omfg.. a woman at my work gave out "litter tickets"

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Leros

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: SampSon
It was a frigging joke. Ya know, humor. The idea that is seemingly lost on the so many people on this forum. Not every statement here is made to spark a debate.

Mabey you are right.

I think you're wrong.

Boo... :thumbsdown:

Correct reply is:

I think ur wrong.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Kelvrick
had a lady at work who went around and lysol'ed every single phone receiver at work.

You mean there are still Telephone Sanitisers?

 

[mercanucaribe]

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe

Originally posted by: SampSon
That is an incredible waste of time and general resources.

Print out this straight dope column in 96pt fonts and give it to her.

Did you miss the point of that article or something?

Nope, I understood it very well.

Recycling is neither here nor there. After reading other local series articles about local recycling efforts in my area, I tend to lean towards recycling being a net loss.
In my area two trucks pick up garbage and recycables. So that's two full size trucks with two full crews and two separate facilities. I'm not sure if the results are different in other areas, but in my area recycling is a feel-good politician drive.

I didn't mean to start a debate on the positives/negatives of recycling. It was meant to be an ironic joke to be played on his idiotic coworker. If you want more information then go and search the internet and local news archives.

The Dope article says that recycling saves resources and energy in most cases, the exceptions being plastics.

Having another truck going around is an insignifcant impact on the environment, considering how little fuel it takes to service a whole neighborhood. It's not like they use Ferraris for trash pickup.

Are you one of those people who is under the impression that recycling paper uses more energy than logging and possibly growing new trees? This is not the case at all. It's something like 5 times more energy efficient, and saves fertilizer, land, and in some cases old growth forests.

There's no comparison at all between mining bauxite and processing vs recycling aluminum. Why do you think Anheuser Busch owns its own recycling operation?

Mabey you missed where I said my opinion is formed from more than just this 7 year old article? Did you even read my post? I'm not making blanket statements about recycling (you would know that had you read my post, or mabey comprehended it), I was talking more specifically about recycling studies in my local area.

The trucks they use, a fleet of over 1,000 (as of 2002-2003), get mabey 3-5 mpg at best. That is only a one factor in the higher cost of recycling over new material.
I don't fabricate this data in my head, I pull it from the same sources you have available to you. Except mabey the local series articles from the Buffalo News.

Please cite your sources about recycling being 5 times more efficient than recycling (because frankly that's bs). You had to have read the Wiki article on this topic, right? If you haven't, then take a look at it.

From everything I've read we know that recycling aluminum is a good thing and recycling paper isn't as good. The old growth forest arguement is pointless, primarily because we never use old growth forests to make paper. We use quick growing soft woods like pine that are so easy to grow that we farm the damn things. Please do an ounce of research before you post.

I got my 5x as energy efficient thing from a documentary on Discovery Channel Sci Channel I saw the other day. You are talking about the trucks picking up recycling.. you do realize that trucks are used to move lumber too right? Trees don't harvest themselves either.

What makes you think that old growth forests aren't used for paper and that I didn't "do an ounce of research"? Are you under the impression that I just fell off the turnip truck and onto hippie propaganda websites? Everyone knows that fast growing trees are grown for paper, but old growth boreal forest is cut down in Canada for paper. Did you miss the Victoria's Secret controversy?

In any case, growing trees isn't free. It takes water and hydrocarbon based fertilizers. If you compare natural wood and farmed wood, you'll see that the growth rings are much further apart for the farmed wood. Why? Because it's watered and fertilized! Soil resources take a long long time to renew themselves, so we use artificial fertilization. The argument that wood is renewable and so we should use as much as we want is the same as the BS pro-ethanol arguments. Land is not infinite, and in order to grow corn for fuel, or trees for paper, we must replace natural vegetation.

If recycling in it's current state was so vastly superior to pulling raw materials then we would be heavily developing more efficient recycling systems and our raw material consumption would drop, right? On top of that there wouldn't be so much debate and criticizm of recycling, correct? Since that is not the case and people much more involved than you and I are involved in figuring out why, I don't see how you can make an assertion with any certainty at all. Mabey you have a secret data set that I, or anyone else, simply does not have, but I seriously doubt that.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts...ecycling/solidwaste/paperandglass.html

Recycling glass is a relatively good energy saver. Using recycled glass to make new glass products requires 40 percent less energy than making it from all new materials. It saves energy because crushed glass, called cullet, melts at a lower temperature than the raw materials used to make glass. New glass is made from sand, soda ash, and limestone.
...
A paper mill uses 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber. However, a recycling mill may consume more fossil fuels than a paper mill. Paper mills generate much of their energy from waste wood, but recycling mills purchase most of their energy from local power companies or use on-site cogeneration facilities.

Making recycled paper does require fewer chemicals and bleaches than making all-new paper. Although recycled paper is less polluting than paper made from wood fiber, both processes produce different by-products. Paper mills may emit more sulfur dioxide, but recycling mills may produce more sludge. Deinking at Cross Pointe?s Miami, Ohio mill results in 22 pounds of sludge for every 100 pounds of wastepaper recycled.

Paper recycling does mean fewer trees are used to make paper, but all-new paper is almost always made from trees specifically grown for papermaking. A tree harvested for papermaking is soon replaced by another, so the cycle continues. ?We are not talking about the rain forest or old growth in the Pacific Northwest,? says Champion Paper?s Martin Blick. ?Most of the trees cut for paper come from fifth or sixth generation pulp-wood forests.?

(They omit the resources used to grow trees for paper)

From your Wikipedia link:
Economist Steven Landsburg has claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish the forests they own, large demands for paper lead to large forests. Conversely, reduced demand for paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests.[3] Similar arguments were expressed in a 1995 article for The Free Market.[16]

When foresting companies cut down trees, more are planted in their place. Most paper comes from pulp forests grown specifically for paper production.[10][16][17][5] The amount of timber in the U.S. has been increasing for decades[16][17] and there is "three times more wood today than in 1920."[10] Many environmentalists point out, however, that "farmed" forests are inferior to virgin forests in several ways. Farmed forests are less able to fix the soil as quickly as virgin forests, causing widespread soil erosion and often requiring large amounts of fertilizer to maintain while containing little tree and wild-life biodiversity compared to virgin forests

That is some amazing circular logic by Steven Landsburg. Who the hell trusts Libertarian economists in the first place? Since most paper comes from tree farms, it's simplistic and foolish to use an argument that "forests would shrink if recycling increased". Tree farms are monocultures with little biodiversity. It's the same as a corn farm. "More trees good" is a BS argument targeted to people with little knowledge of ecology.



Edit: By the way, there's a "debate" over evolution too. What does that tell you?