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I'm all for recycling if it's economically viable and/or if there's a REAL benefit to it. But often that's just not the case.
Metals are already recycled on an industrial scale- and that's a good thing. Keeps us from digging up the environment, conserves resources, AND it's less expensive in many cases.
But cardboard? Glass? Seriously?
Nobody is cutting old-growth forests for cardboard. Them there trees are a renewable resource! And glass... is there a sand-shortage that I'm not aware of?
Land-fills are a non-issue. Now that I've lived out west and I'd seen just how VAST the unused land in this country is... we could have ten times our current landfills and it wouldn't make one bit of difference.
I have a recycling container out front of the house. Never asked for one... they just brought it. It's good for throwing away excess boxes... pretty much nothing else.
10-04-2015, 08:19 PM
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n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow
Put costs aside. What I want to know is does recycling cut down on the size and quantity of land fills, and the garbage that we throw out in to the ocean? Is there something that shows that there has been a significant difference in the amount of trash due to us recycling?
Depends on the city really.
In Portland, garbage collection is down about 35% and that's just from going to once a week recycling pickup and every other week garbage pickup. The recycling bins often fill up before the garbage dumpsters.
Apparently the recycling industry is in trouble, because the economics are just not there. The CEO of Waste Management, the largest waste collection company in the country, is publicly expressing doubts about the future of this movement.
Honestly, I have no ideological objection to recycling. In fact, we are just getting ready to implement this service in the community where I live. But the question remains, why are we doing this and does it really make sense to allocate resources to this kind of an effort, in this way, at this time?
From the New York Times:
So just because a private company like Waste Management isn't making "money" at recycling it's now "costly & inefficient'!
I read somewhere that recycling is actually worse for the environment because the processes involved to break down the plastic, paper, and glass pollute more than just making new products.
It was probably started for political purposes. A local at an ethanol plant said that it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get when it's burned. It was for the farm vote.
I've seen it done well in northern Virginia. And I've seen it done poorly in the Front Range of Colorado.
But as I said in some other threads, everything that's good to do doesn't always make a profit.
Before my city changed the regulations about what we can place on the curb for trash pick-up, scrappers used to collect metal bearing items like old car parts, computers, BBQ grills and the like.
Now, people place these same items in with the regular trash and it ends up in a landfill.
Before my city changed the regulations about what we can place on the curb for trash pick-up, scrappers used to collect metal bearing items like old car parts, computers, BBQ grills and the like.
Now, people place these same items in with the regular trash and it ends up in a landfill.
So glad the government got involved!
In the old days when we had a city dump, a couple of guys made a living hauling scrap metal out of it. When the government got involved, they made it illegal.
Recycling, like most pro environment action items are about appearing to be green. No one actually cares if they are green or not, they just need to look like they are to others.
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