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 ...
“We used to burn most of this stuff. We should go back to that for most of this stuff.”
You know, that’s really not a bad idea...a bit impractical, but near genius for someone that age.
Meanwhile, I keep recycling to reduce the volume of my regular trash, because if I mix them and have to use the blue recycling bin for regular trash, the city-employed Trash Nazis (in Texas, FFS!) will fine me (I’ve already gotten a warning).
Not if they're your slaves and you want to keep them busy and somewhat happy least they think about rebellion.
From today’s Seattle Times: E-Waste recycling fraud.
Reduce, Reuse, Repair; nothing wrong with those ideas.
I try to be no more wasteful than my Grandmother (God rest her soul) would disapprove of in the depths of the Great Depression. Yes, that means I’ll spend time soldering, welding or otherwise fixing something that might technically be cheaper to just buy again, but I can still hear that scorn of *any* waste from my youth :-).
I don’t buy into the Green B.S., but I view this planet and its resources as on loan from the Lord, and I refuse to spend a buck replacing something that can be repaired.
We should launch regular rocket missions to take our trash to the Sun.
As the former PW Director for a county, we presented the facts to the board of commissioners that it was costing us more money and that the market for plastics recycling was going away. this was back in 2013. The board reviewed the economic of the program and agreed to end recycling programs and of course there was public outcry, so we kept the big centrally located blue bins for those that wanted to do their part. But at the end of the day those bins were hauled to the landfill and their contents were disposed of with the rest of the trash.
Well, Newspaper Drives have certainly dropped off some from the daze of my yute.
My true believer spouse would side with them.
Yeah, I’ve heard about Colorado. They elect sodomite governors.
you should be a motivational speaker!
I’m was not home schooled. Perhaps you can have me banned from this holy site you spout from?
I would have no problem putting a deposit on glass bottles. That goes for soft drinks, water, milk whatever.
While your enthusiasm is appreciated; paying for both the exorbitant property taxes with the mortgage payment *and* private school tuition for multiple kids is not always a possibility for everyone.
The *vast* majority of kids go to public schools; some in highly rated suburban districts. The leftist bent is definitely there; but even my brother who was able to send his 3 kids to private parochial school K to 12 ran into leftists who argued with his kids in class about Trump.
Anyway - my situation was this; so its clear that not everything is always possible....
At the birth of child #3 my wife stopped working. She was making 45% of the household income at the time. Baby #3’s due date was the first day of Kindergarten for my oldest. I was paying pre-school tuition for Child #2 for two more years at that same date in time. Cutting our family’s pay in half *and* adding private school tuition was not possible.
Selling the house and downsizing was also not possible; as a) we had just added another member of the family and b) we under-purchased the house 3 years earlier to begin with knowing my wife might stop working soon; and c) this was going into the teeth of the housing crash; and while still carrying probably 78% loan-to-value (from the previous value 3 years prior) we would have likely been well into 5 figures in the hole to try to sell - and then what? The transaction cost of selling one home and buying another wasn’t doable either.
So; yes. Could I afford it now? Probably; I have gotten two promotions and annual raises since then.
I don’t consider myself DEMENTED; but BLESSED to have been able to provide for my 3 kids all these years while having my wife *still* at home with the kids to this day, well more than a decade later. She has essentially been retired since she was in her 30’s. I care greatly about what my kids become; and having their mother there every day to help them realize their potential is something I wouldn’t change for anything.
Sending them to one of the 3 private schools they could have gotten to locally would not have been worth them coming home to an empty house every day their entire childhood.
I am curious, how could you afford to house, feed, clothe, and home-school four children? Two working parents want to know.
“Dr Seuss showed decades ago that there is no removing pollution it is just transferred from one medium after another.”
Until you get out the Voom! :)
Yea, those great depression survivors were like that. My parents and grandparents were just like that.
Oregon passed the bottle bill where you still get a 5 or 10 cent deposit refund for returning the empties. Of course that cost is added at the time of purchase.
When I lived there between April 2000 and June 2002 we would have to visit the recycling machines. Each major grocery store has these located in their parking lots. They are large machines where you insert bottles and cans and then get you refund ticket.
I started calling them the “great equalizer” because no matter your social or economic status, everyone had to show up and stand in the sticky floor and insert their cans and bottles 1 at a time. The other rub is if you buy national brand products you can go to any location and return the cans and bottles. But if you bought Walmart brand product you couldn’t take it back to Safeway’s machine. Plus you had to keep a garbage can at home just for this purpose. It was a stinky, sticky, smelly mess as well.
So here’s how to scam those. We were from Washington state and would by our products at Costco when we would travel back to see our parents. there is no deposit requirement here. So we would cash in those and get money back.
Basically living below our means, in an area with crappy schools [since it didn’t matter] and putting two kids in each bedroom. There are very cheap houses in Texas [old, 3br types] and it doesn’t hurt that I fix most things myself.
It was a tradeoff for us...and I think in the long term we come out way ahead because none of our kids will require ‘parental welfare’ as happened to many of my friends with kids.
And those of us on FR have known this .......... forever.
While you are technically correct, the chemicals involved are VERY nasty:
White liquor consists mainly of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide in water and is the active component in Kraft pulping.[1] White liquor also contains minor amounts of sodium carbonate, sodium sulfate, sodium thiosulfate, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate and other accumulated salts and non-process elements. These additional components are considered inert in the Kraft process, except sodium carbonate that contributes to a lesser extent.
The chemical composition and properties of the white liquor are calculated as total alkali, active alkali, effective alkali, sulfidity, causticity and reduction.
I didn’t demand that parents send their kids to private schools, only keep them out of public schools, more specifically [although I didn’t mention it], US public schools, since they are by far the worst in Advanced Countries.
As to how to go about it, it’s not always easy, but it should be considered, and while many may not find a way, I am hoping that some of the people reading this thread might just be able to do so.
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