I dont know who saw the penn & teller bullsh*t episode pertaining to recycling. Penn/teller made a very impressive argument against recycling papers/plastics/metals(except aluminium)/glass. They explained that it takes up more money to hire people to pick up and run facilities to process these materials. Also, causes more pollution-- the trucks that pick up materials and the plants that process it. Aluminium is the exception and is even justified considering u can get money for it. Any thoughts on this subject peeps??? I am sure I missed something due to the haste i posted this.
Where else am I to get my recycled toilet paper? Okay, recycling schemes at the moment are a joke. That's because most governments think about the now and here not the future. They see it as the futures problem, no ours. So a lot of recycling schemes are ineffective. The amount of money put into recycling shouldn't be an issue. Recycling is very important to the future of us as a species and the planet. I'm all for it although the schemes are borderline pointless. I recycle everything I can, nothing is wasted but time in my house.
The more recycling is done, the less it will cost. To be able to reuse plastics, glass, metals and other products actually saves alot of money because they don't have to go out and locate the oil, transport the oil, refine the oil into various products and then distribute it. That is just plastics, then there's mining the ore and making whatever metals from the mining process which takes a huge amount of earth to dig up to get the small amounts of metals from it.
I'd like to think that we're recycling instead of cutting down rainforests, and I hope that we never stop looking for more effective ways to do it. Cheers Teri
Recycling is important, but I have to agree with Thor, a bit of a sad joke. Even the thrust of the post is only talking of secondary recycling. What of primary recycling? i.e. reusing a container. There is so much we all could do more conscienciously . http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldsummit2002/earth/story/0,12342,777979,00.html Any Non-U.S. folk have enforced recycling like Japan's garbage police? Garbage there was required to be in clear plastic bags to be picked up, the garbage police could fine you for not recycling. Humourously, the crow population exploded because the crows could see the tasty morsels and squads of crow police(in bird armour) were required to control the population. Right out of Hitchcock the crows began attacking people. Here in Seattle a new law allows garbage to not be picked up if recycled material is therein. I hope our city leaders don't go for the clear bags.
At the moment there isn't a lot of incentive to recycle.People can't see the point nor do they see the rewards. Japan is famous for being tidy. Littering is one of the most anti-social things you can do there. I would like to see recycling mandatory for every household. We all need to do our bit to preserver our future.
How would you go about that Spurious? Would you impose a limit per person? If I had voted in the recent local elections it would've been for the Lib Dems as they promised an improved recycling scheme. It was for that reason alone.
If they consume above their allotted level a police car will come to their place. An officer will knock on their door. And will shoot whoever opens the door. He will enter the house and shoot everybody he can find. Alternatively we should stop brainwashing the people that they need more. Which will never happen.
And then we could recycle all of their belongings and corpses. Excellent idea and a HUGE insentive Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
No, we can't recycle their belongings. That will kill the consumer society. Why do you think that people trade in their car for a new one each year or second year? Because the old one doesn't function anymore? Because 2 year old cars are in desperate need to recycle? No, we need to consume to keep the system intact. Recycling is bad for the system.
For that record, I AM a police officer. Well, temporary. =P And i'd love to shoot down those over-consuming domestic culprits. Then I'll head down to finish off all those wasteful families. And not forgetting to drop a visit at chemical factories to gun down their executives. But of course, that'll be done after forcing them to swallow and ingest all the mess that they've churned out. Then dispose of their corpses in an environmentally sound way. Never liked garbage-generating, water-poisoning, resource-wasting, pollution-spewing, toxic-frolicking parasitical lifeforms in my neighbourhood anyway. But hey, where in the world can we actually find environmental justice or a reliable eco-police force that'll do us all those favours? Captain Planet? I do see a glimmer of hope in the work of scientists in the biological arena - bacteria cultivation. Minus the part on justice killings, these trash-gobbling microbes would be more than glad to swallow all these junk food, and reducing it into bio-degradable, eco-friendly excrement. It might just be our magic bullet to defeat the stinking trash monster. Our trash monster.
I would like to see the research that shows that recycling steel, glass, plastics, aluminum, etc is less efficient then mining and making it. I don’t know but it seems like a lot of energy is spent mining ore, oil, coal and wood, transporting the raw material, refining and purifying it, all of these steps are not generally needed in recycling.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! All the more reason for those of us who genuinely believe in recycling to make every effort! We - the public, the consumers, the majority - are the ones who can make it work, by giving the recycling companies enough business to be profitable. In nations without major government recycling programmes, private recycling initiatives have to be able to prosper and expand. Apathy and inaction are not the answer, even if the situation seems grim at the moment.
I agree with you Starthane Xyzth. Did you read my post or just the first line? Just curious, How many of the 50 methods of Earth improvment from my link do you follow?
I abide by 12 of those recommended policies on a regular basis, Insanely. Sorry if my post came across the wrong way - I wasn't trying to say that YOU display apathy or inaction. But a lot of people I've met do. Then again, some don't care at all.
It's can be quite dubious. There are several phony recycling companies - or green initiatives - out there. When they're claiming to recycle; they're actually shipping discarded materials to other countries for dumping. No trash is recycled; and the landfills degrade the surrounding environments. And because they're paying for the dumping rights, host nations would (usually) gladly accede to such requests. Not sure if corruption is involved in these agreements. And it's ironic that the more stuff we put into recycling bins, the more possible harm we could cause to the environment. Here's an example of the recycling fraud in China... (The Philippines and Indonesia were also identified as such global dumping grounds) http://www.laserpage.com/recycling-fraud.htm Excerpts: "Guiyu, China, has become the world's dumping ground for what is defined as "e-waste". "Exporting Harm", a 54-page report issued by the Basel Action Network (BAN), exposed the environmental horrors in this small town. Toner cartridges comprise a large portion of the town's problems. The e-waste comes from familiar places like Los Angeles or Chicago, as identified by tags and plates on the debris. How did they end up here? Because someone wanted to have them recycled. According to the report and videotape from BAN, recycling centers may collect e-trash, but then they become mere distribution centers for exporting the same. According to recycling insiders, about 80% of the e-waste collected by recyclers ends up in containers bound for Asia."
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Sickening. Strange that it's more profitable to ship large quantities of junk across the Pacific Ocean than to reprocess it at the point of origin, in America. I once came across a supposed environmental employment agency, offering eco-oriented jobs for both the experienced and inexperienced (the true pariahs of the civilan employment market). I sent my details in, and received not an offer, or a word, in about 5 months - until New Year, when they asked for money to renew my subscription! I suspect it was just a scam.
One cannot recycle energy. All recycling requires lots of it. Recycling of glass does not offer any resource preservation advantages (it takes about the same amount of energy to make glass from raw materials). Recycling of plastic is simply impossible using current technologies (without incredible amount of manual labor). Metal recycling is profitable, most of the metal making plants in the US will not run without metal scrap. On the other hand, "reusing" is much more environmentally friendly than recycling.
