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I seem to recall one of the Scandinavian countries admitting that they did not see any good in it.
I had read many stories of how recycling was piling up at waste centers because it was to expensive to haul, and the economy had slowed down.
But I cannot find links to show my leftist friend who believes all the fairy tales the leftist have to tell.
My google searches come up nil, so I would expect they are manipulated...or not. Thanks fellow Freepers!
Read P.J. O’Rourke’s “All the Trouble In the World”
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
Here’s my favorite:
“More than a third of the waste paper and plastic collected by British local authorities, supermarkets and businesses for recycling is being sent 8,000 miles to China without any knowledge of the environmental or social costs - and to the complete surprise of most consumers.”
More at the link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/sep/20/environment.china
Now that article in the Guardian is from 2004, but if you search with “Great Britain recycling China” as key words, I expect you can find some more recent stuff - I remember reading a couple of years back about some Brit town where the local council had the townspeople separate their crap into about 8 different recycle bins - and then had most of it just shipped off to China.
Just the waste in energy and transportation pollution astounds me.
Find your city budget.
My city:
Sidewalk repair: $82,000
Street maintenance: $450,000
Recycling Program: $2,400,500
Neighboring city:
Sidewalk repair: $23,000
Street maintenance: $122,400
Recycling Program: $3,545,800
I mean, really, consider it: Cities are spending 5-10 times their annual budget for street repair for these idiotic wasteful recycling programs. They obviously don’t make a profit, they are a huge loss for the city, and drain the budget from what most people would consider as being ‘important.’
And a FYI, I’m the guy in the audience every city budget meeting who stands up and reads off those sections of the budget - the embarrassing parts... Retirement funds for elected officials, costs of their benefits, etc.
The Arsenal of Democracy: Conservation and Recycling
The U.S. Government after Pearl Harbor asked Americans to salvage and collect a long list of materials that could be used for the war effort. The materials included paper, aluminum, tin, iron and steel, rubber, silk stockings, and cooking fat. Some of these material like rubber and silk were needed because th Japanese had cut off the supply by their rapid advance through Southeast Asia.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
This article says that in 2003, the city of Santa Clarita, California was paying $28 per ton to put garbage into a landfill. The city then adopted a mandatory diaper recycling program that cost $1,800 per ton.
http://freeliberal.com/archives/000001.php
This article says that in 2002, 40% of the garbage that New York City residents separated for recycling actually ended up in landfills.
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2002/apr/18/city-council-holds-hearings-on-saving-recycling/
I recycle yard waste in my composter and reap the benefits with yummy tomatoes and bigger trees.
Recycling works when the beneficiary is the person doing the recycling but until the government sends us a check for doing the dirty work public recycling is a scam.
Went to stay with friends in a town with forced recycling, where they have to separate their stuff into three different kinds of receptacles: yard waste, trash, and recyclables.
On garbage day, they set out trash and recyclables. Two different gigantic noisy trucks made the rounds throughout the neighborhood, and a day or two later, for the yard trash day, another truck made the rounds.
We don't have mandatory recycling. On trash day, once a week, one truck comes through. Seems a lot more environmentally friendly to me.
Side note: in another city where we lived, no recycling, every four or five days we'd set on the curb a gigantic trash bag with empty aluminum cans. Bag never remained on the curb for more than 20 minutes before someone would snag it. Kept the neighborhood clean and earned somebody some easy change.
Went to stay with friends in a town with forced recycling, where they have to separate their stuff into three different kinds of receptacles: yard waste, trash, and recyclables.
On garbage day, they set out trash and recyclables. Two different gigantic noisy trucks made the rounds throughout the neighborhood, and a day or two later, for the yard trash day, another truck made the rounds.
We don't have mandatory recycling. On trash day, once a week, one truck comes through. Seems a lot more environmentally friendly to me.
Side note: in another city where we lived, no recycling, every four or five days we'd set on the curb a gigantic trash bag with empty aluminum cans. Bag never remained on the curb for more than 20 minutes before someone would snag it. Kept the neighborhood clean and earned somebody some easy change.
Many years ago Harrisburg, PA built a huge recycling center ($50 million comes to mind but I’m not sure). It never showed a profit.
I think it sets unused now, and IIRC the city is facing bankruptcy, a large part of that being the recycling center.
So, neighborhoods paid more to “recycle” everything being dumped in the same dump.
I'll search, but it has been so long since I read the article. Still, I'll search.
Recycling doesn’t work at all, it is a net cost increment without much in the way of offsetting revenues from scrap dealers.
One rule of thumb: Any material that is recycled will be worth less the more of it is recycled. Newspaper is a good example of this.