Swedes Say Recycling Wastes Time And Money 94
Rob Parkhill writes "The London Daily Telegraph is reporting that a group of Swedish environmentalists are claiming that recycling is a waste of time and money, and most houshold waste should be burned instead."
huh. (Score:3, Funny)
end rant
Let me tell you about Swedish environmentalists... (Score:2, Interesting)
Background:
The Swedish' electricity saving programs has worked quite well during the last 20 years, but the use is still rising (people get computers, etc.) So any lowering of production capacity has to be replaced with fossile fuel.
The environment can't afford Swedish' environmentalists. They are ... words fail me.
(The decision of coal/nuclear was done by social democrats and environmental political parties. The report is about a report written by experts...)
Re:Let me tell you about Swedish environmentalists (Score:1)
They seem to be a bunch of frustrated ex.... (Score:1)
Former director-general of the government's environmental protection agency, former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy, former managing directors of three waste-collection companies.
I only read former, former, former. Perhaps I am wrong, but this sounds like an assembly of exwifies howling in front of their ex`s house.
And even _if_ their arguments are rigth (wich I doubt), they have a very short-sighted point of view. They stand on the bottom of the bowl and are only capable of looking to the rim but cannot grasp that there is a wider horizon. They ignore the fact that one day there will be no oil to produce plastics, not enough wood to produce paper,
Just my 2 ct
Maresi
Re:They seem to be a bunch of frustrated ex.... (Score:3, Informative)
No more oil to make plastics, no doubt. But as for wood, there is a greater acreage of forest cover (in the US) than there was 300 years ago; lumber companies love to plant trees, it's a very cheap factory. What we have lost is old growth forest, not total ammount of forest. Trees are a renwable resource in every sense of the term; It is unlikely that we will run out of them due to their overuse.
As for the "former former former," these guys are experts in their field, and obviously have strong convictions regarding the environment. The main point is that these are the same people that advocated recycling 20 years ago. They have now reversed their opinion, and that is significant. If we listened to them then, why not listen now?
Not a new insight (Score:5, Insightful)
I think any environmentalist would agree that not generating waste in the first place is always preferable to recylcling. Encouraging people to think that tossing a half-full Starbucks cup into a bin is an environmental victory is counterproductive.
(Out of curiosity, why is it that questioning environmentalist dogma is only valid coming from Scandinavians?)
Re:Not a new insight (Score:2)
Environmentalists never wanted recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
(Out of curiosity, why is it that questioning environmentalist dogma is only valid coming from Scandinavians?)
The "recycling saves Mother Earth" viewpoint was never really from the environmentalists. I remember back when recycling was first being considered in America -- the environmentalists were the only group opposed to the idea. The reason is simply that they wanted the responsibility for trash to be imposed on the corporations producing the junk rather than relying on the volunteer efforts of consumers. For the politicians, the recycling plan was absolutely brilliant. By passing it, they could convince the masses that they were doing the environment a favor. Passing the bill also kept their corporate campaign contributors very happy. And most of all, people could get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside everytime they went to the recycling center, knowing that they were doing something good, all thanks to Senator Whatshisface.
Recycling was never part of "environmentalist dogma". It was simply a very clever trick cooked up by politicans.
GMD
Re:Environmentalists never wanted recycling (Score:1)
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:1, Interesting)
This type "research" is frequently sponsored by corporations with an interest in attempting to sway public opinion by footing the bill for "scientific studies."
Instead, call them out [petitiononline.com] on it.
PS: we've seen this [slashdot.org] stuff before [slashdot.org]
Don't be a sucker.
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence for your claim that some of the most established figures in the Swedish environment movement are actually working for `the corporations'? (Which corporations? Since when? What evidence contradicts their conclusions?)
Did it cross your mind that someone could wish to preserve the environment, but not agree that current attempts to do so are the right way to go?
Or do you automatically consider someone to be in ill will if they don't agree with you one hundred percent?
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:1)
If you look at what Exxon/Mobil has done to thwart emission reductions and confuse the public through "scientific press releases" about global warming you can see an obvious pattern. They are interested making people comfortable with their gas guzzling SUV's and driving up energy use.
In my opinion, the cost of recycling shouldn't be a major concern. Money is a man-made concept that we've invented for ourselves. It does not "exist" unlike the plastic soda bottle that will take hundreds of years to decay. I would rather pay 10x the cost to ensure proper disposal than to get a cheap one-use item that will outlast us all.
To think only in financial or economic terms over environmental matters is a grave mistake. For instance, just because the GDP went up when Exxon spilled gallons of crude in Alaska that doesn't make it a "good thing."
All I'm saying is to take it with a grain of salt and question this new "proof."
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:2)
So, in other words, you feel we should judge scientific work not by whether its methods are valid, but by whether its conclusions meet our pre-formed political conceptions.
Very interesting.
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:1)
Not quite true. Money represents "value" or "worth." What you say is true if the value of something is in human labor. However, fossil fuels also have "value," as well as trees and other natural resources. Suppose that a recycling plant takes {some huge amount of money} to build. That is not just green pieces of paper (or whatever color money is over there), but bricks made from earth, which probably used a bulldozer to get at. The bulldozer burns fossil fuels! Also, to build the bulldozer (heavy steel content) required mining, which uses fossil fuels. And the raw materials and the finished product for the bulldozer has to be moved all around, which uses more fossil fuels.
I could also go on about the eqipment in the recycling plant, and the trucks used to haul this stuff around, the trees cut down so that the beurocrats in the plant can have papers to push, etc. You get the point .. that almost every dollar impacts the environment.
Note that I am NOT saying that we should not recycle. Just that we DO have to take these things into account in order to have an accurate picture of what is happening.
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:3, Insightful)
In any case, I think this particular question isn't very interesting. The motto for environmental friendliness has always been "reduce, reuse, recycle". These are roughly organized decreasing order of how much net energy can be saved by adopting the practice. Recycling has always been known to be an inefficient process.
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:2)
Seriously, "research" like the parent comment is the result of BILLIONS of electrons streaming towards the front of quakeslut's CRT in a frantic search for unsubstantiated opinions. Anybody who tells you that paper and plastic recycling processes involve the use of toxic chemicals is lying, just like those republican assholes who say that glass recycling takes almost as much energy (generated with fossil fuels, or worse, with that evil nuclear stuff) as making new glass, without even counting the costs of collecting and sorting bottles.
Even it sombody comes up with an idea that's good for the environment but contrasts ideas presented as environmentalist, we should resist those ideas, as they reduce the momentum of the movement and undermine environmentalism as a political force. Clearly that power is more important for saving the environment than anything these meddling scientists can think up.
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting. So you believe (heck, you come out and say) that even if the environmentalists are wrong on an issue, we should lie and say that they are right, in order to help their political cause?
Given that you say you believe in lying for your cause, you understand why I don't believe anything else you say, right?
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:2)
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:1)
Why am I explaining that?
Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You (Score:2)
Noted and (sheepishly) logged. You are explaining that because even in full sarcasm mode, you didn't manage to sound less rational then some of the posts made in all serious to a number of /. environment threads.
Consider my post withdrawn. :-)
Recycling Considered Harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
In many cases there are health concerns - for example would you want recycled plastic of dubious heritage showing up in plastic sode pop bottles?
Recycling today is really driven by municipalities who are having trouble siting new landfills due to NIMBY. In reality there is no shortage of land for landfills - just plenty of politics arount their siting.
There are a few things that are being recycled sucessfully - corrugated cardboard and aluminum. However most of the rest is driven by politics rather than sound science and economics.
The case for recycling (Score:3, Insightful)
There's currently plenty of space for landfills, and there's currently no particular shortage of raw materials. Fast forward a few decades and things might not be so convenient, at least not everywhere.
Pushing recycling now advances the state of the art. Even if the process is inefficient now, it will eventually become cleaner and cheaper, in the same way that paper recycling has. So part of every dollar we put towards recycling can be considered an investment in future technology.
Doesn't work (Score:2)
The price mechanism of the free market does a terrible job of pricing many limited resources. Take oil, for instance; the price of a barrel of oil is seldom much higher than what it costs to find it, pump it, and store/deliver it. Occasionally the producers will stockpile or artificially adjust output in near-term planning, but rarely will they do this wi
Re:Recycling Considered Harmful (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, in countries, where there is an existing enforced recycling system (for example, most of Northern and Central Europe), the plastic in soda bottles is standardised. It's PET (polyethylen), IRC.
Actually, plastics are one of the easiest things to recycle, far easier than, say glas. The possible harmful additives are already outlawed, since people are drinking from such a bottle.
IRC, the plastics are shreddered and dissovled in various solvents. One solvent for each kind of plastic. Then the plastic is extracted from its solvent and you receive a practically pure resin.
Not to mention that recycling processes can be improved as production processes are improved. This is especially true, when the product is designed and produced with recycling in mind. And AFAIK, this hasn't happend a lot in the past.
Re:Recycling Considered Harmful (Score:2)
It is far more complex than that. The safety of plastics for food packaging is determined primarily by how much of the components of the plastic end up in the food. This has been carefully studied for many years in the case of virgin materials. Nobody knows what the characteristics of recycled plastics are in this regard. Clearly additional processing of the plastic is highly likely to increase its mobility. In addition there is a great possibility that contaminants from the life cycle handling of the plastic (maybe the consumer mixed week killer in the bottle for his lawn after the soda was consumed!), or errors in sorting the plastics during recycling lead to contamination.
IRC, the plastics are shreddered and dissovled in various solvents. One solvent for each kind of plastic. Then the plastic is extracted from its solvent and you receive a practically pure resin.
There are many things wrong about this - first, cross-linked plastics are not soluble in solvents, and second, the introduction of solvents in itself will cause traces of the solvent (possibly harmful) left in the plastic - and then there is the issue of environmental damage from waste solvents.
The fact is that recycling is mostly a pipe dream. The only real way to reduce waste in an economic and sound environmental fashion is through reduced consumption.
Recycling Centers are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I've burned one gallon of gasoline and, if the IRS is to be believed, it cost me $5.60 for mileage.
Hundreds of other families in town are doing the same thing. So, that's about two barrels of oil, and about $500 out of our pockets.
Tell me again how this is cost effective and good for the environment?
Now, for the more valuable recycleables, a truck drives down the road and picks them up from the curb. The incremental cost of getting from my neighbor's driveway to my driveway is probably $0.10, a much more reasonable solution.
Who has comments about good home incinerators?
Re:Recycling Centers are the problem (Score:2)
Really? I use newspaper in the garden as mulch, but with all the dyes, plastics, and gloss coatings on junk mail I never considered it. Is it really OK?
Re:Recycling Centers are the problem (Score:1)
Re:Recycling Centers are the problem (Score:2)
I thought about it, and I don't think so.
Consider the costs, both monetary and environmental of:
* mining all the raw materials for another car
* processing those raw materials into usable parts
* assembling the parts
* finishing the parts
* lubricating the parts
* transporting the car to me
* keeping the car running (oil changes, fluids, taxes, registrations, etc)
Now consider that in order to buy and maintain the car, I need to earn money. Just about every way of earning money involves an expenditure of energy in terms of fossil fuels, and the price of a car requires alot of expenditure.
So, say I get myself a Mini Cooper to go to the recycling center (ignoring that it won't work in the snow or be able to negotiate the ruts at the shed). It gets 28MPG. My truck gets 16MPG. So, I save 0.4 gallons of fuel by buying the new car per trip, or a little over ten gallons of fuel for the year. That's a hundred gallons of fuel for the amount of time I'll have the truck. It doesn't net out in favor of getting the new car, and it still doesn't make the centralized recycling model economically favorable.
what about _____? (Score:3, Funny)
ObWYRM (Score:1)
Trueness (Score:5, Insightful)
In Bridgeport, CT there is a plant called the RESCO, I toured it when I was in elementary/middle school (I forget). They take trash and burn it in a giant furnace, which in turn generates electricity. And the only thing you see coming out of their "smoke" stacks is steam. Very environmentally friendly, profitable and it works on almost anything that burns.
Recycling is a waste of time effort and money. The benefits to the environment from using a trash power plant vs. a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant are far greater than the benefits of say recycling paper vs. trashing paper.
Re:Trueness (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trueness (Score:1)
Well, yes and no. A dedicated bin for newspaper or for white copy paper yields waste that can be efficiently and profitably recycled. The stuff I put outside every week -- a mix of junk mail, envelopes, cardboard, wrappers -- is far less attractive.
The problem is that RECYCLING!!!! has turned into an end in itself instead of a means to help the environment.
Re:Trueness (Score:2)
They take trash and burn it in a giant furnace, which in turn generates electricity. And the only thing you see coming out of their "smoke" stacks is steam.
This process could be further improved if new products are designed using "incinerator friendly" materials that minimize environmental damage when burned.
Re:Trueness (Score:1)
The problem is not this simple. Suppose that the monetary cost of producing a good from unrecycled material is less than the monetary cost of producing the same good from recycled material. Even so, it may be the case that it's better to produce the good using recycled inputs if the environmental damage is sufficiently smaller. (Of course, government subsidies are necessary to encourage the right out outcome in such situations.)
While this is great in theory, I don't think the environmental ramifications of using recycled versus unrecycled inputs are typically very well understood. This is a problem that I run into constantly as an environmentalist, it that often I find that the information I need to make even a simple problem (e.g., paper vs. plastic) is simply unavailable...
Anyone who claims that all recycling is bad (or good) has an agenda.
Paper recycling. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is the source of unrecycled material. While we have no shortage of things like metals, and while fossil fuel reserves are large, I know that here in Canada we're converting forests to wood pulp at an alarming rate, and my understanding is that the US has already mostly finished this process and is importing from us.
When the forests run out - easily within my lifetime - we'll either be stuck farming trees for lumber and wood pulp, with a manyfold increase in lumber and paper costs, or have to use recycled paper (paying more than we do now, but less than we would with tree farming as the sole source of supply).
Personally, I'd rather we used steel and concrete for building and recycle paper and keep the forests. But that's just me.
We'd still have to farm trees, as recycling would never be perfectly efficient and some applications (like food wrappings) need to be made from new material, but we'd stand some chance of halting the full-scale deforestation that's going on now.
Lastly, if we think that recycling technology will ever get better in the future, it's best to get people into the habit *now*, so that we aren't stuck trying to retrain the populace down the road.
Re:Paper recycling. (Score:1)
Anyone who thinks that either Canada or the US is running out of trees, or will EVER run out of trees, has clearly never stepped outside their local concrete urban neighborhood and seen how truly immensely huge and relatively unpopulated North America is.
Now we are running out of old-growth forest, and destroying some unique ecosystems in the process, and that is a problem. But we are certainly not running out of trees.
Re:Trueness (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't news (Score:2, Insightful)
If recycling was really worth the effort, the recycling companies would be paying the city for the effort and we'd be getting credits on our utility bills! If recycling was really worth the effort, recycling companies wouldn't need government mandates and subsidies to stay in business.
Re:This isn't news (Score:2)
So over here, if you put it in your recycle bin or not (if what he said is to be believed) it doesn't matter... but I still do anyways
Catch-22 (Score:5, Insightful)
So should we all start littering? No because the litter will just pile up, we make it much faster than it would decompose. In the same light I think several hundred million people's piles of trash being perpetually burned would have the Global Warming people throwing fits. We make it faster than the atmosphere can reasonably take it in. That's a heck of a lot of CO2. A volcanic eruption of extremely fine particulate matter that never ceases. El Nino Grande anyone? Don't mess with the weather.
Their argument seems logical, but so can littering seem logical. In the end it really is a Zero-Sum game. There are only so many atoms on the planet (don't pick the metiorite type nits). In the long run, reducing, reusing and recycling are the only weapons that can work in this game.
Re:Catch-22 (Score:1)
Balogna. The result of burning garbage doesn't necessarily have to be CO2. Plasma burners yield H20 after they are finished processing the H2 and CO that come out. Is H20 harmful to our planet? If so, we are in deep trouble, because there is far more H2O than we know what to do with! Or maybe it is the sand byproduct you are worried about. After all, where can we possible put millions of tons of sterile sand?
The result of just burning garbage without controlling the temperature or what exactly you were burning would be chemicals far worse than CO2 (and far worse than CO!). That's why you don't burn pop bottles and styrofoam in a campfire.
Conservation of matter. (Score:2)
If you have carbon going in, you have carbon going out.
Burn it in an oxygen-poor environment or play reforming games, and you get the carbon out as tar or particulate carbon instead of CO2 (mostly), but it still comes out.
Plasma burners or other high-temperature incinerators are also *extremely* expensive to run compared to more mundane incinerators. They're used for PCBs and other difficult-to-decompose hazardous wastes, and not much else.
Re:Catch-22 (Score:1)
CO2 enrichment works really well for growing hemp (which grows fine in side shipping containers from what I hear).. In turn, use the energy from burning and the CO2 to grow more fuel.
Yeah.
Incineration isn't such a bad idea (Score:2)
After all you need power anyway, and if you were going to burn something you might as well burn trash rather than burn oil.
Better to have the oil turn to plastic, then to trash, and then only burn it, than to burn it straight away.
Re:Catch-22 (Score:2)
If you have lots of small CO2 sources, then you have a problem, but if you only have a few large ones, you can collect the CO2 and pump it to the bottom of the ocean, where pressure will keep it in liquid form.
There are only so many atoms on the planet (don't pic
Where's the Cost/Benefit Analysis? (Score:2)
A good analysis needs to factor in transportation costs, processing costs, whether using the recycled material requires more/less energy than using the raw material, etc. For starters, look at materials that can be truely recycled (such as aluminum cans) rather materials that are just put to another use (such as melting down HDPE bottles to make park benches).
Then somehow factor in the long term cost of using raw materials that come from non-renewable sources versus renewable sources (oil versus paper).
The problem is that an analysis that considers the multitude of materials used by modern society would be a very complicated and time consuming project. I doubt if anyone has even attempted it.
Re:Where's the Cost/Benefit Analysis? (Score:1)
It's really pretty simple. If it made economic sense to recycle, they would pay you to do it. There's a reason we pay companies (or municipal employees) to pick up our garbage, and not the other way around.
Re:Where's the Cost/Benefit Analysis? (Score:2)
Re:Where's the Cost/Benefit Analysis? (Score:1)
Let's say that it costs $10/ton to put waste in a landfill. If the cost to recycle the same waste is $5/ton then recycling makes economic sense.
If so, then waste mgmt. companies that recycle would be able to bid lower for contracts than waste mgmt. companies that don't. Some of this actually goes on--mostly with metals being reclaimed--precisely because it does make economic sense.
Who ever claimed otherwise? (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim that I've always heard (and happen to believe) is that recycling lowers the rate at which we burn through resources while reducing the volume of crap that we bury each year.
Yes, that costs more money. Yes, that takes more time. This surprises you?
spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, they are not saying we shouldn't be recycling. Recycling metals, especially aluminum, makes a lot of sense. Recycling paper from offices, where lots is generated, saves energy and resources.
But, sometimes the cost of sorting is greater than the savings. This is the case with mixed packaging (paper & plastic), and mixed color glass, and sometimes household paper. This is all they are saying. The Telegraph is trying to say they don't want you to recycle, this is not the case.
Mixed glass could be easily delt with by just recycling clear glass, and levying a $10 per lb tax on the non-recycled glass. This would encourage beer makers to use clear glass on their new brands and properly account for the added costs of the non-recycled stuff. Same thing could be done with plastics, just recycle one type, and levy a sin/sorting tax on the other stuff. And it's also not a huge loss to just burn plastics, most of it is non-toxic if burned at a high enough temperature. Those that aren't like epoxy, bakelite, teflon, etc have specialized uses (make at home, high temperature, good sealing properties and non-stick in these examples). An extra levy on these wouldn't hurt the producers unless they could be using the non-toxic stuff, in which case the levy would encourage the users to use the non-toxic stuff. Sure these taxes would hit the lower middle class disproportionately, but we could just adjust for that by raising the income tax exemption to 30 or 40 k and/or eliminating sales taxes, there is plenty of room for use taxes. Hell, you could have a $50/gallon gas tax and still make it revenue neutral by simply killing the payroll tax and raising the income tax exemption. (Not that I'm recommending such a high gas tax, that would distort the market in the other way. My point is simply that you could do it without lowering people's after tax income.)
Finally some stuff just doesn't make sense to reuse, this you can either burn or ship to a landfill in Virginia. Plastic still has a lot of hydrocarbon chains you can suck energy out of, and even household waste if properly aerated produces some methane you can combust.
Re:spin (Score:2)
sun light is bad for beer.
The lighting in your average convenience store is not the problem, more likely being left on the shelf too long or wide variations in temperature during shipping are the enemy. If your deli leaves the beer in the sun for hours or points an arc lamp at them you've already lost the war.
Besides it wouldn't be illegal or even noticably more expensive to the customer. If the beer maker thinks the bottle color is important to marketing to you, or even for giving them a few extra hours of shelf life they will swallow the cost, if not they will make your bottle 5 or 10 cents more than their competitor in a clear bottle. I can't imagine chosing a clear bottled Newcastle Brown over a brown bottled Sierra Nevada Pale Ale because of a few cents, they taste different. But the cost would still be accounted for, and in the long term it would probably result in some changes in packaging for some beers, like say a paper cover or UV blocking plastic coating to lower your jitters about light exposure. Hey maybe someone will figure out a cheap way to dope clear glass for UV protection, the point is even if it doesn't happen the cost is accounted for, with the benefit of not forcing clear bottles on the producer that doesn't want them, unlike a 'clear bottle only' mandate.
Re:spin (Score:2)
They already destroy the flavour by preservation process. Make yourself a favour, try Real Ale sometime. But watch out, drinking too much unfiltered ale..
Re:spin (Score:2)
I spoke with a guy who works at a glass plant once. He said that they heat the glass to some ridiculous temperature (3000F?) and all the coloring dyes incinerate, float to the top, and are easily scraped off as a bit of slag. They're left with just molten sand at that point, which is clear glass. The town was requiring separated glass at the time and he thought it was just some political idea to make people think they were doing more.
Paper versus Plastic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Paper plates are made from a renewable resource (trees), which sounds good, but energy would be continually used to harvest the raw material and manufacture the plates. Plus throwing them away results in energy being used to transport the waste to the landfill, and then waste takes up space in the landfill. At the time I didn't consider incineration, but that undoubtably has costs, too.
Plastic plates are made a non-renewable resource (oil), which does not sound good, but it's (almost) a one time usage since the plates would be used many times. However, it takes energy to clean them (water has to be heated, automatic dishwashers use electricity, etc) and the soap may not be completely biodegradable. Plus in some areas the availability of water is an issue.
After about a day I gave up, because I had no idea where to start looking for information about the energy used for the different steps in each process. Plus I had no way to assign any type of cost/value to renewable versus nonrenewable resources, etc. I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of what initially seemed like a simple problem.
I bring this up because almost all decisions about things that impact the environment require making choices, and in most cases all of the available options have some amount of environmental cost. The problem is that there are no good sources for information that would help us make true comparisons. Instead, we are left with comparisons that are influenced by politics or ignorance (or both). As we consider new proposal about how to deal with environmental issues, we must never forget that nearly every alternative will cost something.
Re:Paper versus Plastic? (Score:1)
Re:Paper versus Plastic? (Score:1)
Re:Paper versus Plastic? (Score:1)
Re:Paper versus Plastic? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, every method for dealing with waste does cost something. Using less in the first place and reusing whenever possible makes this problem less daunting. Maybe consumption could be reduced to such a point that the amount of waste could be effectively (both environmentally and econimcally) dealt with.
Re:Paper versus Plastic? (Score:1)
People buy the individually wrapped ones, that's what happens. At at a higher price, no less. Why would any company that produces x ignore this data? They won't! Why? Because we are capitalists.
Therefore communism is the answer! Thank you, Thank you, I'll be here all week.
Seriously, it doesn't help that in our society the only thing that motivates anyone to be environmentally friendly is the rather abstract idea that we are ruining it, and the vague morals that accompany this condition.
And in other news... (Score:1)
Burning (Score:1)
The county dump, incidentally, was sort of a recycling center all it's own. My grandpa often came home with more 'good stuff' he'd salvaged than garbage he'd hauled there in the first place.
However, don't try to salvage anything from a modern dump. There are thugs there (municipal employees) whose job is to make sure nobody recycles anything.
Aluminum!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just business rubbish. (Score:5, Interesting)
None of these people are environmentalists. One is an Ex-Government mouthpiece, a former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy (former is the key word here), present occupation sounds like Waste-Management Lobbist and a bunch of waste collection companies. And their argument is purely money oriented. Waste-Collection companies find that it's unprofitable to recycle. This isn't about what's really good for the environment.
What would be best? Using less! But people won't do that. They like the convienence. They don't want to have to remember to bring a Nalgene bottle with them everywhere they go. They want to say 'Ah, I'm thirsty, and only poor people drink out of drinking fountians, and there isn't one around here anyway, so I'll plunk another dollar down for a bottle which I'll promptly throw away.
The truth of this is, recycling in the long run probably isn't cheaper, but it is better for the environment. By recycling, we keep our finite resources circulating rather than throwing things away.
So, boohoo if the waste management companies don't want to recycle. If the government is forcing these programs on waste-management, voters should support subsidies to waste-management to ensure that recycling continues.
So while it's about profit, sometimes you have to pay more to do the right thing.
The gluttony of resources at rock-bottom prices is just unrealistic. Nobody wants to pay the true price now. They just want discounted convienence by making future generations pay the price. The headline on this story is misleading.
reminds me of one of my housemates (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I've come to the conclusion that most so called "environmentalists" are really about "feel good" solutions, and not ones that actually work. They don't really care about solving the real problem, just alleviating their own guilt.
Re:reminds me of one of my housemates (Score:5, Funny)
I guess I've come to the conclusion that most so called "environmentalists" are really about "feel good" solutions, and not ones that actually work.
Based on a sample of one? So you would say that it's fair to assume that Minnesotans who live with female roomates should have nothing to do with a field that involves statistics?
Re:reminds me of one of my housemates (Score:2)
Anyway, I intended the last comment as an interesting point to my story, not the serious theory with data points to support it that you seem to be assuming.
Re:reminds me of one of my housemates (Score:2)
I think the previous owners were very proud that the washing machine saved water and the geothermal heating system saved electricity.
[I'm not too concerned about the geothermal unit, there are springs around the house with water gushing out.]
wait a second... (Score:2, Insightful)
The three Rs (Score:1)
Policy damage (Score:1)
In other news, scientists reveal tin is magnetic (Score:1)
Will wonders never cease!
-j
A Couple of Points (Score:2)
The city where I live used to have a trash burning municipal power plant. It was shut down a few years ago because it dumped too much dioxen into the air. The cost of building filters was way more than the electricity produced plus landfill averted was worth. There is also the question of what to do with the resulting ash which is heavily contaminated with things like lead and mercury.
That IKEA furniture will never decompose... (Score:1, Funny)
A better idea... (Score:1)
Then I can take over the world using garbage as raw material. BWUHAHAHAHAHA!
Of course there's no risk of the wee beasties escaping and eating the planet, oh no. It'll say so on the FAQ at my website.
recycling, or just throwing it away? (Score:1)
Once I saw someone dump a container that held only aluminium cans straight into the regular garbage...
Also, I belive it was Durham, NC that was just throwing the recyclable items right in the landfill with everything else. I'm pretty certain this happens more than people would believe.
Incineration (Score:3, Interesting)
Better to import your oil and wood as finished goods and burn them for energy once you're totally done with them, than to burn the oil directly.
All that talk about it being a step backwards from recycling just seems emotional not rational.
"Sends out a negative message". Tsk.