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.
...(I never asked but I wonder if the municipalities get paid for the stuff they drop off.)
Of course they do. It is not a profit after the overhead is counted in, but once the start up costs like new bins and trucks are paid off, the city spends less on recycling than on garbage.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral
justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith
We could solve many problems with this issues. First, we could take unemployed and homeless people and send them to the dumps where the cities dump their waste. Conveyer belts could be set up so all trash goes down the conveyer belt and the recyleables pulled out by hand.
Pay the workers on "commision".
Win - Win solution. Bravo!!!!
Actually most cities have some form of garbage sorting facility maned by city workers so there wouldnt be any room for unemployed and homeless people, but seems Penn and Teller have the most expedient solution = recycle nothing just thow it all in a dump somewhere and forget about it..
Of course they do. (get paid for recyclables)-It is not a profit after the overhead is counted in, but once the start up costs like new bins and trucks are paid off, the city spends less on recycling than on garbage.
Aye there's the rub, Avenger. My municipality doesn't have garbage pick-up. We pay for that separately to privately-hired haulers.
If left to our own devices, would we consider doing our own recycling if we could get paid for it like we used to in the "old days"? Especially in these hard economic times.
If we could have collection drives for charitable entities and let them get paid for transporting the newspapers and metals to the scrap yard, would folks be willing to do the dirty work? Or have they gotten too used to asking for cash donations?
OMG, I'm spending far too much time over-thinking this subject! LOL
At some places I have worked (and even at home) there have been the blue recycling containers for recyclable waste. yet many many times I have found trash thrown into the regular garbage can.
I remember going to one of my 3rd shift jobs and taking recyclable garbage out of the trash that thoughtless people had just thrown in there. It drives me crazy!
Why do people do this when there is clearly a container for recyclable waste? I would always find newspapers, those huge soda cups from Circle K, gallon milk jugs,etc... I would even make a sign @ wk asking people to please recycle and people would still do it! Are people truly that lazy to walk a few more yards to the blue container to dispose of their trash?
Do people just not care about the planet?
At least at home it doesn't happen often, my kids are on board with recycling, it's usually people that come over...but then I let them know
Well, that's my rant for today.
You do realize that all the matter on the planet get's recycled regardless of whether it's placed into a recycle bin or not? It might not get re-used immediately but it all gets re-used.
I'll start seperating my trash when someone makes it worth my while economically. In other words when someone pays me to to do it I'll do it. Until then I'll let mother nature handle it. She's been doing a fabulous job for a few million years and she doesn't charge me.
Of course they do. It is not a profit after the overhead is counted in, but once the start up costs like new bins and trucks are paid off, the city spends less on recycling than on garbage.
I call BS on this. Let's see some authority for this.
You do realize that all the matter on the planet get's recycled regardless of whether it's placed into a recycle bin or not? It might not get re-used immediately but it all gets re-used.
I'll start seperating my trash when someone makes it worth my while economically. In other words when someone pays me to to do it I'll do it. Until then I'll let mother nature handle it. She's been doing a fabulous job for a few million years and she doesn't charge me.
While I do agree Time2, that Mother Nature is an efficient recycler of organic materials, there is a difference between the matter that is "digested" and returned to the earth and the synthetics that MN never had to deal with in the past. It would seem to be that humankind's ingenuity proves to be the undoing of the planet in our time. The ability to invent items that never have been dealt with before means the planet must relearn everything it ever knew about absorbing the unwanted items effectively.
While at some point in time the Old Girl may be able to learn how to break down the plastics that we are feeding her, it may be hundreeds of thousands of years, and during that time, humans continue to add to the pollution.
Research to find ways to recycle discarded plastics into other usable products while refusing to add the discards to the already-existing mounds of rubbish should be a priority.
Make no mistake, my motives for recycling are purely in my own best interest. At my age, I'm not going to be around to deal with the problem in the long term, so I'll take my reward here and now in ice cream cones. If you try to find a reason that benefits you, you may be more willing to take the extra steps to the big blue bin. All the best to you.
Those plastics you are so worried about have been shown to break down pretty quickly. This stuff you hear about things like 6 pack rings being a danger to animals is real but that's because the plastics outlive the animals not because they never go away.
Quote:
2007 July 15
According to an article in England’s “Daily Mail”, the first “Friendly Floatee” rubber duck has been found in the UK. As predicted by oceanographers, some of the 29,000 rubber ducks (and frogs, beavers and turtles) accidentally lost at sea in 1992 are now beginning to make landfall in Britain. The wayward rubber duck was found by Penny Harris, 60, as she walked her dog on a Devon beach. Covered in brown seaweed and barnacle-encrusted, the faded and partially decomposed toy has been sent to manufacturer The First Years in order to claim the $100 finders reward offered by the company.
Seattle oceanographer Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who has been tracking ocean-going oddities since 1991, predicts another wave of ducks will make landfall in North America in 2007. Dr. Ebbesmeyer’s work in ocean currents, and the stuff that floats on them, has called worldwide attention to the issue of ocean pollution. It is estimated that 10,000 shipping containers fall into the ocean each year, adding to the millions of bits of trash and junk floating around the world. After decades of exposure to the elements, most garbage breaks down into a layer of plastic and chemical scum that is coating the surface of oceans worldwide.
I'm not pointing this out to justify littering, only that those plastics the recyclers like to talk about being around "forever" are known to decompose over a matter of years - not even decades. Now let's put those items in a landfill where that "scum" cannot do environmental damage and the decomposition process is itself tapped for energy. Here's an example from the town I was born in. We used to race rc cars in the park at this place, it was very nice.
While I do agree Time2, that Mother Nature is an efficient recycler of organic materials, there is a difference between the matter that is "digested" and returned to the earth and the synthetics that MN never had to deal with in the past. It would seem to be that humankind's ingenuity proves to be the undoing of the planet in our time. The ability to invent items that never have been dealt with before means the planet must relearn everything it ever knew about absorbing the unwanted items effectively.
While at some point in time the Old Girl may be able to learn how to break down the plastics that we are feeding her, it may be hundreeds of thousands of years, and during that time, humans continue to add to the pollution.
Research to find ways to recycle discarded plastics into other usable products while refusing to add the discards to the already-existing mounds of rubbish should be a priority.
Make no mistake, my motives for recycling are purely in my own best interest. At my age, I'm not going to be around to deal with the problem in the long term, so I'll take my reward here and now in ice cream cones. If you try to find a reason that benefits you, you may be more willing to take the extra steps to the big blue bin. All the best to you.
Take any plastic and bury it in the ground for 5 years and then dig it up and see what is left. Plastic wont last a human lifetime much less hundreds of thousands of years. I think recycling for those that want to do it is great, but it's impact on the planet is so remote that it can't be measured and I personally choose to not go through life letting inert matter dictate how I live. That's just a personal decision based on common sense.
Of course they do. It is not a profit after the overhead is counted in, but once the start up costs like new bins and trucks are paid off, the city spends less on recycling than on garbage.
Recycling trucks doesn't produce revenues anymore. It a service provided to help reduce landfills space and to promote going green. Really they profit from solid waste and makes no money on residential recycling. We pay the recycling center to dump. In an unincorporated area they have to pay for recycling service. They produce revenues from that, but really isn't that much profitable. A truck that cost $250,000, fuel, maintenance, tires and the driver salary is alot overhead to overcome. We have maybe 2 trucks out of 80 that picks up unincorporated trash and recyclables two days a`week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilson1010
I call BS on this. Let's see some authority for this.
Recyclables collection isn't profitable for a Refuse collection company. It's profitable for a recycling center. We pay over $200 to dump. The center sorts it out and sell it to China. Commercial collection produces revenues. Residential not so much. We provide the service to win bids. We're not losing money on it, just not making money on it either.
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.
