Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We need some new threads. No, I don't meah recycled old threads.
Is it worthwhile trying to recycle your trash?
In my view, the main value of "recycling" is just to get people to think about how much we waste and throw away. But recycling probably doesn't make any real impact at all on the overall environment, with a couple of notable exceptioons. Recycling aluminum cans is very valuable, because the cost of recycling old alumimum is less than 5% of the cost of creating new aluminum as a raw resource. And the value of recycling plastic is that it does not get burned, and burning plastic in the asmosphere is a serious health hazard.
I recycle paper at the micro level. I never buy paper---I use the blank backs of junk mail and envelopes. I never throw junk mail paper away unless it is printed on both sides.
I've recycled aluminum cans for decades, but even that is getting to the point where I ask myself why. I took 89 pounds of cans to the recycler last week and got $17 plus change -- 20 cents a pound. That's half what it was the last time I turned in cans. But I'll keep doing it as long as it doesn't cost me money.
Most of the recycling here costs the homeowner (we have to pay for the bags), and then it costs the city extra to boot. I'll give a pat on the back to anyone who pays extra to have their trash recycled, but I won't do it. I read in our local newspaper a few months ago that 80% of the "recycled" material going into our waste plant wasn't being recycled anyway. It was being stacked for recycling, but because there wasn't enough manpower to handle it properly in a timely manner, it was being moved to the dump and buried.
Yeah, it's worth it to recycle some stuff but not everything.
Many areas are running out of landfill space so anything that can be taken out if the waste stream is a positive. One problem I've seen, very limited view, is that many jurisdictions (recycling is a governmental task many places) is no real management knowledge. Recyclers should be paying for the material not being paid for taking it away. I did a quick study for where I live for this year's budget and my small town could save $40K/year in landfill fees if we have a 90% participation in recycling. Most of the savings don't come from cans or bottles but paper, especially newsprint.
I worked for a glass company years ago and we would pay for waste glass. Several guys would come in once a month with 55 gallon drums full of glass they'd collected alng the roads or at their jobs. I don't remember what we paid per pound, I want to say a nickel.
For the most part, recycling is a waste of resources. That's why people have to be practically shamed and sometimes forced by law into doing it and it's why governments have to subsidize it. Markets already exist for those materials where recycling makes sense from a resource-consumption standpoint, mainly metals such as steel and aluminum.
I stopped at a highway rest area in Wisconsin, a state that is particularly avid about recycling. At one rest area, I counted 28 separate receptacles for trash, each one marked with the different contents that it was intended to accept. (There were several separate banks of similar recycling receptacles.) Each receptacle was in an artistic pebbled masonry monolith intended to render scenic beauty to the Interstate, an oxymoron. It must have cost the taxpayers several million dollars to erect that artistic monument to the principle of recycling. Men in orange jumpsuits from the nearby jail could have come over an picked up the trash off the ground, and saved the state millions. Frustrated travelers no doubt got fed up with taking their car litter bag apart and sorting out all the plastic spoons and jar lids and paper napkins, and in a majority of cases, everything simply went into the trash undifferentiated, and still had to be resorted by men earning union scale.
It depends on the costs and the benefits. Metals recycle pretty efficiently compared to digging up more after tossing it. While newspapers with the mineral based ink took more energy and chemicals to recycle it into new newspaper, but could be reused in other fashions. It all depends on what it takes, it's not great to recycle everything back into the same products again...but you can do something with old products to make sure they aren't just shoved into a landfill.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
