Is Recycling Really Worth It? 209
sickofbluebins asks: "If one does a google on Why To Recycle there is a staggering amount of information on how recycling saves trees, resources, reduces pollution and generally is A Good Thing (tm). However, I recently read this article which comments that most recycling (besides aluminum) is not really worth it, and most of the recycling push is not based on science, but rather just by more politically based groups. I remember having people in my college classes be shocked when I informed them (being from a small town in the middle of logging country), that old growth forest was NOT being used for paper, as those trees produce the best lumber for things like houses and decks. The shock continued when I also stated in fact most paper comes from trees planted just for that purpose. All this makes me wonder how accurate the typical recycling information is.
So I ask you, Slashdot readers, have any of you seen a true 'scientific' study of the benefits (or lack thereof) of recycling, especially renewable resources such as paper. I would really like to know what recycling really helps our planet out, and what is just a bunch of hype."
Bad search (Score:1)
The following words are very common and were not included in your search: why to.
Re:Bad search (Score:2, Informative)
While you're at it (Score:2)
Re:While you're at it (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing a critical piece of the puzzle there.
Recyling deals with the disposal of materials and the reuse of those materials. Throwing away just deals with the disposal part.
Recycling is pointless if the materials don't get used again.
Recycling can be part of the manufacturing process. If you melt down a bunch of aluminum cans, you don't need to mine aluminum from the eart
Re:While you're at it (Score:2)
Re:While you're at it (Score:2)
& let's not forget how much water & oil it takes to produce that 1 cup of oil. I hear that it takes around 6 parts of water for 1 part of usable oil.
I'm referring to some places which pump water in to push oil out, & that isn't the case with mos
Re:While you're at it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Our entire town does it. You put everything into one can, and then the garbage company takes it to a facility where minimum wage workers hand sort it.
Supposedly it's more efficient.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear Tuning Point Rehabilitation Center (Score:2)
One of your patients, a Mr. Rush Limbaugh, has gained access to a computer and is sumbitting stories to Slashdot. Please discipline him as appropriate. Preferably shock therapy.
Re: Dear Tuning Point Rehabilitation Center (Score:2)
> Answer: He didn't. Man did. All religion is man's failed attempt to restore relationship with God through his own means. Instead, that relationship was meant to be had freely, simply because God loves us. That is the core message of true Christianity, though it may often be obscured or even ignored by those who claim to be "religious".
Loves us so much that he'll torture us for all eternity if we don't play his arbitrary game?
Recycling (Score:3, Insightful)
-Sean
Re:Recycling (Score:2)
By cutting the last of the old growth forests, companies profit and loggers will lose their jobs.
If they cut down the trees, the Companies profit, Loggers loose their jobs.
If they DONT cut down the trees, the Companies won't profit and the Loggers won't have a job to loose.
While I can agree that we need to save "Old Growth Forests", the Loggers seem screwed either way, so why bring them into the arguement?
Only Part of the Story (Score:2)
If they DONT cut down the trees, the Companies won't profit and the Loggers won't have a job to loose.
A couple of points here: If you stop logging old-growth, there is still second growth available for logging. Unfortunately, second-growth trees are much smaller than first growth and thus much better suited to heavily mechanized harvesting.
Second point is that, in an area where old-growth logging is stop
Re:Recycling (Score:2)
Re:Simplistic take on old-growth... (Score:2)
1: Skip this step. Not needed.
2: Figure out how many trees you can cut and process each year.
3: Buy or lease 20 times that amount.
4: Cut all the trees you can, then re-plant the land with something that grows fast, like Cottonwood.
5: After 20 years, when all the original trees are cut, your first crop of Cottonwood will be ready for harvest.
6: Profit!
No, this is not a "tree farm," it's a forest. Yeah, we cut nearly all the 300 year-old trees. So what? Yes, now there's only one spe
Cottonwood (or other 20-year growth) (Score:2)
Maybe hemp has woody stems, if you look hard enough.
I call BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
I informed them (being from a small town in the middle of logging country), that old growth forest was NOT being used for paper, as those trees produce the best lumber for things like houses and decks.
While the second half of the statement is correct, the first half is speculation, and incorrect speculation at that. Old growth logging for paper does occur in BC (Canada), although most of the paper produced is for situations where high-quality paper is needed, not for writing paper in your three-ring binder. Blanket statements are A Bad Thing
The shock continued when I also stated in fact most paper comes from trees planted just for that purpose.
Correct, but your proposition leaves out a whole slew of other situations - you're stating that paper comes from either old growth or tree farms, ignoring exploitation of second and third growth forests in the public domain. Even though it's been logged, a large amount of it has recovered to the point of being relatively "virgin", yet is being logged again.
My own take on it: using trees (whether "wild" from a forest or "domestic" from a tree farm) to make paper is just plain stupid. We should use less paper or make it from other sources. Hemp or kanaf, for example, make fine, high quality paper, you get a much higher yield per acre and cause less soil depletion. Recycling would still be a good thing though in terms of cutting the waste stream on the other end, because even if the argument about "saving trees" was debunked, you still gotta figure out what to do with it on the other end, which is usually bury it or burn it, neither of which is a great solution.
Epilogue: From the website or your article's "source":
Heartland's mission is to help build social movements in support of ideas that empower people. Such ideas include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.
Heartland has been endorsed by some of the country's leading scholars, public policy experts, and elected officials. Dr. Milton Friedman calls a "a highly effective libertarian institute." Cato Institute president Edward Crane says Heartland "has had a tremendous impact, first in the Midwest, and now nationally."
So your premise is to debunk the "politically charged" assertions of environmental groups with "scientific "evidence, but you cite a right-wing libertarian think tank? Do I detect a little "small town logging bias"?
Re:I call BS. (Score:2, Insightful)
So your premise is to debunk the "politically charged" assertions of environmental groups with "scientific "evidence, but you cite a right-wing libertarian think tank? Do I detect a little "small town logging bias"?
"Libertarian" and "Right-Wing" are too completely different things, and if you wish to mock the evidence provided, consider providing some evidence of your own, rather than assuming that every reader considers libertarianism to be a Bad Thing. Veiled ad-hominem attacks are an impediment to in
Re:I call BS. (Score:2, Informative)
And yes, I know that they are two different things. But they are not mutually exclusive things, and reading through their site, I felt that they met both definitions.
Now, how about YOUR ad-hominem attack?
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
I did make a generalization, and I'm encouraged to know that there are libertarians that support the environment.
I have also heard Libertarians saying that the government shouldn't own public lands, and that public parks and open spaces should be privately owned and that their use should be determined by
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Are you sure about that? I know that some paper is produced using pulp from old growth forests; but I thought that was just because there's lots of small bits and pieces left over (after the large pieces of lumber have been cut) which can't be used for anything else.
Re:I call BS. (Score:2)
Different regions have different logging routines. What most people don't know is that forestry is a leading industry in unusual
A problem with recycling (Score:2)
Middle of logging country (Score:2)
The shock continued when I also stated in fact most paper comes from trees planted just for that purpose
Do you have facts to back this part up?
Growing up in a small town in logging country doesn't really make you a paper expert.
And who claimed that paper comes from old growth forest? Are you sure you aren't mixing up the messages?
Re:Middle of logging country (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have a source, but Minnesota grows a lot of paper trees, and the logging companyes prefer popal, which grows very quickly, lots are generally logged every 10 years or less. An Oak tree can live for 300 years, but it grows slowly. Popal grows much faster.
Re: Middle of logging country (Score:2)
> I don't have a source, but Minnesota grows a lot of paper trees, and the logging companyes prefer popal, which grows very quickly
Actually, they prefer harvesting public lands at no cost under the guise of fire prevention. They settle for popal when they can't get what they want.
Depends.... (Score:4, Insightful)
There needn't be a single, universal answer to this. It depends on the alternatives to recycling and the costs of each. For example, it may not make much sense to recycle steel if you live between an iron mine and a coal mine, but if you're in Japan, and have domestic supplies of neither raw material, recycling may make sense.
Another fact is the cost of the inputs, key among which is labor. If labor is cheap, picking through garbage to find glass, metal, and specific kinds of plastic makes sense. If it costs US$20/hr, it probably doesn't.
And finally, you need to consider the cost/benefit of your alternative, landfill or incineration. In some places, potentially recyclable materials, including some plastics, are burnt to generate electricity; this might make more sense than recycling. And if you're in Japan, recycling can also save valuable land from the dumps. That probably matters less in Montana.
Bingo (Score:3, Interesting)
Recycling is about anything but saving te environment. It's about economics.
Practically nobody who is in a position to really 'clean things up' is motivated to do so. People who run recycling plants by and large don't give a hoot about the environment - they're trying to make a profit. Recycling only happens when it's easier/faster/cheaper/more profitable than using new materials. And you can make all the federal laws you want abo
I am a student at a midwestern research university (Score:2)
umm...yeah (Score:2)
Nope it just some horribly biased marginal source with no statistics other than the fact that we only have to make 44 square miles of our country into landfill. Great, which major metropolitan area should we bury?
So, here's the crazy logic I alluded to. We use oil to make plastic. We dig oil up from the ground. When you recycle plastic it means we have more oil to burn because we don't have to use it to make
Re:umm...yeah (Score:2)
(Emphasis mine.)
I do hope that was ment as an ironic statement. Otherwise it's just pretty sad.
Re:umm...yeah (Score:2)
I hope you were joking with your "crazy logic", because it's about as "logical" as the marketing spin the oil or tobacco companies would come up with.
Re:umm...yeah (Score:2)
See the beauty of my plan is that it produced incentives to reduce the amount of oil we use. The less oil we have, the more expensive it becomes.
I don't understand your problem with my logic. Tell me where there is a hole in the logic and I'll accept you comparing me to oil and tobacco companies. But I'm not really worried, the logic is flawless. Hey, prove me wrong.
Re:Get informed PLEASE (Score:2)
If plastic broke down, it would emit CO2. Which is bad.
I never said it turned into oil. That would be bad 'cause it could be burned, thus releasing CO2.
It's all about walking on carbon vs. breathing it.
Whoo Boy! (Score:3, Insightful)
But autocracy breeds corruption. And when you have to base your policy on "what if" and "just in case" and not, for example, 5000 years of careful scientific observation, the possibility for corruption becomes much more than a possibility. Corruption and waste run rampant in any system that is based more on faith and arguments from authority [skeptics.com.au] than on science because oversight and public scruitiny become extremely difficult, and environmental policy is no different.
Don't get me wrong. We need these laws...otherwise we go back to the days of rivers being so polluted that they catch on fire [amrivers.org]. But unless some serious and objective long-term study is done in all areas of environmental science, the solutions will always be very sub-optimal and may not, in fact, do anything to protect the long term health of the planet.
Re:Whoo Boy! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is most obvious when Americans say "Our way is better because we make more money".
Recycling in the US is a mostly a political issue, the article you quote reads like a Microsoft apologist paper than anything else.
Resource management should be deemed successful using other metrics:
Also for recycling to be successful, it most be the norm rather than the exception and the end consumer must do the sorting and separation. Here, there is quite a large fine if you are caught not sorting your trash, and it is levied on all of the flats in the house, so generally your neighbors do not tolerate this sort of thing!
Scarcity of disposal facilities (Score:3, Interesting)
Things might be different over there in the land of the freely available, but here in Europe, the push to recycle has as much to do with not generating waste. We're running out of space to put the stuff, and noone wants incinerators built near them, so every attempt to build one gets held up in court for years.
And yes, sand for glass is pretty damn cheap, but in some places, it can be a lot easier to turn old glass into new glass than to find a new quarry, or beach that isn't vanishing due to everyone driving down and taking sand and rocks for their gardens.
The economic arguments aren't all focused on costs of production, or sustainable use of resources anymore (since we're supposed to have learnt the lessons by now).
Re:Scarcity of disposal facilities (Score:2)
I find it incredibly hard to believe that beaches are vanishing due to "everyone driving down and taking sand and rocks for their gardens" -- do you have any data to back that up?
Doesn't natural movement of sand, beach erosion, storm effects, and even rising sea le
Re:Beaches (Score:2)
Wow, an opinion piece by the Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
Next week: "Smoking is good for your health" by the R.J. Reynolds Institute.
Re:Wow, an opinion piece by the Heartland Institut (Score:2)
Remember, kids -- if your opponent doesn't use unfair ad hominems against, that's no reason to pretend they did and accuse them anyway!
Re:Wow, an opinion piece by the Heartland Institut (Score:2)
Re:Wow, an opinion piece by the Heartland Institut (Score:2, Insightful)
But what do you expect the Heartland institute is a propaganda arm of the politically active corporate sector. And this is not even a liberal/conservative argument, there are plenty of conservatives who embrace environmentalist arguments. This is a political conflict between economic interests who have heretofore not had to pay for the costs associated w/ pollution generated by their product and services(known in economics as externalitie
Re:Wow, an opinion piece by the Heartland Institut (Score:2)
Recycling is to achieve two goals. (Score:2, Insightful)
Trees need to shed their leaves come winter in order to prevent this very vulnarable part of tree to become damaged and with it damage the tree itself. However these leaves represent a huge amount of resources for the tree. The energe invested in growing them is not a problem. It will have gained enough energe from them in return to regrow them next year.
The minerals however are another matter. Soil contains only a limited amount of the building blocks for leaves
Re:Recycling is to achieve two goals. (Score:2)
So YOU'RE the Asshole who crawls along in front of us on the Highway, feeling all righteous and legal, doing this so called "speed limit"!
Probably one of those stupid liberal raghead dykes...
Author is Demented (Score:2)
Re:Author is Demented (Score:2)
You would think, but you'd be wrong. Having a forest of trees that never get harvested doesn't pay for anyone, even governments. At any given point, the number of trees *with* paper is always more than *without* paper. If the land wasn't used for trees, it would be used to grow hay or pasture animals. I could draw you a nice graph out of --- and /\, but Slashcode would just fark it all up.
Re:Author is Demented (Score:2)
It's a mistake to think that a natural forest has to "pay" for anyone, even governments.
The number of old-growth trees is reduced to 0. Plantation trees are hardly the same thing.
Re:Author is Demented (Score:2)
In what way are they worse? What do 'old-growth' trees provide that fast-growing trees don't, besides nostalgia?
Would the US be better-off if we hunted buffalo instead of cattle? Should we outlaw honey harvesting to encourage the bee population? I'm convinced that most of the resources that humans squander would be better used by a diverse conglomerate of insect species; frankly, I don't care.
If these environmentalist arguments don't begin to have some sort
Re:Author is Demented (Score:2)
Habitats for animals. Plantation forests are notorious for being biological wastelands.
Also the fast growing trees that they use (typically pine) destroy the soil.
But you still miss the point. Plantation trees aren't planted for the long-term benefit of the forest. They are planted as a crop to be harvested when they are mature. Eventually the plantation trees are logged and there are no
Re:Author is Demented (Score:2)
I'm speechless. I can't even imagine that you're serious but apparently you are.
The article missed part of the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to totally miss the point, Mr. Article! Clearly a 44mi x 44mi hole in the ground is possible (I nominate somewhere in Utah) but the fact is that in our large cities, we have nowhere to put the trash. NYC is a great example of this. We recycle because it's something else to do with the trash besides truck the sh*t to some inland landfill. In other words:
There is no more room, convenient to the cities where most people live (and therefore most trash is generated), for our trash to be dumped. This means either (A) urban/suburban residents paying the garbage company [no, not SCO, the other kind of garbage company] exorbitant amounts of money to haul garbage in a truck to someplace like Utah, or (B) reducing our trash output by whatever means is possible.
I'll take B.
Re:The article missed part of the point. (Score:2)
(C) Move the fsck out of the city. Spread out a bit.
Yet another (inadvertant) bit of support for my pet philosophy:
People don't do well living like insects.
NIMBY (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the best place for the landfill is next door to Roy E. Cordato's house or the Heartland Institute, though I'm sure they'd prefer it be next door to someone of lower income.
So many of these rants sound to me
Re:NIMBY (Score:2)
A couple of good books. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A couple of good books. (Score:2)
One example can be found at this URL [gristmagazine.com]. There are many others.
Provides jobs (Score:2)
Negative Effects of Recycling (Score:2, Interesting)
As paper decomposes it encourages the growth of microorgamisms that effectively 'eat' trash. Without these microrganisms, material such as plastics are taking much longer to degrade. So, rather ironically, putting less
Re:Negative Effects of Recycling (Score:2, Informative)
>> decompose, imagine the gases that would be
>> coming out of the landfill.
One of the points of the article was that as the micro-organisms which are encouraged to develop by the decomposing paper cause a decomposition of less degradable materials that is not only faster, but also reduces the release of harmful gasses.
Aluminium Recycling considered harmful (Score:2)
Or are you? The greatest user of recycled aluminium is the motor car industry. So all those gas-guzzling, air-polluting SUVs driving around are made cheaper by being constructed from your recycled Coke cans...
- true or false? I dunno, its something I heard from a Gr
Re:Aluminium Recycling considered harmful (Score:3, Insightful)
sorting metal is easily done by the factory using an electromagnet...
The automotive industry is also the largest consummer of recycled steel...
It doesn't matter whether it's an SUV or a zero emissions electric car -- they're both made of metals ...
It requires less energy to re-smelt the metal than to extract it from the ore and process it from scratch (although they're often mixed new with recycled to control the final mixture)...
There was... (Score:2)
I wish I could find the article, because it was excellent and thorough. The conclusion was recycling is more wasteful and pollutes more than just throwing away the old stuff (no polution other than transport) and making new. The problem was that sanitation companies (if you don't know who owns these, mayb
A small experiment. (Score:3, Informative)
When, some years ago, I was in the nappy (diaper in the US) purchasing stage, writing on the packat claimed that using disposables was more environmentally friendly than machine washing and tumble drying re-usables. This was from an obviously biased source, so I didn't take it seriously (but went on buying disposable because of the yuck factor) but it does suggests the relative costs must be in the same ballpark for them to get the claim past the advertising standards people.
Re:A small experiment. (Score:3, Insightful)
If this is really what the package read, then you can see how they got this past the advertising standards people: Tumble drying is highly inefficient, burning lots of energy just to evaporate water. If, instead, you machine washed the cloth diapers and then hung them out to dry
disposable diaper as "organic waste" (Score:2)
Take a look at the "about" page (Score:2)
The Heartland Institute is a genuinely independent source of research and commentary founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1984. It is not affiliated with any political party, business, or foundation. Its activities are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
They say they're not affiliated with any political party, but who do they cite as authorities who approve of their work?
Heartland has been endorsed by some of the country's leading scholars, public policy experts, and elected of
I've been think about this recently (Score:2)
Just from your first 2 sentences... (Score:2)
OK, I haven't read the article. However, just from your first 2 sentences, I would say that it's more likely that recycling does good. Note what you said:
If one does a google on Why To Recycle there is a staggering amount of information on how recycling saves trees, resources, reduces pollution and generally is A Good Thing (tm). However, I recently read this article which comments...
(emphasis mine)
So...there's a "staggering amount" of information on why recycling's good, but suddenly now, because on
Getting paid to recycle (Score:2)
Re:Getting paid to recycle (Score:2)
Is it cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)
Much in the way that electric cars don't reduce pollution (just redistribute it out of the cities to the power stations), recycling doesn't always reduce the impact on the environment... it just redistributes that impact to somewhere else.
Re:Is it cheaper? (Score:2)
The problem with this argument, as I said, is that you are still doing damage, just in a different area. Sure recycling paper may save trees... but maybe it kills fish by dumping hot/contaminated water into the river. Recycling cans will alleviate strip mining for metal in one part of the world, but will increase the drilling for oil in another...
Quanity matters (Score:2)
Compared to say, a large retail store, who has for years, crushed and bundled cardboard boxes, for recycling. But they have the space to store a partial truckload, making it worth the effort to pick up. Now, plastic amd steel strap can be recycled in the same way.
The problem now is that residential garbage needs to be sorted by a human for recycling. Until a machine is invented that can sort
Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:4, Insightful)
Bottles work to recycle, if like in most of Canada, they are washed and reused instead of broken down and remelted. I remember the numbers being a little closer for glass, depending on the type.
The problem people forget is nothing is free. You need to collect the material. That's energy. Then you need to transport the materials to a center, where they are trucked yet again. All the while burning gasoline and diesel - don't forget those emissions in your calculations. Then you need to expend more energy to reduce the material to a simple state, then more energy still to reform it. The end product often needs to be recombined with unrecycled material to get an acceptable grade of finished product.
Do the environmentalists have any idea how paper is recycled? It's not friendly - you need very powerful chemicals to break up the bonds to reform into pulp. Where do you think those chemicals go when they're used up?
The sad thing is often it makes more sense to throw it away. Recycling is DEFINATELY not based on a solid background. It is a feel good, useless exercise to make children and ignorant adults feel better about their MASSIVE impact on the environment.
If you REALLY care about the environment, live close to where you work or telecommute so you don't have to drive and waste gas. Drive a small car. No, you don't need a SUV. Yes, they're nice. Use LESS material. Buy material in BULK so you don't have packaging. Limit your consumption of electricity. If you really want to help, don't have more than one or two children. If you're not selfish at all - don't have ANY children. Those things will make a real impact.
Recycling a bottle just makes you feel good, because the government must be right.
Show me the science. Recycling, until then, remains a bad joke. There is no shortage of land for landfills. There is no shortage of trees. Trees are the least of our problems. There is certainly no shortage of either iron or aluminum in the earth's crust. There is no shortage of silica. What there IS a shortage of is ENERGY. Wars are being fought over oil - thousands of people die over oil. Many more will in the future. People do not die over glass bottles.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Do you know where this expression came from? Do you know why recycling is last on that expression? Because it doesn't work.
Rant off.
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:3)
Only glass bottles are reused. Beer bottles are probably the biggest supply. (When was the last time you actually bought a Coke in a glass bottle? They exist, but are sometimes hard to find.)
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:2)
Ummm, aluminium was a bad material to pick on... it takes about 20 times more energy to produce aluminium from bauxite ore than it takes to recycle it. Aluminium is one of the few materials that actually makes sense to recycle. As you state, there IS a shortage of energy.
Factor in the transportation, handling, and processing/sorting effort, and you'll realize why you need to pay a recycling fee to process that can back. That's my point. If it was such a great buy, you wouldn't have to legislate recyclin
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:2)
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure (most of these references are in swedish, but
What there IS a shortage of is ENERGY.
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:3, Informative)
Your drivel redlined my bogometer hard :
The real problem environmentalists miss is the energy issue - we are going to run out of energy long before we ever come close of running out of Alumininum. Aluminum recycling is particularly stupid because it's so cheap to refine in mass quantities.
According to the Aluminium Association of Canada (who should know better than you do), recycling aluminium require 95% less energy. Linkage [aluminium.qc.ca].
Do the environmentalists have any idea how paper is recycled? It's not f
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:2)
Given how badly off your calculations are, you might want to take some remedial math and/or science courses. Others have sufficiently pointed out the numbers on aluminum. Paper is more marginal, but not vastly so.
The problem people forget is nothing is free. You need to collect the material. That's energy. Then you need to transport the materials to a cente
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:2)
You're generally right about recycling paper being a costly process, but that specific example is wrong. The spent caustics used to pulp paper are removed from the pulp and sent to a *drum roll please* recovery boiler, where so much energy is burned out of it that it powers the rest of the mi
Re:Show me some thermodynamics. (Score:2)
All studies indicate that intelligence is distrubuted according to a standard curve. There are billions of people, that puts tens and hundreds of thousands in the highest percentiles. There are very smart people in China and India that mearly lack exposure to education - and immigration can solve that. There is certainly no problem with the gene pool.
Mind you, I am am selfish enough to want children (eventually). My g3n3s 0wn j00. I'm even If you were truely selfless abou
You forgot the transportation and processing fees (Score:2)
Watch all the soccer moms dropping off the cans in their SUV's. Then watch trucks haul the cans around. Then watch them get processed. Then watch them get shipped again.
We won't even get into recycling paper.
Re:You forgot the transportation and processing fe (Score:2)
You're comparing a small part of the life cycle of a can made from raw materials to the entire life cycle of a can made from recycled materials.
Waste that isn't recycled doesn't just magically disappear in the trash can, and packaging made from virgin materials doesn't magically materialize on the doorstep. You have to do the collection, transportation, and distribution whether the packaging
Some things to consider. (Score:2)
Recycling aluminum makes sense, as it's one of the few items that actually gets stronger as you recycle it. Many people don't realize, however, that in many jurisdictions beverage cans aren't made of aluminum -- their bodies are often extruded steel, with only the top being aluminum. However, steel recycles well too, so this isn't really a major problem. Indeed, steel is typically the most often recycled material.
Recycling isn't just about making new material out of old material, or minimizing the impac
Re:Toxic Waste (Score:2, Informative)
However, the original poster has got it wrong when he claims no old-growth forest is used in the paper industry.
Here in Australia there are thousands of hectares of old-growth forest being used for just that. And the plantations set up are mostly of faster-growing, low-value timber. The largest timber companies have a long record of setting up a few "showcase" plantations while cont
Re:Toxic Waste (Score:2, Informative)
The de-inking water can then be filtered or evaporated, and what you end up with is the ink that was already on the paper, and some soap.
If that paper is NOT recycled, where would the phone book go? Into a landfill or an incinerator (possibly as paret of an energy plant).
If the
Re:Toxic Waste (Score:2)
Re:My favourite is glass (Score:2)
Re:My favourite is glass (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at a glass factory, but you could have at least used google to learn how the process works.
Science Agrees! (Score:2)
Should be: "Urban Ledgend Agrees!" (Score:2)
glass is a silicon dioxide molten superfluid (it's below 'freezing' temperature but not crystalized)
This is an urban legend. Glass is not a molten superfluid, supercooled liquid, etc. It is an amorphous solid. Old windows do not flow [ucr.edu]. Soda is used to reduce the melting point of sand in making new glass; it works the same way as putting salt on ice does. Adding old glass reduces the melting point the same way puting frozen saltwater on ice would, but that doesn't buy you anything--you can just as wel
Re:My favourite is glass (Score:3, Insightful)
Transportation costs are a major factor in recycling glass. This results in a finite radius around glass plants in which it is economical to ship recycled glass back to the manufacturer. Transportation costs are also why you will typically find glass plants located close to sources of glass grade sand such as the Saint Louis area. Given that commodity prices for industrial grade sand is roughly $18/ton, see USGS mineral commodity summary [usgs.gov], it doesn't take many miles before transportation costs become proh
Re:aren't you forgetting something (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago , our town's landfill, well, filled up.
But... due to a rather amazing bit of short-sightedness there's a two year delay in getting the new landfill online! What to do?
Well, in our case, they've gotten the Recycling Nazi's to take over operation of the landfill (which is rapidly turning into a large hill, there's a good view from the top).
Now everyone going in gets their load of junk inspected for anything recyclable by the Recycling Nazi's. Boxes / glass / paper / car parts / old fridges / oil / any domestic appliance gets taken and so on. The only thing that makes it to the landfill now is domestic refuse. Of course, when I use the phrase "Recycling Nazi" I'm being facetious - they're quite friendly and will happily sift through your junk without any effort on your part.
The upshot of this is of course
- Our landfill grows at a slower rate than it did previously. Which is lucky , because for a while there we all thought it would start blocking out the sun soon
- That one man's junk is another man's treasure and they make a bit of cash selling used parts cheap.(Eg I bought an A/C compressor for my car for $5, as opposed to $400 new)
Re:Trees (Score:2)
Why is that? Asthetics and treehuggery aside, of course.
This is probably buried WAY too deep in the second page to get read, but I think all that really needs to happen is to put everybody on an airplane and fly them over Seattle or New Hampshire. Every ten seconds look out the window and point at the fields of trees growing as far as the eyes can see and say 'hey look, another tree. and over there... more trees. hey look over that direction - se
Re:Aaaaaaah shit (Score:2)