Is going green still worthwhile?

[IGBT]

Text



Last year a group of five Swedish campaigners, including the former head of the country's environment agency, claimed recycling was a waste of time and money.


In common with the authors of the nappy report, they turned popular belief on its head by stating that incinerating household waste, as opposed to recycling it, was best for the environment, the economy and the management of natural resources.

Another widely-held belief about what is best for the environment was questioned back in March when a report in the journal Food Policy said locally-produced food was usually "more green" than organic food.

 

[Amused]

A clue:

If you don't see bums picking it out of trash cans to recycle, it's not worth recycling.

So that leaves bottles and cans.

Paper and plastic cost more money, and are WORSE for the environment to recycle than to just produce from raw materials again.

 

[sonambulo]

pop another one

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Amused
A clue:

If you don't see bums picking it out of trash cans to recycle, it's not worth recycling.

So that leaves bottles and cans.

Paper and plastic cost more money, and are WORSE for the environment to recycle than to just produce from raw materials again.

plastic im not sure about, but when you recycle paper, im fiarly the amount of water used in the recycling process and the amount of paper lost(either you lost 25% of the pulp content or you only ended up with 25% of the pulp content after the recycling process) actually makes it worthless to recycle paper. energy use is comparable to incinerating and emissions from making it paper again is pretty bad too.

reforestation is the way to go.(im thinkinh along the lines of "tree farms")

 

[Analog]

You know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadilac El Dorado Convertable
Hot pink!
With whale skin hub caps
An all leather cow interior
And big brown baby seal eyes for headlights
YEAH!
And I'm gonna drive around in that baby
At 115 miles per hour
Getting one mile per gallon
Sucking down Quarter Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable Styrofoam containers
And when I'm done sucking down those grease-ball burgers
I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag
And then I'm gonna toss the Styrofoam containers right out the side
And there ain't a Goddamn thing anybody can do about it
You know why?
'Cause we got the bombs, that's why!
Two words: Nuclear F_uckin' Weapons
Okay!?
Russia, Germany, Romania
They can have all the Democracy they want
They can have a big Democracy cake walk
Right through the middle of Tienemen Square
And it won't make a lick of difference
Because we got the bombs
Okay!?

 

[0]

I remember going crazy with recycling back in the early 90s. We had 4 different trash buckets in each cubicle.... LOL..

Then came the downsizing and cutbacks. Guess what... The recycling went out the window.

 

[Kipper]

There have been valid points put into this thread, but consider this:

Items that are not recycled add to the total volume of waste that must be disposed of, whether it be landfills or incinerators. Moreover, you have to consider both short and long-term effects. Are the resources we consume renewable or are they not? It may make less sense to recycle when we can reproduce more cheaply and more efficiently, but do supplies of aluminum or steel, for instance, have the possibility of drying up or rising in price in the near future?

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Kipper
There have been valid points put into this thread, but consider this:

Items that are not recycled add to the total volume of waste that must be disposed of, whether it be landfills or incinerators. Moreover, you have to consider both short and long-term effects. Are the resources we consume renewable or are they not? It may make less sense to recycle when we can reproduce more cheaply and more efficiently, but do supplies of aluminum or steel, for instance, have the possibility of drying up or rising in price in the near future?

We're in no danger of running out of landfill space. That was such outrageous hype that has been completely debunked.

As for running out of specific raw materials, when we do, it will be profitable to recycle and we'll mine the ancient landfills... making trillions (inflation, ya know).

As for aluminum, it already is profitable to recycle, thus we have bums picking it out of trash. Steel is profitable only in large quantities. Thus we have junk yards and ship breakers.

Wood/paper is completely renewable. We grow it in crops just like we do corn.