Posted on 01/21/2003 3:55:14 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Twice a month I have to bundle my newspapers and take boxes with glass and plastic items down to the curb to be removed and, one assumes, recycled. This does not include the two other pickups for what is presumably just plain old garbage. I am old enough to remember when a person just threw all of this stuff into the garbage can to be taken away. It involved two less trips and a smaller bill from the "waste management" company.
Ask yourself about the utility of recycling. Glass is made from sand. The Earth is not running out of sand. Newspapers, when buried, stay intact for decades and, when burned, become mere ashes. Recycling plastic requires as much or more energy than to produce it. Its uses, however, are extraordinary, contributing to a healthier lifestyle for everyone. So, why recycle?
In 1998, it cost Americans $36 billion to get rid of 210 million tons of municipal waste. It probably costs more today. Part of that multi-billion cost is the additional element of recycling requirements. It´s not like you have a choice. New York City publishes a brochure on recycling that says bluntly "It´s the law."
There is no question that Americans produce a lot of garbage. In the past we buried or burned it, but that was before the environmentalists, Greens, began a campaign that would have us believe there was no room left for landfills, that landfills were inherently a "hazard", and that incinerators were no better because of what came out of the smokestack. All of a sudden, it became very costly to get rid of the garbage where, before, it was no big deal.
The result of the Green lies about garbage was the closing of thousands of landfills around the nation and the increased difficulty of opening new ones. One effort in New Jersey to build a new incinerator ended up a financial nightmare for investors when the courts ruled that haulers could not be compelled by law to bring the garbage to the incinerator, especially if it was cheaper to dump it somewhere else.
The problem is not that we have more garbage. The problem is we have fewer places to bury and burn it. For that you can thank the Greens. This is something to think about every time you separate your glass and plastic or bundle your newspapers, You may feel you are doing something noble for the environment, but you are paying more for that privilege and the odds are the stuff is being buried and burned just the same. The market for anything recycled often proves unprofitable because the cost of recycling does not justify itself.
One scholar, A. Clark Wiseman of Spokane´s Gonzaga University, calculated that, at the current rate of solid waste generation, the nation´s entire solid waste for the next 1,000 years could be buried in a single landfill 100 yards high and 35 miles square. We are not running out of land for landfills. We have run into the lie that they are unsafe. The truth is that landfills have been routinely converted into valuable property once filled. In California there are a number of golf courses that were former landfills. In New Jersey, there are malls and corporate campuses.
In July of last year, New York City suspended the collection of plastic and beverage cartons for a year and the collection of glass for two years. Said the Mayor, "This temporary suspension will save the City an estimated $40 million." Now do the math. If New York can save $40 million by not requiring recycling, imagine the billions that could be saved by cities and suburbs coast to coast? You could renovate every school in America with those funds.
In the end, if recycling was cost-efficient why is it necessary to pass laws to force people to separate and bundle stuff that could just as easily be tossed out with the rest of the garbage? That´s how environmentalism works. It creates a Big Lie and then sets about getting laws passed to mandate it. Years later, states, cities, communities, and just ordinary people begin to ask, "Why are we doing this?" and the answer is, "It´s the law."
It wasn´t always the law. There was a time when landfills were understood to be a perfectly sensible way to get rid of the garbage. Incinerators, too. But that was before the Greens decided recycling was a dandy way to make everyone think that throwing out the garbage was yet another "hazard", "danger", and "threat" to Mother Earth. To which I say, "That´s just garbage!"
Just remember the next time you drink out of a paper cup that it used to be a newspaper in the bottom of some bird cage or lining some cat litter box. :^)
We just started curbside recycling in our area last year. We don't have to sort, and we are provided a large plastic container to put our recyclables in, but we have been told to rinse our cans and bottles before disposing of them! We are in the middle of a huge drought and have been asked to conserve water, yet we are supposed to wash out every soup can, spaghetti sauce jar and soda bottle before placing them in the recycle container! Guess what, tough, I don't wash them; I pay for the privilege of recycling, I'm not paying extra on my water bill too.
T
Paper can be profitably recycled in cases where the collection and sorting costs are minimal, as it typically is with "pre-consumer" waste. If a company has a ton or so of unsold magazines that can be thrown in bulk into a pulping machine [assuming the machine doesn't mind stapes] that may take a few minutes of labor and generate a buck or so of value.
Compare that situation to one of collecting newspapers from a recycling bin; that requires either having workers shake out the individual newspapers to ensure there's nothing else mixed in with them or else accepting product spoilage resulting from mixing in unsuitable stuff with the paper. Managing a ton of paper that way is apt to require man hours worth of work and thus be far less worthwhile.
As you may know, at the beginning of "the Gay Nineties," CA passed a law mandating a 50% reduction of waste into landfills by 1995 and 100% by 1999. Our county was one of the few to comply on time and we did it by trucking it to Laughlin, NV!!!
The law also mandated that landfills be closed and sealed with clay. We did that too, along with the mandated "reduce, re-use, recycle" recovery facilities so the "handicapped" could sort it all out.
Then we tried to contract with a firm that gets huge "tax credits" for converting the methane from our closed landfills into electricity which the county could sell to help solve the energy crisis.
The local EnvironMentalist whackos WENT NUTS!!! They sued us to stop us on... you guessed it... ENVIRONMENTAL GROUNDS!!!
There's more absurdity involved, but I'll spare you as I learned from this that "getting involved" to "make a difference" and "make the whirled a better place" is absurdly niaeve(sp?) and stupid and I wish I'd never done it!!!
Finally... The CA Waste Management Board is a bigger political plumb to get appointed to by the Governor than getting appointed to the Golden Gate Bridge District!!!
And further more... if some of you brainwashed FReepers that think that recycling anything other than aluminum cans,(which I do) is somehow worthwhile, you better start thinking for your selves instead of leaning on all the crap you learned in public high school!!! (drove my chevy to the landfill levy, etc.)
lmr, I would especially appreciate any insite that you have into the matter of municipal ineptitude in recycling.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Dallas' recycling program is a $17 million joke (May 16, 2002)
Trashy Questions: City auditors take a belated look at Dallas' recycling program (June 6, 2002)
Recycling Works (July 7, 2002)
Letters to the Editor:
New life for newsprint: I am writing regarding the article "Garbage In, Garbage Out" in the May 16 edition of the Dallas Observer. You stated in the article, "The city's curbside recycling program is a waste of time and money." While we don't argue that recovering recyclable material and reusing it in industry can be expensive, it is important to remember that recycling is about much more than saving landfill space. According to EPA studies, recycling saves more natural resources and prevents pollution. In fact, by 2005, recycling will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 48 million tons, the equivalent of the amount emitted by 36 million cars annually.
What you discussed in your article does not represent the range of thinking on recycling. According to the American Forest and Paper Association, 84 percent of all Americans are recycling used paper at curbside and recycling drop-off sites. Each and every day, Americans recover for reuse and recycling about 247 million pounds of paper. That means nearly 45 percent of all the paper Americans now use is recovered for recycling.
Abitibi-Consolidated is the largest recycler of old newspaper and magazines in North America. Our mill in Sheldon, Texas, manufactures 100 percent recycled newsprint that is used by The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and many others. The Sheldon mill consumes 80 percent of the old newspapers and magazines recycled in the state of Texas. The newspapers the residents of Dallas put at the curb each week don't go to waste...we use them. Our business depends on recycling programs like the one in Dallas.
With the simple act of recycling every day, you provide jobs, reduce air emissions, save energy and supply valuable raw materials for Texas businesses. All of this helps to ensure the health of our planet and the community's future generations.
Frank Killoran
Area Manager,
Abitibi-Consolidated, Recycling Division
Arlington
Cash for Trash: The city's new recycling center is up and running, sort of (Nov 11, 2002)
**************
And now, thanks to the miracle of electronic archives, let's peek at the columns written by none other than, our current Dallas mayor and former leftie columnist, Ms. Laura Miller Wolens:
As mayor, she now says...
"I think that if you spend $2 million, you ought to get more than 4 percent of your trash recycled for that kind of money," Miller says. "We have an inefficient recycling program that unfortunately hasn't been very successful in terms of the amount of tonnage that we are recycling."
Why just a few years ago, she commented...
Spouting rubbish: Dallas has run out of recycling excuses, by Laura Miller (Nov 30, 1995)
....That's ridiculous (says Laura). We could do recycling citywide tomorrow morning if we wanted to. LuAnn Anderson says it would cost $1 million that we don't have, but that's a fiction, too. If recycling were so expensive and burdensome, the private sector wouldn't do it at all. But Waste Management of Dallas, the giant garbage-collection company, just opened a huge recycling facility in West Dallas called Recycle America....
No doubt that the issues is much more complicated than it may seem at first glance, but the dollar does indeed flow as efficiently as possible to its destination, excepting government intervention.
You mean the "Born Again Pagans" of the DARK AGES, don't you?
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