Free Republic

There are three things everybody knows when we talk trash: 1.We know we're running out of landfill space; 2.we know we're saving resources and protecting the environment by recycling; and 3.we know no one would recycle if they weren't forced to. Let's look at these three things we think we know. Are they real or are they rubbish? 1. Are We Running Out of Landfill Space? Two events created the perfect garbage storm in the late 1980s. One barge and one bureaucrat created this overhyped myth. The garbage barge was the Mobro 4000. The bureaucrat was J. Winston Porter. The...

Thrift-driven Americans are fixing up, making do and reusing so much to cope with the recession that the drop in throwaways means less fill for landfills. To deal with the drop-off in dropoffs, landfills are laying off workers, reducing hours of operation and hiking disposal fees, with the increases passed along to cities, businesses and consumers. "You can look at waste and see what the economy is doing," said Tom Houck, manager at the Defiance County Landfill in northwest Ohio. He's watched the amount of trash arriving at the landfill plunge 30 percent in the past year. With consumers cutting...

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- As the nation's coal-fired power plants work to create cleaner skies, they'll likely fill up landfills with millions more tons of potentially harmful ash. More than one-third of the ash generated at the country's hundreds of coal-fired plants is now recycled -- mixed with cement to build highways or used to stabilize embankments, among other things. But in a process being used increasingly across the nation, chemicals are injected into plants' emissions to capture airborne pollutants. That, in turn, changes the composition of the ash and cuts its usefulness. It can't be used in cement, for...

State officials announced Thursday that California has finally achieved its goal of reducing landfill waste by 50%, thanks to diligent recycling by residents and businesses. The milestone culminates a 16-year campaign by the state to persuade people to separate recyclables out of the trash. The state passed a landmark law in 1989 mandating that communities establish waste-management plans for residents and businesses that would ultimately divert at least 50% of all recyclable trash from landfills. California was supposed to reach the goal in 2000, but preliminary data released Thursday show that the goal wasn't reached until last year. A total...

Supposedly, we face a major tech-trash "crisis." Too many Americans, according to a handful of in Congress, use their old home computers and other outmoded electronics as giant paperweights, storing them in attics, garages, and basements and "taking up space in homes and businesses." The "inappropriate storage of these things is not an option," said Rep. Mike Thompson, California Democrat, at a recent press conference. In the face of this calamity, he and three colleagues announced a new "working group" to educate Congress, apparently in the dark on the dangers of so called "e-waste" stored in homes or buried in...

By Gene J. Koprowski UPI Technology News Published 12/3/2004 9:04 AM CHICAGO, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- A mobile phone is a disposable product -- consumers buy a new one about every year and a half, and toss the old one in the closet. Then, years later, when they have a major house-cleaning weekend, they find a few old phones collecting dust and toss them out in the trash. Experts told UPI's Wireless World this pattern is starting to become a major environmental issue, as old mobile phones start to fill up garbage dumps across the United States and leach lead,...

<p>Angry at Disney's plans to sell disposable DVD movies, environmentalists plan to dump their grievances on CEO Michael Eisner in a massive phone protest Wednesday.</p> <p>Hundreds of students from around the country will call Eisner to discourage the sale of these throwaway DVDs, and urge the company to abandon the product, according to the protest's organizers.</p>

FREIHEIT, Texas - Have Nose. Will Travel. That sums up Barbara Emmerson's job. She's one of two so-called Nasal Rangers at the Comal County, Texas, Landfill. They stop at specific locations and take a big whiff. The Nasal Rangers are part of an effort to control yucky odors emanating from the landfill. They say it can be a little embarrassing when they tell others about the unusual job. The Rangers have office duties at the landfill as well. But Emmerson says sticking her nose in the air is the satisfying part of the work. She says she wants to help...

<p>RUMFORD, Maine (AP) A committee that organized an event marking the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has apologized for the improper disposal of thousands of American flags in a New Hampshire landfill.</p> <p>The flags were supposed to have been burned following a ceremony Sept. 7 organized by the Sept. 11 Remembrance Day Committee. Instead, they were taken to a local transfer station and later sent to North Country Environmental Services Inc.'s landfill in Bethlehem, N.H.</p>

The article is too long to post here. But go to the link and read it. The article explains how government mandated recycling wastes more resources than it saves. But smug environmentalists don't care. Because the real purpose of this recycling is to make the smug environmentalists feel morally superior. It has nothing to do with actually helping the environment. http://www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/garbage.html Recycling Is Garbage - By John Tierney New York Times June 30, 1996. pps. 24-29,44,48,51,53