Recycling

[okawei]

How many people today recycle? Millions. However do you really think that recycling is good? Well the truth is no, recycling is not good. Why do people recycle? Well i'll make a list and prove why each individual reason for recycling is bad.

1. It saves money.
No. A ton of regular trash costs about 60$ to take and despose of. However, to recycle the material it costs almost 180$ to recycle a ton of trash. Collectivly we spend 8 million dollars a year on recycling.
2. Saves Energy
Nope. Actually in order to transport, sort, and refine waste it takes much more energy than just puting it into into a landfill.
3. We are running out of room for landfills.
Again False. The idea that we are running out of landfill space was created by Jay Winston Porter. All of the US's trash could be held in a landfill 35x35 miles and 200ft high, for the next 1000 years. Even then no one would want to live next to that, however people dont want to live near it because of the gas created. Even then that gas can be tunneled to, for an average landfill, create energy for 60000 houses for 30 years.
4. We are running out of trees
Nay. Over 80% of all trees used for paper are from "tree farms" which are man made forests created to harvest trees for paper. We actually have more trees now than we did in the 1920s. Hence if we stop growing tree farms because we are recycling paper we will actually have less trees in the US.
5. It creates good jobs for the community.
No. Actually all the jobs created are only paying about minimum wage and they have to stand in an assembly line and sort trash all day. I dont know about you guys but that just doesnt sound fun to work all day sorting trash for minimum wage.
6. Its good for the environment.
Not true. The transporting, cleaning, refining, and finally redistributing the trash creates more pollution then just transporting to the landfill and, eventually, plowing over the landfill to create a nice park or golf course. What would you rather have, a recycling factory or a national park or golf course?

I would like to close this post by just stating its totally up to you if you would like to recycle because it makes you feel good throwing away 8000000$ into a recycling factory then fine. But just remember your making the earth a worse place.

[Corinthian]

You forgot one reason, possibly the biggest: it saves material resources. For example, 80 % of steel in the world is recycled. That also, in turn, means we could cut down on iron mining by 80%, and still have the same amount we have now.

[v0tchka]

I recycle because my step-dad tells me to. It is also good for the enviroment and as Corinthian stated above, many resources are reused by recycling. So that is worth it.

[okawei]

Actually i just told you all the reasons its NOT good for the environment. And about the recycling of steel and aluminum cans. Yes, thats the ONLY good form of recycling though.

[Corinthian]

thats the ONLY good form of recycling though.

What, the kind where you reuse materials instead of getting new ones? I thought that was the only kind of recycling.

[okawei]

No recycling of steel and aluminum notice how i put that before i said that...
There are plenty of useless forms of recycling such as recycling paper, plastic, glass, and other various items apart from some metals.

[Rab]

No recycling of steel and aluminum notice how i put that before i said that...
There are plenty of useless forms of recycling such as recycling paper, plastic, glass, and other various items apart from some metals.

Do you have any proof of this?

[98smithg]

I agree 100% with you , i have read scientific jornals that proove beond doubt that recycling at our current level of efficiancy is more damageing to the enviroment than throwing away rubish.
Plus where i live the bin men come every other week for normal rubish and every other week for recyceld rubish. it means we i can only get the bin emptied once a fortnight so i have to go down the tip.

[semiavrage]

I'm going to jump on this bandwagon too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqqGBVZXWTY

[Corinthian]

useless forms of recycling such as recycling paper, plastic, glass, and other various items apart from some metals.

Those other materials are good to recycle for the same reasons steel and aluminum are.

-Paper recycling: means we don't have to cut down more trees to have the same amount of paper we do now.

-Glass recycling: means we don't have to use up more sand and silicon to have the same amount of glass we do now.

-Plastic recycling: probably the most important. Means we don't have to drill for more oil to have the same amount of plastic we do now.

See a pattern forming? That's because recycling means one thing for all materials, metal or not: reusing materials rather than getting more from the earth.

[okawei]

Ok i'll handel your topics one by one.
Paper recycling- more than 80% of all paper used come from tree farms. Man made tree farms. Now for one thing if we recycled paper and didnt use the paper on tree farms we would stop growing them. Hence less trees. (supply and demand, if we stopped eating potatos then we would stop growing them, less potatos)
Glass recycling. Do ya think were running out of sand and silicon? Nope, and pluss both are renewable resources. we can make both for instance makeing sand? Crush rocks...I'm not too informed where silicon comes from though.
Plastic Recycling. It costs less to just make the plastic than to transport clean refine and redistribute. And you say it uses less oil? How much oil do you need to make a plastic bottle? How much do you need to run a truck and machines to refine the plastic? Defidently less to just make it

[Slevin57]

1. It saves money.
No. A ton of regular trash costs about 60$ to take and despose of. However, to recycle the material it costs almost 180$ to recycle a ton of trash. Collectivly we spend 8 million dollars a year on recycling.

8 Million...That's .0000616333% of our GDP, I think we can spare it.



2. Saves Energy
Nope. Actually in order to transport, sort, and refine waste it takes much more energy than just puting it into into a landfill.

This is why you reuse it...to get more money out of it.


3. We are running out of room for landfills.
Again False. The idea that we are running out of landfill space was created by Jay Winston Porter. All of the US's trash could be held in a landfill 35x35 miles and 200ft high, for the next 1000 years. Even then no one would want to live next to that, however people dont want to live near it because of the gas created. Even then that gas can be tunneled to, for an average landfill, create energy for 60000 houses for 30 years.

Somebody made a post about turning garbage to trash...it's not done yet. Do you know what kind of biohazard a landfill that large would make? It would poison the land around it for hundreds of miles.


4. We are running out of trees
Nay. Over 80% of all trees used for paper are from "tree farms" which are man made forests created to harvest trees for paper. We actually have more trees now than we did in the 1920s. Hence if we stop growing tree farms because we are recycling paper we will actually have less trees in the US.

How could you possibly be that dumb.. Trees do not grow quickly. They grow SLOWLY. Even if you planted a tree farm it couldn't be used for 12 - 20 years depending on what kind of tree it is. We get most of our lumber from Canada because it's largely illegal to log here, because the trees were all being used up. The only true "forests" left are in our national parks.

If you live anywhere on the east or west coast you need only drive out of your suburb to see that, indeed there are less trees. In fact your cozy little gas guzzling home probably wasn't even there in 1920, guess what was there... TREES.


5. It creates good jobs for the community.
No. Actually all the jobs created are only paying about minimum wage and they have to stand in an assembly line and sort trash all day. I dont know about you guys but that just doesnt sound fun to work all day sorting trash for minimum wage.

As opposed to outsourcing all of our manufacturing work to China? Paying 7 year olds .33 cents an hour to make half the shit in your house? Just because you are not willing to take that job doesn't mean there are plenty of people that wouldn't take the opportunity in a heart beat.


6. Its good for the environment.
Not true. The transporting, cleaning, refining, and finally redistributing the trash creates more pollution then just transporting to the landfill and, eventually, plowing over the landfill to create a nice park or golf course. What would you rather have, a recycling factory or a national park or golf course?

It's called recycling, TRASH GOES IN, PRODUCTS COME OUT. The landfill doesn't just disappear when you fill it in, the toxins can easily leak into the groundwater


I would like to close this post by just stating its totally up to you if you would like to recycle because it makes you feel good throwing away 8000000$ into a recycling factory then fine. But just remember your making the earth a worse place.

We already recycle close to 50% of all the paper used, and 34% of all of our plastics. Conservation is the lesser evil here, but recycling doesn't deserve to be tossed aside.

[okawei]

One of your main arguments seems to be that toxins can leak into the ground and poisin our water supply. Actually Landfills have to reach strict guidelines in order to be allowed. First of all they have to be a certian distance from water (dont know the exact distance). Second they place a 1ft thick rubber diaper on top of 8ft of clay then add dirt then trash kinda hard to get through that dont you think? 3rd yes the landfills do dissapear after they are full, i live near a full landfill and it was turned into a baseball field in a matter of months after it was full.


As opposed to outsourcing all of our manufacturing work to China? Paying 7 year olds .33 cents an hour to make half the shit in your house? Just because you are not willing to take that job doesn't mean there are plenty of people that wouldn't take the opportunity in a heart beat.

Also we cant outsource recycling jobs, its just not logical that would just cost billions more to ship all of our trash into china. I dont agree with outsourcing jobs but that is the decision of the company.


How could you possibly be that dumb.. Trees do not grow quickly. They grow SLOWLY. Even if you planted a tree farm it couldn't be used for 12 - 20 years depending on what kind of tree it is. We get most of our lumber from Canada because it's largely illegal to log here, because the trees were all being used up. The only true "forests" left are in our national parks.

If you live anywhere on the east or west coast you need only drive out of your suburb to see that, indeed there are less trees. In fact your cozy little gas guzzling home probably wasn't even there in 1920, guess what was there... TREES.

Ok calm down. They now have genitaclly enginered trees that grow in half the time a normal tree would take. And these farms were planted in the early 80s-90s hence there are already trees there and guess what, were still planting them so we dont run out.
And about the 1920's thing we did have less trees in the 1920s then we do now and my house was built in the late 1800s so :P. Source-
But The U.S. Agriculture Department says America has 749 million acres of forestland. In 1920, we had 735 million acres of forest. look it up if you want


Somebody made a post about turning garbage to trash...it's not done yet. Do you know what kind of biohazard a landfill that large would make? It would poison the land around it for hundreds of miles.

I'm not preposing we do that i'm just saying it for the idea that were not running out of landfills We could have 140 square quarter mile landfills and still get the same effect.


2. Saves Energy
Nope. Actually in order to transport, sort, and refine waste it takes much more energy than just puting it into into a landfill.
This is why you reuse it...to get more money out of it.

Woh i thought we were talking about energy not money...


8 Million...That's .0000616333% of our GDP, I think we can spare it.

Thats still 8000000 dollars down the drain per year and the number is constantly rising

[Slevin57]

One of your main arguments seems to be that toxins can leak into the ground and poisin our water supply. Actually Landfills have to reach strict guidelines in order to be allowed. First of all they have to be a certian distance from water (dont know the exact distance). Second they place a 1ft thick rubber diaper on top of 8ft of clay then add dirt then trash kinda hard to get through that dont you think? 3rd yes the landfills do dissapear after they are full, i live near a full landfill and it was turned into a baseball field in a matter of months after it was full.

No? lol. I mean I don't know what else to say. There is a landfill right down the street here, that's right next to a lake...and they had a problem with toxins leaking into the water killing the ducks and yards around the lake.

The point is, no sealant is permanent. It will crack, and it will leak it's only a matter of time. Why do you think the property value around landfills that have been filled in is so low? Because of the high risk of soil contamination. Out of sight out of mind is not a good policy.



Also we cant outsource recycling jobs, its just not logical that would just cost billions more to ship all of our trash into china. I dont agree with outsourcing jobs but that is the decision of the company.

rofl copter. I did not say to outsource them, I meant as many other jobs are being shipped overseas, there is a higher demand for factory jobs like a recycling center.



Ok calm down. They now have genitaclly enginered trees that grow in half the time a normal tree would take. And these farms were planted in the early 80s-90s hence there are already trees there and guess what, were still planting them so we dont run out.
And about the 1920's thing we did have less trees in the 1920s then we do now and my house was built in the late 1800s so :P. Source- look it up if you want

No? lol

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Oldgrowth3.jpg




I'm not preposing we do that i'm just saying it for the idea that were not running out of landfills We could have 140 square quarter mile landfills and still get the same effect.

All that aside, just saying "bury it!" encourages people to use more, not live sustainable (conserve).



Woh i thought we were talking about energy not money...



Thats still 8000000 dollars down the drain per year and the number is constantly rising

Well you said dollars, I assumed you meant money.

[Element]

Downgrade plz

[okawei]

2. Saves Energy
Nope. Actually in order to transport, sort, and refine waste it takes much more energy than just puting it into into a landfill.
Ya i was defidently talking about energy when u responded

This is why you reuse it...to get more money out of it.




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Oldgrowth3.jpg
Oh really I liked how you didnt include my source in the quote i'll post it again if you missed it

But The U.S. Agriculture Department says America has 749 million acres of forestland. In 1920, we had 735 million acres of forest.
, i kind of trust the us department of agriculture more than some guy on wikipedia


No? lol. I mean I don't know what else to say. There is a landfill right down the street here, that's right next to a lake...and they had a problem with toxins leaking into the water killing the ducks and yards around the lake.

Here are the exact laws on landfills in the US
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=504&invol=353
That landfill obviousally doesnt comply with those regulations hence we need tighter enforcement of the laws

[Slevin57]

I wasn't going to waste my time quoting sources, BUT :P

"The United States produces over 200 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) every year. According to data from the EPA, 28% of the MSW waste is recycled or composted, 15% burned at combustion facilities, and the remaining 57% disposed of in landfills.

Landfill costs have more than doubled in the last 15 years as the requirements for stabilization and containment of waste have become increasingly stringent and obtaining a permit for a new landfill site has become more costly."

http://www-esd.lbl.gov/ECO/smart_store/problems.html

It seems you are correct about their being more forest land now then there was in 1920. However, I see no reason why that is a defense for not recycling paper. Obviously if we stopped recycling now, that 50% of recycled paper product would come out of the trees.

It's nice to have the law's, but short of tripple reinforced concrete landfills, they are bound to leak.

I am not saying that landfills don't work, I'm saying that they are not an excuse not to recycle either. Just because we could bury all of our trash, doesn't give us an excuse to use more.

The average US Home already uses more in a year then an entire village in other countries.

The US has strict laws about deforestation, hence all of the trees... However countries like Canada and countries in South America are not so lax.

Please tell me why people shouldn't recycle. We obviously have plenty of money to do it.

[Corinthian]

Downgrade plz

Downgrade? Maybe i'm confused, but I thought intelligent conversation was encouraged.

Anyways, more of my point was this: if for some reason, all the trees on earth were gone, all the underground ores were gone, all of our petroleum disapearedall of our sand disapeared, if we recycled, it wouldn't nessasarily matter, since plastics, glass, metal, and paper can be recycled. As for the cars thing, diesels can run on vegetable oil, so even if like I said where all of our resources were exhausted we could still have plastic, paper, etc.

[Hacky]

We should use hemp paper and rope instead. Better solution than merely recycling.

[Beck]

Paper recycling- more than 80% of all paper used come from tree farms. Man made tree farms. Now for one thing if we recycled paper and didnt use the paper on tree farms we would stop growing them. Hence less trees. (supply and demand, if we stopped eating potatos then we would stop growing them, less potatos)

Trees take minerals from the ground, the ground is going to run out of minerals eventually, then where will we be? In shit, that's where.


Plastic Recycling. It costs less to just make the plastic than to transport clean refine and redistribute. And you say it uses less oil? How much oil do you need to make a plastic bottle? How much do you need to run a truck and machines to refine the plastic? Defidently less to just make it

You missed an important point. Plastic takes up to thousands of years to break down.

[98smithg]

Trees take minerals from the ground, the ground is going to run out of minerals eventually, then where will we be? In shit, that's where.



.

No not necesarily energy is mearly converted from one form to another ,it is not ever entirley lost. e = mc^2 and all that.
We get energy from the sun in essence, algie for instance grows entirly on photoenzic energy from the sun. tuna can live off just algie , and tuna can be pluaghed into the fields to refresh the nutrients! even if nuitrients where to someone escape the system , it would take at least 40,000 years reasearch might sugest . qft " www.photenzicrecycling.com/timproj.pfd"

[okawei]

Trees take minerals from the ground, the ground is going to run out of minerals eventually, then where will we be? In shit, that's where.
The ground will run out of minerals, oh really. How long do you think this will actually take? Quite a while.


You missed an important point. Plastic takes up to thousands of years to break down.

Ok it takes thousands of years...underground...with no one caring about it...

[Slevin57]

Trees take minerals from the ground, the ground is going to run out of minerals eventually, then where will we be? In shit, that's where.



You missed an important point. Plastic takes up to thousands of years to break down.

The nitrogen and carbon cycle replace those "minerals". It's all one big cycle. The tree's roots absorb the minerals...When the tree's die naturally they go back into the earth through various cycles.