Why the Trash You Sort Isn't Getting Recycled

http://www.americanoutlook.org ^ | December 29, 2003 | Dennis T. Avery

[Grampa Dave]

I know that the county and city provide this material to those who want it for free or low cost.

I'm passing the word about Starbucks and their coffee grounds to a couple of young relatives who want to raise earthworms for bait and gardens. These great nephews want to be big time worm raisers. I think there is a local Starbucks in their area.

My sons, before they graduated to flies and artificial lures would buy a couple of dozen worms, put them in an area and throw our coffee grounds on the top of the soil and cover it with damp newspapers. In a few months they had all the worms they needed.

[RippleFire]

bump

[Grampa Dave]

This clown will be a big Dean supporter if he isn't.

[Hank Rearden]

I don't live in Calcutta, so I always attempt to minimize the amount of time spent playing with my garbage.

[Dont Mention the War]

But glass was sterilized and reused umpteen times. Then somebody got the bright idea to dump the costs on the public and use "disposeable" plastic bottles, which takes years, if ever, to deteriorate. Note that the shift to plastic didn't equal a drop in price.

I don't ever recall 2-liter Cokes being sold in glass bottles, either.

[metesky]

Please see tagline...

[Dan Evans]

But glass was sterilized and reused umpteen times. Then somebody got the bright idea to dump the costs on the public and use "disposeable" plastic bottles, which takes years, if ever, to deteriorate.

The only reason glass was recycled was because we didn't have the technology to make enough plastic bottles. Now we do, and it's cheaper than hauling all those heavy bottles everywhere. The plastic bottles actually decompose faster than the crude oil they were extracted from.

Even if we run out of fossil petroleum we will still be able to synthesize whatever plastics we need from trees, crops or coal. All it takes is energy -- and we have at least a 4,000 year supply of uranium and thorium.

The most rational way to recycle is to burn trash to reclaim the energy and release the CO2 so that plants can use it.

[Carry_Okie]

Why did people promote recycling so heavily in the first place? Lots of people probably misunderstood the costs and benefits. It’s also true that eco-activists urgently wanted everybody to feel a direct stake in saving the planet. Telling us all to recycle was their way to make us feel eco-involved.

This is a clueless answer. The foundations that financially sponsor eco groups are heavily invested in selling you energy and water. Guess what recycling wastes in abundance?

[Dan Evans]

So now one of the Doctors, a watermelon, has become the Complex's Garbage Nazi. His office has a corner view of the garbage storage area with all of the marked and defined bins. He watches all day and then makes periodical visits to physically inspect the individual dumpers which are different colors and marked for specific garbage. All of the garbage goes into one or two trucks, it is compacted together

Insanity. Like Alice in Wonderland. Like a Monty Python skit.

[stylin_geek]

Notice the last part of the last sentence ..."feel eco-involved." I think that is an accurate summation, IE, the left puts feelings ahead of facts.

[Agnes Heep]

Some of the best humor in life are these little slices of reality like this one you posted:
"WHITE TRASH ONLY."

Well, I was certainly amused! Every time I lifted the lid I half expected to be regaled by the sight of a toothless redneck, chugging a Miller Lite and chomping on a big wad of Red Man.

[Carry_Okie]

Notice the last part of the last sentence ..."feel eco-involved." I think that is an accurate summation, IE, the left puts feelings ahead of facts.

It may describe the useful idiots, but it doesn't do justice to those who fund them.

[Dan Evans]

I don't live in Calcutta, so I always attempt to minimize the amount of time spent playing with my garbage

Maybe this is just a big joke and even the greens don't believe in it -- just their way of having fun. Kind of like the way they stopped up everyone's plumbing with the low-flush toilets.

Stupid or evil? Evil

[John H K]

People certainly don't want dumps near them, thus every single new dump will be fought tooth-and-nail legally, the point is there's no shortage of space whatsoever for dumps, which is absolutely true.

There's immense amounts of open space in this country and dumps will never, ever, make the slightest dent in it.

[Johnny Gage]

Not to mention the leak of smelly icky "garbage fluid" that drains out of the truck every time they fire up the compactor on the back of the truck.

[Joe_October]

...AND these phony recycling programs has us paying $2.00+ a month for our planet! Sheech!!....

It gets worst. Because the government makes it illegal for others to pick up your recyclables, organizations like the boy scouts who used to make money by doing it for FREE cannot.

Heck, we used to scour the neighborhood for glass bottles for the $0.05 bottle deposit.

[Joe_October]

....It is cost effective for me to sort. I pay $2.00 per can for garbage to be hauled away. Recyclables are free....

Yea, no scam there.

[Boot Hill]

ER,

"one-time second largest aluminum recycling site in North America (my previous employer)"

By recycling, did you mean that they actually melted the cans down to ingots? If so, what kind and size of crucibles did they do the melt in? And how long did those crucibles last, before needing replacement?

I ask because a dirty little secret of aluminum recycling is that the ratio of aluminum oxide to aluminum is at its highest in the thin sheets used to make aluminum cans. The aluminum oxide is a very good insulator and this causes hotspots in the crucible which results in overheating it to destructive levels. Crucibles are very expensive and the need for frequent replacement can destroy the cost savings of recycling.

Any comment?

--Boot Hill

[TexasBarak]

Last time I was in the local Starbucks, they had a basket full of two-pound bags of grounds. I snagged one for my organic-gardener neighbor. Made my work truck smell great for the rest of the week :)

[Boot Hill]

"the stupidest recycling story I've heard, was a few years ago when a street near me was repaved using recycled glass"

Actually, that's not as stupid as you make it sound. Recycled glass is crushed to the size of small grains of sand and added to road repaving materials, recycled rubber (e.g., for railroad crossings) and to plastics to make them extremely strong and durable. Pretty standard and intelligent use of recyclables.

--Boot Hill