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Education Science

Is Recycling Really Worth It? 209

Posted by Cliff from the other-alternatives-may-be-worse dept.
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."
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Is Recycling Really Worth It? More

Is Recycling Really Worth It?

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  • From the Google link:

    The following words are very common and were not included in your search: why to.
  • See if you can find any data that indicates just how toxic the recycling process is vs the original manufacturing process. I have a sneaky suspicion that recycling computers by shredding them, melting them down and pouring them into a chemical soup is in fact worse for the environment that if they were just thrown out. (Of course, keeping them running through repair and upgrade is best by far, but even that still spins off bits that can't be used again.)
    • melting them down and pouring them into a chemical soup is in fact worse for the environment that if they were just thrown out

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42@osu. e d u> on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @12:58AM (#7267601)
    At my high school there's a trash can and recycling bin in nearly every room. After school lets out, the janitor comes around and dumps both into his trash bin.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whoda ( 569082 ) *
      It's called single stream recycling.

      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.
  • Dear Tuning Point Rehabilitation Center,

    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.

  • Recycling (Score:3, Insightful)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @01:07AM (#7267634)
    A quick comment on old growth forests. Preserving old growth forests has nothing to do with recycling or need. Compared to 150 years ago, old growth forests are nearly gone. I want old growth forests preserved because they are rare and valuable from a beauty and moral standpoint. Many who have been in a pacific northwest old growth forest know this. There is plenty (like most forest land) of other managed non-old growth forest land that logging companies manage. By cutting the last of the old growth forests, companies profit and loggers will lose their jobs. To imply that the ones who recycle (misguided, I agree) are ignorant need to look at the loggers who let their bosses profit while they lose their livelihood. These days, old growth forests are exceedingly valuable and rare and truely irreplaceable.

    -Sean
    • So...
      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?
      • By cutting the last of the old growth forests, companies profit and loggers will lose their jobs.
         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

      • False choice. There is always the option of finding a sustainable method. But of course Americans like things 1) cheap 2) now (despite the fact that they will be vastly more expensive later), which tends to run counter to sustainable practices (same thing for energy policy, etc.).

  • I call BS. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the argonaut ( 676260 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @01:11AM (#7267657) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by ninjadroid ( 622900 )

      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)

        by the argonaut ( 676260 )
        I didn't mean to imply that it was a Bad Thing (although I would agree that it is), I was merely noting that it is there. Before considering the validity of any source, the first step is to note its bias.

        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?
    • Old growth logging for paper does occur in BC

      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.
    • Oddly, your call for more hemp (which I support... it's way too useful) is closer to reality than you might think. In many cases (percentages won't be suggested), the "trees" for even quality paper stock in the Southeastern United States are in a state much closer to hemp plants. If you tour the Weyerhauser facility in Louisiana, you'd think they're making paper from acres of pot.

      Different regions have different logging routines. What most people don't know is that forestry is a leading industry in unusual
  • One problem with recycling is an economic one. Recycling only works if recycling affects supply and not price. If supply is constant, recyclers will cause prices to fall, and therefore, sales should rise, particularly if recyclers are in the minority. Saving paper may just allow another company to buy more paper at a lower price, therefore negating the gain of recycling. Does that mean we shouldn't recycle? No! It means that other political efforts may be required to prevent recyclers for just allow
  • I informed them (being from a small town in the middle of logging country)

    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?

    • 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.


      • > 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)

    by brusk ( 135896 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @01:50AM (#7267832)

    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)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      If there was ever a post tat deserved a +1 insightful, it's the parent post.

      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
  • ...and we found out last year that the school just throws the stuff in all the in-dorm recycling bins in the trash anyway. I guess I can't blame them so much, tho - everybody seems to throw their trash in the bins anyway. Of course, they could mark the bins a bit better, and could let folks know specifically what sorts of products can be recycled. Believe it or not, most people think that staples count as recyclable paper.
  • Ok, when I first saw this post I was all excited. Finally someone agrees with my crazy logic.

    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

    • 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 more plastic.

      But, if you throw plastic away the oil goes back into the ground (hopefully) and we have less oil to pollute the atmosphere with. So recycling plastic leads to air pollution.

      (Emphasis mine.)
      I do hope that was ment as an ironic statement. Otherwise it's just pretty sad.

    • ummm... or we can recycle our plastic and reduce the amount of oil we burn, thus reducing the amount of oil we dig up. Saving our natural resources for future generations, reducing landfill, and reducing air pollution all at the same time.

      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.
      • or we can recycle our plastic and reduce the amount of oil we burn

        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.

  • Whoo Boy! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dr. Bent ( 533421 ) <<ben> <at> <int.com>> on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @01:56AM (#7267870) Homepage
    Environmental policy is, by it's very nature (pun!), ineffecient. Pollution is one of those rare problems [wikipedia.org] that cannot be solved by a competitive free market. It's extremely difficult for people to "vote with thier dollars" for whatever company creates the least amount of long term negative environmental impact. Firstly, because that kind of thing is difficult to print on a label. Secondly, because nobody knows what the long term effects of what we do really is. So you have to dictate from the top.

    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)

      by bhima ( 46039 ) <(Bhima.Pandava) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @02:21AM (#7267968) Journal
      I think that the fact that most people miss is that recycling is resource management. It does not intrinsically need to be profitable.

      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:

      Reusing glass bottles rather than recycling them is an example.
      Others would be land fill usage and environmental contamination (like from all of our old electronic toys or air pollution from incineration).

      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)

    by sboyle ( 139324 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @01:59AM (#7267886)
    Reuse is becoming cheaper than disposal for lots of things.

    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).

    • 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 ... beach that isn't vanishing due to everyone driving down and taking sand and rocks for their gardens.

      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

  • saying recycling isn't worth it. The Heartland [mediatransparency.org] what? [capitalresearch.org] Heartland bills itself as "the marketing arm of the free-market movement. Title of it's newsletter is Intellectual Ammunition, they get grants by GM, Exxon, Chevron and Amoco. The mission of Heartland is to support ideas like "market-based approaches to environmental protection" - IOW, if there's no money in protecting the environment, it's evil communism.

    Next week: "Smoking is good for your health" by the R.J. Reynolds Institute.

    • How in God's name is that insightful? Lars completely dismisses the content of the piece because he doesn't like who's writing it. How childish.

      IOW, if there's no money in protecting the environment, it's evil communism.


      Remember, kids -- if your opponent doesn't use unfair ad hominems against, that's no reason to pretend they did and accuse them anyway!
      • Sorry that I put a grain of salt to your wonderful world of free market environmentalism. Face it, that article (6 years old BTW) is based on nothing but the authors agenda. There is no scientific basis, no data to back it up. The fact that the source is constantly spreading stuff like this and coincidently gets money from the worst poluters speaks values.
    • The article is idiotic in places and long on speculation in others.

      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
  • One of the simplest examples is with trees.

    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

    • (The same people) who think speed limits are a restriction of their civil rights

      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...

      //sarcasm for those with a humor level < 2

  • This same logic applies to the relationship between paper and trees. If we stopped making paper from trees, there would be fewer trees. Eighty-seven percent of the trees that are used for manufacturing paper are planted for that purpose. That implies that for every 13 trees "saved" by paper recycling, there will be 87 that never get planted. This is why, contrary to popular belief, both the amount of forest land and the number of trees in this country have been increasing for the last 50 years. Increased

    • No paper: 13 trees. Paper: 0 trees.

      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.

      • Having a forest of trees that never get harvested doesn't pay for anyone, even governments.

        It's a mistake to think that a natural forest has to "pay" for anyone, even governments.

        At any given point, the number of trees *with* paper is always more than *without* paper.

        The number of old-growth trees is reduced to 0. Plantation trees are hardly the same thing.

        • Plantation trees are hardly the same thing.

          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

          • In what way are they worse? What do 'old-growth' trees provide that fast-growing trees don't, besides nostalgia?

            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

  • The article missed part of the point. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danielsfca2 ( 696792 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @03:48AM (#7268233) Journal
    > it would require a hole that is 44 miles on each side and 120 feet deep. This is a mere one-tenth of 1 percent of the land area of the continental United States. As the report concludes, "there is sufficient land available to continue [our] reliance on landfills."

    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.
    • You left out:

      (C) Move the fsck out of the city. Spread out a bit.

      Yet another (inadvertant) bit of support for my pet philosophy:

      "Sprawl is your friend!"

      People don't do well living like insects.

    • NIMBY (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dpilot ( 134227 )
      Nobody wants the 44mi x 44mi x 120ft hole in their back yard. I have a sister who lives in Utah, and I've visited there, and they TREASURE their land. (So do we in Vermont, for that matter.) To get one Utah opinion that is shared by many (though assuredly not all) read the works of Edward Abbey.

      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

  • A couple of good books. (Score:3, Informative)

    by kinema ( 630983 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @03:50AM (#7268240)
    I can recomend a couple of good books on the subjet, writen by scientists. The first is The Skeptical Environmentalist [amazon.com] by Bjorn Lomborg and the other is The World According To Pimm [amazon.com] by Stuart L. Pimm. They are fair and well writen. Read them both.
  • If nothing else, recycling has created an entirely new industry... and many jobs. In the same way environmental cleanup has also created a new burgeoning industry... cleaning up our own waste has always been a huge industry, we're just thinking up new ways to do it.
  • I recently read an article in a scientific journal (I think it was 'Water & Environment Manager') about how recycling paper is actually detrimental to the environment; not just in terms of the energy costs involved in, but in long term damage to the unique biosystems of landfill sites.

    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
  • So you test all your cans on the little magnet, and throw the sticky ones in the 'steel' box and the non-sticky ones in the 'aluminium' (or aluminum) box. You're doing your bit for the environment - preserving the planet and its atmosphere.

    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
    • Your Greeny friend is a little confused:

      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)...

  • ...a New York Times Magazine article about this very topic I think in 96 or 97. Basically, they studied the history of recycling, the cost/benefits, and the political and economic motivations behind it.

    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)

    by AlecC ( 512609 ) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @08:37AM (#7269286)
    There was a study published in New Scientist some years ago in which they studied the use of disposable plastic coffee cups vs reusable china cups/mugs. They came to teh conclusion that if the mug was washed in a doshwasher after every use, it did more environmental harm (energy in, detergents out) than the plastic cup. Two uses per wash and the china won out.

    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)

      by dutky ( 20510 )
      AlecC [slashdot.org] wrote:

      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.

      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

    • There are now some cities in the Netherlands where disposable diaper should go into the "organic" waste bin, instead of the "rest" waste bin. Most cities in the Netherlands have collect "organic" and "rest" waste seperately. Appearantly there are now some waste processing plants that can process disposable diapers as organic material and recycle them in some manner.

  • 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 have come to the conclusion that the us is a society of convience, we thow stuff away all the time. It's not really aour fault tho, there is no incentive to recycle. It does not cost the consumer more to buy something that is made from virgin material. If we want recycling to take place you need to tax the piss out of non recycled materials. Spending the money on the recycling programs, education about packaging (not putting 10,000 pieces of paper in a box), and discounts for items made and packaged i

  • 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

  • Not to be greedy, but there used to be places that would pay you for your recycleables. I seem to remember 15 years ago going with my folks to the recycling center where our stuff got weighed and we got paid. Does that happen anymore? I'm living in Champaign-Urbana, IL so there may be other places that have more services than here on the prarie. What's available out there?
    • This has always been the case with metals and glass in most areas in the U.S. You just have to know where to take it. Our neighbor (a plumber working for the city) supplimented his income with money he made via metal recycling. This was, of course, in the days before recycling became mainstream.

  • Is it cheaper? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by clambake ( 37702 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @10:18AM (#7270271) Homepage
    Well, thing about it this way, is it cheaper to recycle or to create new from scratch? If it's not cheaper, then recycling is probably actually bad for the planet. Generally money is eventually tied to recources, i.e. natural resouces. At some point, that extra money you spend to recycle translates to extra electricity (read, burn more oil), extra man-power (and all the cost of keeping a human housed, fed and entertained), or some other extra resource being used up down the line.

    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.
  • Other than the aluminum can, and pop bottles, the average consumer doesn't generate enough prime scrap to recycle.

    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)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2003 @12:26PM (#7271802)
    The last time I tried to calculate the amount of energy saved vs. the energy expended by recycling Aluminum or Paper, I couldn't make it even close. 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.

    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.
    • 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.

      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.)

      • 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

    • As another has already said, reprocessing aluminum takes about 1/20th the energy that refining ore requires. This is pretty easy to test but unnecessary. Look at the market for recycleable aluminum. People pay handsomely for aluminum cans, doors, siding, etc. If raw ore and the energy to process it were so abundant then there would be no market for aluminium cans. In fact the only reason aluminum is as abundant as it is is because it's mostly produced with very cheap (but not from an environmental pers

    • 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

    • The last time I tried to calculate the amount of energy saved vs. the energy expended by recycling Aluminum or Paper, I couldn't make it even close.

      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

    • 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?

      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

  • 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

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