her off.
For the first hour or so we’d get some smoke, but after the fires really got going, the flames turned incandescent and smokeless, the heat so intense you had to shield your face at fifty feet. 48 hours later you had, maybe, a foot of ash and debris. We did this every spring. We never made a trash run!
If recycling made economic sense, people and companies would gather it from homes and businesses for free. That’s done here in Florida for metals, especially aluminum. This is why I don’t bother recycling.
Geez, hot enough to incinerate everything, even algore’s carbon footprint.
...I refuse to spend a buck replacing something that can be repaired.*************************
Me, too. I repair everything even appliances as long as I can lift it. Clothes, shoes, rugs, walls, ...everything. Oh, well, there is one exception. When my toothbrush gets down to about 3/8 of an inch in bristle size, I call it quits. It is a wonderful challenge to repair stuff from China and, frankly, quite futile actually. So, when I do buy something “new”to do an old job, I go to auctions and by thick pots, rugs, chairs, tables, etc from them. My car and truck are 20 years old and they are still going even at current highway speeds. I love my truck and car...I don’t even want a new one. But I have to admit the seat on the Honda is getting hard as a rock....so you know, I just added a nice soft cushion! Ha. Have to take the dash apart as soon as the weather is good for a guaranteed three days...got to find some lose wires or something. No AC, no heat, no fan...you know...not good!
I looked a bit further, and found the following:
https://bizfluent.com/facts-5731899-chemicals-used-paper-recycling-mills.html
Soap to remove ink, hydrogen peroxide (bleaching agent), sodium hydrosulphite (bleaching agent), and bleach.
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