Posted on 06/18/2004 7:51:55 AM PDT by annyokie
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I personally take sort of a perverse pleasure in putting empty soda cans in with the general trash. Does this mean I'm bad?
I bet that if a serious study was done on recycling, one would find that it makes little environmental sense, and no economic sense to recycle.
For example, I wash out cans and bottles prior to dumping them in the recycle bin. That process uses electricity (to pump the water), propane (to heat the water), and obviously -- clean water. Then there's the extra time spent dividing things up into proper bins, the time spent to take it down to the garage, the extra time spent at the transfer station. For those of us with municipal trash pickup, how much extra labor ($$$) is involved processing recyclibles?
I suspect the only consumer items worth recycling are aluminum cans.
I think I'm bad for putting cat food cans and bottle caps in with the aluminum stuff. They just weigh the bags at the recycling place.
Thank God you can still burn your leaves here.
When we lived in SoCal, the city handed out recycling bins, one for paper, one for glass, one for aluminum.
I happened to be up very early on morning with my baby and saw many Asians out dumping everyone's carefully sorted aluminum cans into the back of their pickup trucks. I later learned that the city had to reschedule pickup do to the enterprising Asians chipping into their profit margin.
For folks who still want to recycle their milk jugs, pop cans, cardboard, etc., they can drive it to the recycler place. Still seems like a waste of time and energy to me...
Actually, it's been done. In several ways recycling is bad for the environment. Newspaper recycling uses a lot of fuel to haul papers to distant recycling plants (that would ordinarily be near renewable pulp forests). Furthermore, the chemicals used to process the paper and bleach it are terrible for the environment. In Fairfax County, Va where I live they have a huge incinerator which burns trash, scrubs the smoke clean, and turns the energy into electricity. Yet, because of the recycling movement they have to recycle newspapers. Glass costs a lot to sort and most landfill/recycling locations admit they only actually recycle 20 to 40 percent and dump the rest because of lack of labor. Plastic has yet to find a valuable product that can be made from the bottles so it cost a lot more to recycle it than to dump it. Aluminum cans are the only item worth recycling and explains why you see people collecting them on the side of the road. Recycling has become a cult, immune to criticism and more of a religion that a practical solution to anything.
We only recycle our aluminum cans and we take them to the recycling place only because it is right up the street from the wholesale bread outlet where you can buy three loaves of bread for $1.25.
Has anybody else seen the episode of "Bullshit!" (Penn & Teller, Showtime) where they took on recycling? I never thought that recycling, of all things, would be shown to be just that. Amazing, and I give P&T for tackling the subject.
Heh. Good article. Our city has had curbside recyling for quite some time. We were provided with a small bin for containers: bottles, cans, plastic beverage containers, milk cartons. Paper was to be placed in another container, or in brown paper bags, like grocery bags. Cardboard was to be bundled with no side greater than three feet, and tied with twine. Oftentimes, when we had larger boxes, and lots of them (like when we were doing some remodeling, and had appliances and tool boxes), I just reduced them in size, and tossed them in the garbage bin. Bundling them in the proper size and tying them was a lot of work.
Now, the city has provided us with one 64 gallon bin so that the mechanical arms on the trucks can pick them up. We put EVERYTHING in those bins - smaller bits of cardboard, cans, bottles, plastic containers of all sorts, paper, junkmail. I am wondering if they actually sort it later, or if it all just gets dumped. I haven't watched to see if it goes in a separate truck or not. We also have "lawn trim" cans for lawn clippings and tree trimmings.
The state also recently raised the deposit on bottles and aluminum cans, so that I refuse to toss them in the recyling bins. I save them until I have enough for a trip to the recyling center and can collect a few dollars for them.
Bump for later reading
Composting costs next to nothing, provides nice rich new dirt for your plants. And you don't need the government to do a damn thing.
That's the only greenie thing I do.
Heheh, I love that subversive feeling I get when I throw our 'recyclables' in the regular trash. After all, it's only subverting the Green religion.
In the part of California where I live we have to deal with 3 huge wheeled plastic trash containers: one for 'regular' garbage, one for recycling, one for grass clippings and garden trash. There are dire consequences for anyone foolish enough to put 'politically incorrect' items in the wrong can! I spend at least an hour every week dutifully slicing up cardboard boxes to exact requirements of the recyclers, smashing pastic bottles and aluminum cans, etc. so I don't get into trouble with City Hall.
My new son in law was formerly the manager of a large supermarket in Melbourne, Oz. He laughs when he recalls all the good people who made special trips to the store to deposit their plastic garbage sacks in the recycling container. "We hauled them all to the tip (dump) and left them with the rest of the trash," he laughs.
Anyone who's watched "The Sopranos" knows who's really behind the recycling business and who benefits from the greatly increased monthly trash fees charged by the city. I've noticed that none of our municipal politicians are ever in need of campaign cash -- at election time posters blossom like California Poppies and so do their 4-color campaign mailings.
As one who has worked in the Plastic recycling industry would you care to back up your statement regards worthwhile recycled plastic products.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Actually, glass, steel, and aluminum are all good for recycling. But recycling PAPER AND PLASTICS is a fool's errand. The resulting stuff is ugly, dull-colored, and becomes impossible to recycle a second time. But glass and metals have been recycled for many, many years. I used to have an old "one-volume encyclopedia" that featured the ease with which glass could be recycled and what it could be made into (fabric, insulation, more bottles, etc). It was copyrighted 1939.
Iet me put it this way. If the plastic is so damned valuable as a recyclable how come no one is collecting it as they do aluminum cans. Please enlighten me on what products are being manufactured out of old milk containers?
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