52 replies to this topic

[Tom Servo]

Your thoughts on it?

[milkdonormama]

It depends on what you are recycling. Paper decomposes rather quickly left out in nature, but plastic does not. So instead of filling up the landfill with plastic bottles, why not recycle them into something useful? After all, all those empty bottles in the landfill will not do anyone any good for the next 800 to 1000 years they sit there.

[Ansem]

Recycling depends upon availability.
I'm 100% in recycling scars resources such as iron, copper etc.
But paper, cardboard, is it really needed ?
It does chop a few trees but isn't it more environmental friendly / less energy consuming to just plant a few trees and chop them down later to make paper instead of recycling used.
It's all about if in the end the sum is positive or negative.

[JBMedia]

Ansem, on 11 October 2011 - 08:03 AM, said:

Recycling depends upon availability.
I'm 100% in recycling scars resources such as iron, copper etc.
But paper, cardboard, is it really needed ?
It does chop a few trees but isn't it more environmental friendly / less energy consuming to just plant a few trees and chop them down later to make paper instead of recycling used.
It's all about if in the end the sum is positive or negative.

I would have to completely agree with your statement. I work at a grocery store and we do bail boxes and recycle them. Which I don't think is a bad thing by any means. However, planting more trees in the end would help out the most with that particular problem. A lot of companies that use an excess of cardboard these days do actually re-plant trees. Scotties tissues is one of them. For every tree they cut down and use, they plant 3 more. Which is an amazing thing in my opinion, seeing how most corporate structures only care about money.

[Mon-Jes]

I didn't know that about Scotties. :-)

If you have something that's not going to decompose or that is scarce, as others have said, recycling wins out. There's no reason not to.

Look, anything we do as humans is going to have some impact, so we have to decide what has the least impact given our requirements and what we can reasonably do, and what we can reasonably change (e.g., lots of cities basically require you to have a car, but you can walk when you can, or find alternative, longer-lasting fuels, etc.). Recycling might have some bad effects, but look at the payoff, which will probably dwarf the bad effects for lots of materials.

[Ansem]

Do you actually prefer to use services that recycle ?
Say you see two brands, same price but you know one brand of tissues ( say scotties ? ) is green and the other not, you'll buy it ?

[zararina]

I also think it could depends on what material is being recycled and how it is recycled.
Some plastic bottles that had been recycled to become chairs and tables although cause pollution could be use for several years more and therefore will not be included in the landfill already and emitting chemicals in there. There are also some waste here used to make hallow blocks that can be use for low cost housing and could stand years also.
Some other papers are being recycled as home decors just like vase and figurines.

[Tom Servo]

I agree with what seems to be the general consensus: recycling plastic makes sense, paper not so much.

[anEgrahm]

I haven't come across this before, but now that you mention it, it seems kind of true. There are types of biodegradable plastic, however, I heard that something degrades when you pour something as simple as water over it. In addition to this, I now agree - paper kind of seems like it does more harm than good.

[MakingCents]

I've never thought about it like that but you are right.  I wonder if anyone has ever done a study as to how 'green' a recycling plant is...

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Huh?
So many posters here that don't believe recycling is an excellent way to save resources?


Aluminum / Metals

• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
  
• 350,000 aluminum cans are produced every minute!
  
• More aluminum goes into beverage cans than any other product.
  
• Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within six weeks.
  
• Because so many of them are recycled, aluminum cans account for less than 1% of the total U.S. waste stream, according to EPA estimates.
  
• During the time it takes you to read this sentence, 50,000 12-ounce aluminum cans are made.
  
• An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
  
• There is no limit to the amount of times an aluminum-can can be recycled.
  
• Aluminum can manufacturers have been making cans lighter -- in 1972 each pound of aluminum produced 22 cans; today it yields about 29 cans.
  
• We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum pop cans every year.
  
• At one time, aluminum was more valuable than gold!
  
• A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
  
• Every ton of recycled steel saves 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,000 of coal, and 40 pounds of limestone.
  
• More than 50% of a new aluminum can is made from recycled aluminum.
  
• The 36 billion aluminum cans landfilled last year had a scrap value of more than $600 million. (Some day we'll be mining our landfills for the resources we've buried.)

Trash / Landfills

• The first real recycling program was introduced in New York City in the 1890s. The city's first recycling plant was built in 1898.
  
• By 1924, 83% of American cities were separating some trash items to be reused.
  
• Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that can be composted.
  
• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
  
• This chart shows the composition of an average garbage dump. Notice how much of it is recyclable!!
  
• The highest point in Ohio is "Mount Rumpke," which is actually a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill!
  
• The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
  
• Speaking of diapers, a cloth diaper washed at home costs 3¢ per use. A disposable diaper costs 22¢ per use. The difference can add up; a typical baby will use about 10,000 diapers!
  
• Between 5 and 15% of what we throw away contains hazardous substances.
  
• Out of ever $10 spent buying things, $1 (10%) goes for packaging that is thrown away. Packaging represents about 65% of household trash.
  
• On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.

Misc.

• More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
  
• Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct!
  
• McDonald's saves 68,000,000 pounds of packaging per year just by pumping soft drink syrup directly from the delivery truck into tanks in the restaurant, instead of shipping the syrup in cardboard boxes!
  
• The largest environmental organization in the world is the National Wildlife Federation. It has 5,600,000 members!
  
• Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
  
• One-third of the water used in most homes is flushed down the toilet.
  
• A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
  
• You can walk 1 mile along an average highway in the United States and see about 1,457 pieces of litter.
  
• The Washington, DC-based Institute For Local Self-Reliance calculates that recycling creates 36 jobs per 10,000 tons of material recycled compared to 6 jobs for every 10,000 of tons brought to traditional disposal facilities.
  
• Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 styrofoam coffee cups every year.
  
• Most cars on U.S. roads carry only one person. We have so much extra room in our 140 million cars that everyone in Western Europe could ride with us.
  
• If today is a typical day on planet earth, humans will add fifteen million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square mils of tropical rainforest, create seventy-two square miles of desert, eliminate between forty to one hundred species, erode seventy-one million tons of topsoil, add twenty-seven hundred tons of CFCs to the stratosphere, and increase their population by 263,000.
  
• Almost four million computer diskettes are thrown away every day, which equals over on and a half billion disks per year or a stack of disks as tall as the Sears Tower in Chicago every 21 seconds. It will take nearly 500 years for the disks to degrade.
  
• <a href="http://www.crsgreent...lingfacts.shtml

[MakingCents]

I think the questions is, we are saving resources by recylcing, but what are the recyling plants doing to our air?  I would jsut like to see a study as to how much power and water a recycling plant uses and how many toxic emissions it puts into the air.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Making a cardboard box from scratch.
Drive to the tree=fuel.
Cut down the tree= fuel +
The resources used for cutting down that tree=
manufacture of chainsaw, fuel to run chainsaw, labor (includes food/water/toilet of the lumberjack)
Driving the tree to the mill=fuel.
Running the mill=water, fuel, labor, electric.
Driving the finished product to market=fuel, labor.
You can also consider the footprint of the truck, the tires, etc.=large footprint.
Consumers buying the end product=more fuel.
Compare all that to recycling paper/cardboard and it reduces the carbon footprint significantly.
http://www.campaignf...ing.org/faq/ghg
http://epa.gov/clima...sRecycling.html
https://docs.google....90EqpFIHrd_Bh0w

[Shortpoet-GTD]

http://www.ecycleenvironmental.com/

[SpikeTheLobster]

Ansem, on 12 October 2011 - 01:05 PM, said:

Do you actually prefer to use services that recycle ?
Say you see two brands, same price but you know one brand of tissues ( say scotties ? ) is green and the other not, you'll buy it ?

I know I'm late here, but I just wanted to answer this: absolutely YES. Given a choice between a product that's friendlier to the environment (whether that's recycled, the company planting trees or whatever) and the same product that isn't, of course I'd buy the "friendlier" one. Who wouldn't?

[brihooter]

I never knew that recycling could be bad.  I guess that does make sense.  I prefer services that recycle as well.  I think we would all be suprised on how many people actually recycle!

[fancyfingers]

I like to recycle, reduce and reuse. I was brought up on that slogan years ago. If something is still in good shape, but no longer is needed in my home, I donate it. Our city recycles certain product, we cash in our aluminum cans, and I reuse many items that would be tossed into both recycle and garbage cans. When I shop, how the item is packaged makes a difference to me if the items are pretty much identical. I look for less packaging.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

brihooter, on 26 January 2012 - 01:10 PM, said:

I never knew that recycling could be bad.  

Huh??????????????

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Artists and other creative thinkers are taking recycling to new heights. Lots of great stories/pix here:
http://www.treehugge...ding-materials/

[brihooter]

I was referring to the original poster.  I misunderstood I'm sorry.  I think recycling is NOT bad.  I see people throwing away stuff that can be recycled all the time.  Like the 6 pack of soda plastic.  The poor animals that get all caught up in that.