There is No Guarantee That the Products You Recycle Are Actually Recycled, the UK Watchdog Warns (bbc.co.uk) 171
An anonymous reader shares a report: The National Audit Office (NAO) says over half of the packaging reported as recycled is actually being sent abroad to be processed. As a result, it says, the government has little idea of whether the recyclables are getting turned into new products, buried in landfill or burned. While an illusion of success has been created by the UK's system for recycling packaging, the NAO says, the reality may be quite different. Its report finds that: The government has turned a blind eye to underlying problems with the waste system. Firms may be over-stating the amount they are recycling. The Environment Agency has only carried out 40% of the recycling checks it planned to.
Recycling theater is ubiquitous. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because to economically recycle plastic, it has to be source sorted by recycling # (which reflects chemistry).
Which means you need to have a half dozen plastic recycle bins, imputes a value of $0.01/hour to your time.
Also colored glass and paper is almost never actually recycled.
The bastards do this, because the sorting time looks free to them. They should be kicked square in the balls/cunt.
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That's why we have robots.
Not yet, but they're coming.
As for now, it makes sense to recycle the stuff that it makes sense to recycle. And incorporate the cost of landfill into the calculation-- landfill isn't free by any means, either, you know.
Re:Recycling theater is ubiquitous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying that's an argument for recycling theater?
Nobody is ignoring the cost of landfill, it is just the cheapest, by far. Making people sort and wash their trash into 32 streams that all end in the landfill is just the _stupidest_ of all outcomes. Unless you're just trying to train people to do as they are told.
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Are you saying that's an argument for recycling theater?
I'm unable to figure out how you interpret a statement saying "use robots when they are available, until then, recycle the stuff that makes sense to recycle" into "an argument for recycling theatre."
Let me state it in clearer terms. Use robots when they are available, until then, recycle the stuff that makes sense to recycle.
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Robots aren't magic, it will remain an economic decision.
The problem is that the world is full of idiots. 'Recycle the stuff that makes sense to recycle' is fine, but the devil is in the details. That should have always been true, but yet here we are...
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The bastards do this, because the sorting time looks free to them.
If your municipality makes you do the sorting. Mine has a single bin. Which got shipped to China (until recently) where they sorted it and then did whatever. Once China no longer accepted recycling, the avoided cost of recycling reappeared as a real cost per ton to bury the stuff in a dump. The multiple bin solution incurs actual costs to collect and keep separate those multiple bins. So even with your (free) efforts, it wasn't worth it to my town.
I used to haul my garbage to the dump (transfer station a
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Also colored glass and paper is almost never actually recycled.
Got any numbers to back that up? A quick google search or maybe even a trip to my local glass manufacturer puts the actual number for coloured glass in the 80% range. That is 80% of glass collected through recycling ends up actually recycled.
Likewise the paper figures are in the >70% range, and the number of paper mills that actually produce products with 0% recycled content is incredibly low these days.
Re:Recycling theater is ubiquitous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, paper buried in landfills is sequestered carbon. The tree pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere, used energy from sunlight to break off the O2, and locked up the Carbon in the form of cellulose. We chopped the tree down and turned that cellulose into paper. Burying the paper represents putting the carbon back underground, the reverse of what we do when we dig up and burn fossil fuels. In theory the paper could eventually biodegrade (converting the C back into CO2). But core samples drilled into landfills have come up with bits of newspaper over a century old, indicating not much biodegrading goes on. So burying paper in a landfill instead of recycling it isn't a problem either. (You don't really save trees by recycling paper - it's in the logger's best interest to re-plant any tree they chop down, so they'll have another tree to chop down in 20-40 years. So in developed countries, the number of trees remains fairly constant.)
Metals usually cost enough to refine that it's worth recycling them.
It's the plastics that are the problem. When I asked my garbage hauling service how they sort plastics, they claimed they hired inmates at below-minimum wage to do it for them.
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Glass recycling is more about preventing broken glass bottles from littering the streets and parks.
This is definitely not true in general, though I'll allow that it might be true in some locations. There was a story about a beer company (Molson?) who was considering changing the shape of its bottles into a shorter keg-style, but ultimately decided against this after calculating mow much it would cost to melt down and re-form all of the existing bottles which were currently in circulation.
Soda is also still sold in glass bottles in many countries. Not because they haven't gotten on board with plastic b
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20-40 years? Buddy, friend, pal. We do that at a rate of replacement in 10 years right now, we specifically breed pines for this exact purpose because they can grow fast and all that and go out of our way to avoid hardwood or broadleaf softwoods because they're more helpful in other ways and fetch more money for other items(furniture, cookware, etc). The only cases where this doesn't happen is where the trees are diseased, or have insect problems like ash. In which case, the only solution is clearcuttin
It's been a sham for decades (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always been in support of recycling even when I knew as a student all the dumpsters went into the SAME garbage truck (I saw it after school.)
Multiple parts in the process have to ALL be addressed. If you get everybody but jerks recycling that is just the 3rd part of the process. 1st part is regulating what's made, we don't hardly do that.... 2nd part is not buying stupid cheap disposable shit we do not need in the 1st place (that won't ever happen.) + more steps...
China had all those boats full of
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Idiot. It's theater. You want to make theater required by law.
you poo poo head! (Score:2)
You can't efficiently solve a multiple step problem involving multiple parties (not all who are willing to participate) all at the same exact time... trying to do that makes it nearly impossible to do.
You give the kids a habit of recycling even though the school trashes everything. Later, as adults, they are used to the whole process so they are not lazy bitching litter bugs resisting change/progress and having to lift a finger. I could figure that out as a teen? how old are you?
Furthermore, upset adults w
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It is indoctrination. You just think that's a good thing. Think for yourself, for once in your life.
ha! (Score:3)
Everything can be called indoctrination; did you grow up on a deserted island all by yourself? If not, then you were indoctrinated. It's all a matter of WHAT is to be indoctrinated not whether or not it is going to happen. My tribe good... better tribe than you tribe...
Does everybody question and think about everything on their own? Hell no! I wish. Most the planet is religious; oh yes, religion is fundamentally indoctrination. Is it bad? sometimes. Is it good? Well, i don't want to argue with everybody I
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Trash is like dirt. Some of it is 'ore', some of it isn't.
Just be ready for the kids to be pissed when they learn there is no Santa, or recycling of anything but aluminum cans.
I'm all for it. The younger they become cynics the better for the world. The sooner they learn about adult theater, the better.
It will be a great day, every year when that first kid opens the dumpster to throw something in. Finds all the recycled paper, plastic, crayons, TP, snotrags and bandaids that they've all so carefully c
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I'm extremely cynical (everybody says so) and I'm probably what you'd call liberal; not that those labels mean much anymore as they've become brands with identities. I'm in almost no way near the American Democratic Party either.
Getting rid of civilization (government and taxes) does not make a society more civil. Making it work better does; which sometimes may require a reboot. Every democracy DIES and my theory is the better they do the shorter their lifespan is. This was known back in the day; hell, they
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Seriously? Ever heard of coercive control, it's a fine example of recycling. You get people to do it by creating shame by not having people do it. The other end of it would be say parking fines.
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I was raised catholic, which is all about controlling people. lots of guilt. Shame is actually one of the strongest emotions, I've heard it argued that it's stronger than any or on par with FEAR. It will beat love too, just like fear does. proving that is a huge problem because the burden of proof is quite high and nobody will let you do the experiments; even primate studies get into trouble doing such topics. (oh there are some devilish ones worth reading...)
Dispel the indoctrination that you are not a
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I'm skeptical of you cynicism. Your sig is a link to an idealistic, moronic, pure propaganda news program. Not an opposite reflection of Fox, an opposite reflection of Infowars.
Taxes are the price of civilization? So more taxes more civilization? I'd like to introduce you to a concept called nuance, but you'd just dismiss it.
lol (Score:2)
I'm skeptical of your cynicism! believe in god still? heaven? democracy? heil trumpf? scientists? have all the time in the world and brains to do everything yourself? think you picked yourself up by your own bootstraps? think others can? think others are equal to you therefore shouldn't get anything you didn't get?
Propaganda is about emotions. Thinking only in support of those emotions. Sometimes it can be hard to see the nuance between thinking bringing out emotions and emotions driving rationalization
Example for Plastics (Score:3)
All CD/DVDs are poly-carbonate - it's industry. But the law could say you have to PICK a standard and stay with it. So say all food containers must be PP #5? no mixed caps made from #2 or #4. All PVS must be white and all ABS must be black... kind of already happens in plumbing pipe. exceptions for classes of products... Think of it like HID class drivers. Sure some will bitch that they can't make their product different by confusing the situation-- well, tough, you can't make your bike out of radioact
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I'm all in for packaging regulations that eliminate hard/dubious recycling. There's way too much packaging and way too much stupid choices that create more packaging -- like shiny plastic surfaces that come with a square yard of cling wrap on top to keep them shiny.
Presort is a lost cause beyond 2, maybe 3 categories total. I can't help but think it's just transferring the cost savings from manufacturers to consumers. They get to save fractions of a cent on packaging, consumers pay the cost of sorting a
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You have a bin for paper and plastic, and depending on that state you are in that bin will also take glass.
That trash is taken to sorting centers and it use to be that they hired the eastern Europeans to do the manual sorting now they are using the various immigrants they have been allowing in.
Cheap labor and separated recycling.
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If you RTFA, you'll see that you are wasting your time. It's all ending in the landfill.
Not just in England, I doubt Germany is any different. They tell you it's being sorted, but they are losing money on every truckload, so sooner or later, they come to their senses.
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Not just in England, I doubt Germany is any different
Don't apply local government issues universally especially between very different countries, and especially about something as complex as waste management. Each country does this very differently, LOCALITIES do it very differently.
For instance right here where I am sitting right now in Germany almost nothing ends up in landfil and while we're encouraged to keep separating our streams because the back end economics can change in an instance, right now paper, plastic and general waste is being combined to fee
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What if the cost of recycling/collecting makes it cheaper to just burn it now and leave some crude in the ground?
I'm not convinced crude will be more expensive in 50 years. It's by no means guaranteed. Economic replacements are going strong.
Re: Recycling theater is ubiquitous. (Score:5, Informative)
It's been cheaper to burn paper/cardboard since the day environmentalists started screeching that paper kills trees and plastic is better. Welcome to 1979 by the way. To recycle paper you have to deink, rebleach, and break whatever it was into base fiber then re-gunkify the entire mess all over again. Even then, most places avoid it because rebonding the fibers makes for weaker paper or requires resins to stop it from degrading quickly. W2E facilities are a better option in many if not all cases. Again, thank environmentalists for their rabid bleating that said facilities are really really really really really bad. Never mind that the heavy ash can be used a clinker(for cement and drywall) or anything. Just don't let them know that we burn nearly all the tires in use for clinker and fuel for cement plant kilns or anything, or they'd go brain dead stupid.
Which reminds me of an example of environmental stupidity from here in Ontario. Pipeline running from Sarina to Montreal, oh there was no problem with the pipeline being used currently. The problem came from them wanting to reverse the direction of flow, and reduce the operating pressure because of it's age. It was replaced with a newer pipeline about a decade ago, so having two redundant pipelines flowing in the same direction was a waste of money. The response? Endless screeching by environmentalists about how it was an environmental catastrophe and would poison all of southern ontario, not exaggerating on that one. It was pushed heavily by environmentalists as true. But razing a stand of old growth maples, oaks, and other broadleafs to put up gigantic fucking windmills? Perfectly okay. It was the hunting associations that blocked that one, because they'd been reintroducing wild turkey, pheasants and hawks to the area.
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It appears we really are just going scratch each others eyes out.
For me, years of working in heavy industry, welding, and politics have instilled a healthy belief in safety glasses.
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screeching by environmentalists ... [contrasted with] ... It was the hunting associations that blocked that one
You know how I can tell you consume too much right-wing media? You talk about "environmentalists" as though they were evil, and hunters as though they were good, as though those were two distinct groups. Your story is about two groups of environmentalists who had a disagreement about how best to care for a certain parcel of land.
It's a weird kind of double-think that allows for this. Been happening a lot lately.
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This isnt a dispute over the usefulness of a good clean environment... its a dispute over liberty. Some people value it. Environmentalists dont.
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I said that I could tell that he consumed too much right-wing media, because it is right-wing media which pushes th
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You're doing a great job of showing just how out of touch you are with the current flavor of rabid environmentalism. They're about 4-5 years a head of what the political left currently is in many western countries, and to be frank people are throwing the environmentalist label over their shoulder and calling themselves other things because it's become so tainted.
The fact that they are hunters and conservationists, and call themselves that. Should tell you something. That you start screeching "right-wing
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calling themselves other things because it's become so tainted.
There, finally you've gotten to something which actually touches on what I was talking about. Who is doing the labeling? Who has declared that this group of environmentalists shall be called "environmentalists" and that group of environmentalists have to be called something else? And why are they doing this?
Actually the why question is pretty easy, you've already answered that yourself: they do it in order to taint the word, so that people will be reluctant to call themselves environmentalists, even when
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There, finally you've gotten to something which actually touches on what I was talking about. Who is doing the labeling? Who has declared that this group of environmentalists shall be called "environmentalists" and that group of environmentalists have to be called something else? And why are they doing this?
Well, that might be actual environmentalists that are tired of all the anti-capitalist, pro-communism crap that's been going on since the 1980's. You have been paying attention to this haven't you?
This is a divide and conquer strategy - if we all agree, as the grandparent said above, that a clean environment is good, then this poses a formidable barrier to the mining and drilling companies mentioned in the article. But if they can taint the idea of environmentalism, if they can label environmentalists as the outgroup, then people will avoid words or actions which might get them put into that group.
Your argument falls flat on it's face. Why? That's easy, the environmentalist groups themselves have become more extreme and pushing further. From the belief that malthusian policies are acceptable. To outright lying on GMO crops. Congratulations on driving people away from using the label.
It's the same thing that's been done to atheists, for example. Neil deGrasse Tyson said a while back that he's unwilling to call himself an atheist, because people focus too much on the word. Atheists are the outgroup - they're all baby-eating villains, as you know if you've ever watched the news. (By which I mean news from the right sources, of course.) Instead he calls himself "non-religious."
You mean the same a
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I have so far tried to ignore this behavior of yours, because that was never the point. I did not come here to defend environmentalists from your bigotry, I
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You know how I can tell you consume too much right-wing media? You talk about "environmentalists" as though they were evil, and hunters as though they were good, as though those were two distinct groups. Your story is about two groups of environmentalists who had a disagreement about how best to care for a certain parcel of land.
Know how you can show everyone you're an idiot? When you haven't been paying attention to the amount of emotional hyperventilating that environmental groups have been engaging in over the last 30 years, where everything, is going to cause **insert great destroyer of the world.** My story, about two groups. One being rabid anti-industrialist environmentalists who want to continue to live in a modern society, but want to shame you to no ends for it, while screeching endlessly in hashtag movements and slackt
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Time and time again you have been shown that your "evidence" for a particular opinion is incorrect. Whilst your points should be evaluated on their own merits it does get hard to take anything you say seriously.
Which is why your comment is devoid of anything of substance, complaint, or argument against what I've said. You're probably the worst AC I've seen today, but we all have to drive to do better.
I wish you success in moving from waste fulfillment to dogma enforcement.
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Nope. The hunters are conservationist, not environmentalist.
Conservationist believe that nature needs to be conserved so that future generations can continue to use it.
Environmentalist believe that humans are a blight on nature, and a better world would have no humans.
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I still hold that we should be separating plastic from other waste and burying it. In 50 years when crude oil is more expensive, we can invest in developing processes to use the buried plastic waste as feedstock for new petrochemicals.
This.
I've always felt that recycling is a disservice to future generations.
When humans have exhausted Earth's natural resources, they'll be able to dig up all the beer cans I've conveniently concentrated in my local landfill and refine them into new products.
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I mean, is the number of people that would bother doing this statistically significant?
Welfare recepients (Score:3)
Make the people on welfare do it. Are you able to work and getting government money? Well looks like you're going be sorting recyclables.
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And politicians...it will keep them out of trouble.
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I pour it down the storm sewer so it can go back underground with the rest of the oil
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Never let bamboo get started on your land. You are better off not knowing, even when it makes you look a little stupid (12:24 PM today, for example).
People do what you inspect (not expect) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a result, it says, the government has little idea of whether the recyclables are getting turned into new products, buried in landfill or burned.
If you don't know then the answer is that they are being handled in whatever manner is least expensive and/or most profitable. Most likely that is either burning or landfill with the chances increasing the lower the energy inputs required to make new. To presume otherwise is to be naive. Steel and aluminum are probably recycled because the energy required to make new is enormous versus recycling. Plastics are probably just buried or burned or dumped in the ocean.
There is a saying that people don't do what you EXPECT, they do what you INSPECT. If you want to be sure it is being handled appropriately then you need to inspect the process to be sure. If you don't inspect then you won't get what you expect.
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Maybe burning plastic _is_ the appropriate way to handle that waste?
Unless you can find someone to work for $0.05/hour you can't afford to 'recycle' it, though burning it is technically recycling it.
What is the fuel value of plastic vs the energy inputs to make new? What is the fuel cost of recycling? Cost is a good proxy, not perfect, but good. The cheapest thing is almost certainly also the greenest.
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The cheapest thing is almost certainly also the greenest.
It's pretty trivial to come up with counter arguments. It's cheaper for me to dump the engine oil from my car down the storm drain than it is to collect it and transport it to a proper waste oil processing center.
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Yes, it's not perfect...do you have a point?
Expected cost (Score:2)
No, it costs about $1 in gas and $15 in time to stop at the car parts store on the way home to dump it responsibly. It costs $2000 in fine plus $600 in lost work if I get caught dumping it down the drain.
You forgot to risk adjust your calculations to come up with an expected cost. You multiply the cost by the chances of getting caught which in all likelihood are extremely low.
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Maybe burning plastic _is_ the appropriate way to handle that waste?
Landfill would be a better bet. Most packaging in recycling bins is either made from fossil-carbon sources like oil or natural gas or from trees and plants like paper and cardboard. Burying it sequesters that carbon and doesn't immediately add to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere whereas burning it does.
Burning makes sense [Re:People do what you ins...] (Score:2)
Maybe burning plastic _is_ the appropriate way to handle that waste?
Landfill would be a better bet. Most packaging in recycling bins is either made from fossil-carbon sources like oil or natural gas or from trees and plants like paper and cardboard. Burying it sequesters that carbon and doesn't immediately add to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere whereas burning it does.
Burning it and generating energy from the process would offsets an equal mass of fossil fuel, so it wouldn't add CO2 to the atmosphere. That actually makes the most sense-- you get the value out of the oil in the form of plastic, and then get the energy out of the oil when you're done with using the plastic.
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If that were true, it would be a butt simple decision. You get a good fraction of the energy back, not 100%.
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That depends on whether you're in an area that actually depends on fossil fuels for electrical power. British Columbia, Quebec, and significant chunks of Ontario do not. They're either on Hydro Electric power or on Nuclear (in the case of Ontario and Quebec).
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Burning fossil-carbon-derived plastic adds CO2 to the atmosphere. Burying it in landfills unburnt means it doesn't add CO2 to the atmosphere. Saying that it's likely that the plastic will decompose slowly underground but it will take decades or centuries to form methane and eventually CO2 and escape into the atmosphere which is a good thing in the medium term. We're still heading for 450ppm CO2 and beyond in a couple of decades time.
We have trillions of tonnes of fossil carbon we can dig up and burn in the
CO2 and recycling plastic (Score:2)
Burning it and generating energy from the process would offsets an equal mass of fossil fuel, so it wouldn't add CO2 to the atmosphere.
You have the logic of this wrong though I understand what you are trying to say. This isn't offsetting fossil fuel consumption. It is just using a delayed form of burning from oil previously pumped. We are adding roughly the same amount of CO2 to the atmosphere if we burn X amount of oil or if we burn previously pumped oil that has been turned into plastic. Either way the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by roughly the same amount. As long as the plastic remains plastic it's effectively preven
Contractual agreements (Score:2)
Maybe burning plastic _is_ the appropriate way to handle that waste?
Perhaps but if you are paying someone to recycle it and they burn it instead then then you aren't getting what you paid for. If I hire your company to recycle my plastic then there are clear expectations about what that means and what it should cost. If I pay you to recycle it and you burn it because that's cheaper then that is fraud, plain and simple. Whether or not that is the optimal use for the material is irrelevant to the contractual agreement. And of course there are the environmental considerati
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Recycling means reuse. Not perpetual reuse. If that was the definition, recycling would be almost non-existent. Almost nothing can be reused forever.
Burning is not recycling (Score:2)
Recycling means reuse. Not perpetual reuse.
Burning is not reuse so your point remains invalid.
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I was reading a management book the other day and it put it this way.. "You get more of the performance you bonus." They also warned that unless you can measure good performance, you will not get what you expect.
They guy writing it was a sausage maker of all things and he had all sorts of issues getting exactly the right weight in each package without going under, until he put a bonus program in place for accuracy in each package's weight. All of a sudden he started getting packages of precise weight, bu
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Nothing new here (Score:4, Informative)
This is a known problem in the States too. NYC, in particular, sends over half [weather.com] of its "recyclables" to landfill anyway. But, not to worry, they still fine [nypost.com] people for failing to sort their trash — whether it helps environment or not, whatever increases the government's power over the subjects is a good thing, is not it?
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whether it helps environment or not, whatever increases the government's power over the subjects is a good thing, is not it?
Wrong issue. Emphasising good behaviour in the most difficult to manage part of the lifecycle should not stop just because a latter part of the lifecycle breaks down.
What do you suggest: Government not issue fines, tell everyone right now that they don't need to recycle as much, then they fix their problem and you get to spend your tax dollars on a campaign trying to convince people who were told they don't need to recycle to start recycling again.
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When fines are issued, it is no longer mere "emphasizing", but forcing.
Nor are we talking of "good behavior", but rather of obedience. Manually separating trash, which will be mixed back together, is not "good behavior" — it is a patently stupid one. Only an authoritarian — like yourself — would insist on forcing a known stupidity for the sake of obedience...
I suggest, the government stops pretending to be a paren
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The landfills aren't indiscriminate. They build them up, and then people come in when it gets cost effective to recycle each of the still sorted materials. Note that sometimes its cost effective, and sometimes its not. And? Think of it as a recycling cache.
Also, changing behavior is the hardest thing. You want behavior changes to persist, not oscillate.
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Yep, Google let me down — and I didn't read it carefully enough myself, thank you.
This other, more recent link, does confirm my point: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com] nationwide. And I do remember reading something like that much earlier — about 10 years ago — but can't find it now. It is certainly not a new problem...
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The article you linked? You've completely read it wrong. Or you're lying.
I hear crap like yours from so many people. Who is disseminating this misinformation to you? And every time we investigate, it's so obviously wrong!
TFA:
It's still a well-known issue in the States. For example, when I lived in Michigan (Grand Rapids area) we had recycling ($4 fee per month too); found out later they collected it separately but it still was always just dumped into the landfill.
Clearly, more money (Score:2)
99% of these stories about an agency's work end with "and if they only had more money, they could finally do the job they were supposed to do". They almost always leave out the budget distractions, ridiculous IT contracts, HR training, excessive pay, unfire-able lifers, extraneous administrators and other items that could be slashed instead.
Same thing in Seattle. (Score:3)
Maybe it's time for a real ecological study on the real effects of recycling vs. simply burying everything. Our oceans deserve more than a good feeling we get by putting things in the blue bins.
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Not any more. Around a month ago China announced they were done receiving unsorted recycling from the US (and other places), Although, the ecological impact of shipping it was probably nil, as China still ships more to the US than vice-versa, and empty ships use almost as much fuel as full.
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And how much of those ships full of recycling had items that were blown into the ocean?
Wow, people really do latch on to the insigificant.
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Seattle sends its unsorted recycling to China.
As a Seattle person and Amazon prime member, I'd say that 95% of my recycling is just Amazon cardboard box packaging. I see that the "transfer station" (where you take rubbish yourself) has a dedicated machine just for squishing cardboard boxes, so I assume they get recycled from there. As for whether cardboard gets recycled when I leave it in the unsorted recycling bin? or when big cardboard boxes are stacked next to the recycling bin for them to take away? I'd love to know what happens to them.
Where I live now. (Score:1)
Not exactly news. (Score:3)
I was working late one night and discovered that the cleaning crew was routinely emptying the blue trashcans with the recycle logos on the side into the same bin as the non-recyclable waste. This was back in the later-'90s and I can easily imagine this happening all over. Even today. [sigh]
reuse repurpose recycle (Score:2)
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reuse and repurpose mean the same thing
I think you meant "reduce, reuse, recycle". But you are right, it is in that order for a reason.
For some things, recycling makes sense (Score:2)
Aluminum, lead-acid batteries, steel and a few others
For most disposable products, recycling is a political tactic to make environmentally conscientious people believe that disposable products are environmentally friendly
Who TF thought there was any guarantee? (Score:2)
Stupid naive leftists.
Economic Difference (Score:2)
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That's why i don't recycle because there safer in the landfill. At least its contained and cheaper for myself.
That doesn't make any sense. So, some fraction of the plastic sent to recycling doesn't actually get recycled... but it doesn't make sense to say it's "safer" to send it directly to landfill, instead of recycling some of it and then sending what's left to landfill.
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That's why i don't recycle because there safer in the landfill. At least its contained and cheaper for myself.
That doesn't make any sense. So, some fraction of the plastic sent to recycling doesn't actually get recycled... but it doesn't make sense to say it's "safer" to send it directly to landfill, instead of recycling some of it and then sending what's left to landfill.
Actually, in many cases it is safer, cheaper and better to just throw things in a landfill. In theory, recycling is a really great idea. But in actual practice, it often causes more pollution and environmental damage, not less.
For example, the process that is used to recycle paper involves various chemicals and as a by-product, generates many tens of thousands of tons of toxic sludge that has to be disposed of -- by dumping it into a landfill. It would be far less harmful to just throw the paper away and
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China, who was taking most of our recyclables, has stopped. Newsprint, which was going for $100 per ton, now sells for $5 a ton on the market. Recycling has failed in the US. Your recycling is going to the landfills right now.
However, there are people developing new plastic recycling techniques using chemicals instead of the standard mechanical methods. No word on if this chemical method will have an environmental impact or if it will be economically feasible. It is being developed to recycle the plastic that is floating in the ocean. There is a project underway to gather the plastic and recycle it using the new chemical method. The chemical method still requires sorting.
For $5/ton, burning newsprint for power starts to make a lot of sense, assuming the power plant is near to where the material is being collected. That's only around $9/MWh ($0.009) for fuel. You would definitely want a sliding grate boiler and a serious electrostatic precipitator though. Assuming the trucking costs were reasonable, this is very much economical.
Burning tree material is mostly carbon-neutral, but I'm sure that environmentalists would be tripping all over themselves arguing whether buryin
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In the States in some areas we have Single Stream Recycling.
Where you put in all your recyclable (Paper, Some plastics normally the thick plastic, and Metal) materials into one bin. Then it goes and gets sorted out.
Only about 1/3 of the material actually gets recycled. However the amount of material sent over to be recycled has increased 5 fold. So overall we are better with a less efficient process, because the convenience makes it easier to increase your output.
For some reason there is a reaction if something isn't working as well as it should, we should just stop it all together. While the net benefit outweighs the cost.
I have also heard a similar type of argument against LED traffic lights. Because in a rare weather condition snow can cover the lights, and be hard to see, while incandescent bulbs create enough heat to melt the snow.
Because of this perhaps once a year occurance, people are using this to prevent LED lights, which use less energy, are cheaper to maintain, offer better viability, as well often will not die at once.
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I have not heard anything about the LED stop lights having trouble with snow cover. We have some new stop lights that appear to be LED they have hoods over the light to keep snow from gathering on the light. Snow could still collect under the hood on the light if it was windy enough but dust would be a larger issue in my area and incandescent bulbs wouldn't really help with that.
I don't find it surprising that people would be against change of any kind there are groups in my area that are against solar and
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The ones here probably have heaters to melt the snow and ice but I know that we have crews out to clean them once a year because of dust anyway. They replaced some that didn't appear to seal well the light covers where always foggy looking and it was hard to see which light was illuminated in the middle of the day and some in new areas that all appear to be LED. The new traffic lights are much brighter day and night and appear to be made up of many LEDs.
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And you can heat the lens if you are really hopped up about this "problem."
No that's just it. The problems are easily solvable, but really that doesn't change those people arguging against it. It's not just LED traffic lights either. There are countless cases where a change produces a huge net benefit while the detractors will find one very specific very rare example where something won't work and then use that as a case against the entire project.
We see that constantly right here on Slashdot too.
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And in any case, recycling is a good habit to develop.