Is Recycling just a big fat crock?

[bertha katzenengel]

I think Penn & Teller sent up recycling programs on their show, "Bullshit!" - did they? I haven't seen it.

I need to know if recycling is worth the effort. I honestly can't see me giving it up. For recyclable things to wind up in the landfills -- the thought just makes me want to vomit! So I recycle. But if my newspapers, cans, glass, and especially plastic are just winding up in the landfill anyway, what's the use?

Are any recycling programs really recycling things?

How can I learn if my county's program is bogus?

Can anyone give me any info? Thanks.

[Lilyhoney]

1. Great question, I want to know too. nt

[bemildred]

2. Yeah, but do it anyway. nt

[uppityperson]

3. Best to reduce, and reuse. Recyling does little compared to them

Recycling serves best to remind people that resources are limited and crap isn't. Reduce the amount you use, reuse what you have.

[bertha katzenengel]

21. reduce/reuse

Sounds like a mantra. :)

[thecrow]

4. We stopped recycling when we saw the garbage man....

throwing all our recycle bins into the truck along with the trash.
Well... shortly thereafter/
When they stopped picking it up at all for about a month, we just gave up.
As we have private trash removal in our town, it is almost impossibleto change it.
We do respect recycling wherever there is a chance to use it.

[MindPilot]

10. Same thing at my workplace

they make a big deal about recycling. We have to separate white and colored paper; putting a battery in the trash is grounds for termination, bins for cans and plastic are all over.

The one evening I had to stay late and I watched as the housekeeping staff went around and emptied every container into the same bin.

I began to question recycling back during the first Gulf War. I was standing at the sink peeling the label from a soup can so they go in separate recycle bins and glanced over at the TV to see millions of barrels of oil flowing into the ocean.

[napi21]

5. I can't speak for your local recyling programs, but I can recommend

a great recycle program for "stuff" you no longer need. It's set up in Yahoo Groups and it's called Freecycle.

There is a local group for almost everywhere in America. I joined this group about a year ago, and have given away, and also gotten quite a few things FREE. The idea is one man's trash is another man's treasure. There is everything you can imagine there (at least in my area) from clothes, LR furniture, lawnmowers, etc. You can also post "wanted" things there.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Freecycle/

I love it! I got a very nice, complete king size waterbed with the drawers underneath a few months ago, I'm getting a Pet taxi tomorrow, and I've given away a wheelbarrow, gas grill over the range microwave and some kitchen cabinets.

[bertha katzenengel]

22. Wish I'd known about it before we threw away our

microwave that had quit working. Thanks for the info.

[marbuc]

6. Here in Boulder, CO

We have a robust recycling program. We have to separate paper products (including milk cartons, and card board), plastic and glass bottles and cans. Participation is compelled through market forces; we get a tiny 32 gallon can for trash, and have to pay more if we produce more. The "recycles" are removed for free.

I can tell you that it cut my landfill contribution by at least 60 percent. A while back I read the program has cut collective landfill contribution by 50 percent, I'm sure that percentage is greater now.

So in short, yes, recycling does work. All it takes is a minimal commitment from people and municipalities, and it is well worth the seconds per day necessary to divide the garbage.

[bertha katzenengel]

23. My sister's town says they do the separating at the dump.

I'm going to have to find a way to verify that, because for years she separated all recyclables religiously. Boulder rocks.

[marbuc]

25. I haven't heard of any towns doing it this way

but it seems to be an ambitious project. Here in Boulder, the materials are kept completely separate. Two trucks come on garbage day, one for trash, and one for recyclables. We alternate paper cans/bottles/plastics, so that each is picked up biweekly.

[bertha katzenengel]

26. All I could find is this

http://www.oclandfills.com/recycling_programs.asp

Hers isn't the only Orange County city that does it this way -- nine cities sort out the recyclables for the residents: Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Newport Beach, Rossmoor, and Tustin. I'm going to have to do better research to find out how it works and what actually gets recycled. (Wish I could depend on the Orange County Register - it's a pretty right wing paper.)

[mgr]

40. The goal of the California program is a reduced waste stream

Can't speak for elsewhere. It is a legal requirement that reduction of the waste stream to greater than 60% be accomplished by all local governments that handle trash. This all followed the landfill crisis in the 1980s. Here in the Central Valley, apparently Modesto had one of the earliest curbside programs, that was recent revamped.

1. The yardwaste can be composted and resold by the local government as a soil amendment--in Modesto it is recycled with biosolids and resold in a manner reminiscent of Milorganite.

2. All plastics, aluminum, metals, and paper are recycled. There should be a contract item stipulating that if there are private haulers. Often if the costs for sorting exceed the value returned for the recyclable, the contract with the haulers will cover that shortfall.

If you see someone not making the effort to segregate the waste stream, inform the management or agency overseeing the contract.

Mike

[Nihil]

42. Our district does it in a similar way

The "green bin" is collected every fortnight but you put paper, card,
tin cans, aluminium cans and plastic bottles into the one bin.
The different items are sorted (some auto, some manual) at the
reprocessing centre. Anything that has just been tipped in (i.e., not
in one of the recyclable categories) is redirected to the landfill
stream along with the standard rubbish bin collections.

You have to take the glass bottles down yourself but at least there
are a lot of collection points scattered around.

It only takes a little effort but even this seems to be beyond an awful
lot of people :-(

[hunter]

39. We get three cans

A small garbage can, a larger "recyclables" can, and a "yard waste" can.

You have to pay extra for a larger garbage can.

They used to shred and compost the yard waste here, but then there were huge concerns about plant pathogens such as Sudden Oak Death, etc.

Now they use the yard waste instead of dirt as cover at the landfill, mostly to reduce scavanging by seagulls and other birds. (Seagulls view dumps as huge buffet tables. Plucking chicken bones out from in front of a bulldozer requires the same sorts of skills as catching anchovies.)

Recycling is not a bad habit, and will become more important as resources grow scarce, and raw materials more valuable.

Probably it's best to think about trash when you go shopping, and minimize the amount of it you bring home in the first place.

For example 5-liter boxes of wine might be better than 750ml bottles...

[KnaveRupe]

7. "I honestly can't see me giving it up."

That was the gist of Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" recycling episode. People are "faith-based" when it comes to recycling. It makes people "feel" like they're doing something important to help the environment, even though they pretty handily proved that it accomplishes nothing. It creates crappy make-work jobs, costs more than landfilling, and has a minimal effect on Landfill size. Further, they pointed out that the landfill "crisis" is... wait for it... "Bullshit!". We are not running out of landfill space. Period.

It was a good episode. And they DID find that recycling aluminum cans IS worthwhile, so keep on doing that. But recycling your plastic and paper, and everything else? If it makes you happy, knock yourself out! It's a better hobby than torturing small animals, or shooting heroin, right? But you DON'T need to feel guilty if you toss your 2-liter coke bottle in the regular trash.

[marbuc]

8. And of course, the faith based crowd

believes recycling is unnecessary because the rapture is imminent

[bertha katzenengel]

12. Don't hijack my thread.

:eyes:

[marbuc]

17. You're joking right?

[bertha katzenengel]

18. No. I'm not joking.

This thread isn't about the whether or not the religious right recycles and their reasons for doing/not doing so.

[marbuc]

19. Reasons for or against recycling

is perfectly relevant to the title "Is Recycling Just a Big Fat Crock?"

[bertha katzenengel]

20. Not in this thread they're not -- especially not "the rapture."

My thread questions whether recycling is done so that it works. I started it so I could learn from people who know about it. Adding "people who are waiting for the rapture don't recycle" doesn't answer my questions.

Your OP seemed to me a gratuitous attempt to bash the religious right and the attempt isn't welcome.

FYI not all who believe the "rapture" is imminent trash the planet.

[marbuc]

24. I'm not above a gratuitous shot at the Fundie Right

but this was not. Several people have made this point recently, including Bill Moyers. If you feel I disrupted the integrity of your thread I apologize, I will be more careful on your future threads.

[bertha katzenengel]

27. Just be sure to recycle the eggshells after you walk on them.

I can be hypersensitive. :shrug:

[bertha katzenengel]

11. About plastic:

It does not return to the earth like paper does. I don't believe it's okay just to chuck it. Especially heavy plastic such as contains our laundry soap (and there's another fun polllutant).

I'm not worried about running out of landfill space. I'm worried about what is in the landfills and what that trash releases into the atmosphere.

[Dogmudgeon]

28. Plastic issues

There's good news and bad news, BK ..

First, the good news. Plastic does, indeed, return to the earth. It is an organic substance, made from Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Hydrogen. All plastic in common use breaks down relatively fast. Laundry soap containers also break down relatively fast.

Now, the bad news: "Relatively fast" can mean ten, twenty, even fifty years, depending on the ecological niche.

Plus, your dislike of plastic has a lot more merit than just the issue of it being "trash". Some plastics release xenoestrogens (toxic estrogen mimics) while breaking down, including the fundamental chemicals used in Teflon manufacture, which is a bad one.

Composting is a good bioremediation practice, and in a big compost heap with lots of beneficial thermophile bacteria, the plastic can be returned to nature as much as 100 times faster than just sitting in a dump. But this usually isn't the case.

I hope you didn't read this as a rebuttal, but as an FYI. The xenoestrogen problem is emerging as a major health risk as we learn more about it.

--p!

[bertha katzenengel]

29. a very important FYI - I'm newly educated

TY, Pigwidgeon.

I am indeed worried about the toxins that the breakdown of plastic can release - not just worried about trash.

Thanks again. :bounce:

[rfkrfk]

34. recycling distracts attention from more important issues

such as,
land conservation,
ocean conservation,
biodiversity conservation.

In some places. it might be legit.
IMO, most places, a scam for local gov'ts
to look like they are doing something.

Old 'Mt. Trashmore', make a good ski hill, for beginners.

[XemaSab]

30. Landfills are a blight on the earth

It's not so much an issue of the actual space used for the landfill, it's an issue of the toxic waste and waste in general.

Landfills decay anaerobically, so stuff like plastics and food doesn't decompose like it would if you chucked it in the yard. It just sits there, eternally nasty. Most of that crap could be composted or recycled (most = more than 80%, from what I could see at the Corpus Christi dump). This is stuff that could get a second life as mulch or compost, or paper, plastics, glass, metal, and other stuff.

There are also toxic chemicals in treated wood, TV's, computer parts, old thermometers, batteries, discarded oil, and who knows what else. These toxins seep to the bottom of the landfill and can easily percolate into the ground water. It's impossible to get anal about a TV or car battery when it's buried in a GIANT truckload of lawn clippings, kitchen garbage, and office garbage.

Landfills are never going to go away, but they can be a lot smaller and a lot smarter.

[KnaveRupe]

35. I'm no expert on landfills,

but from what I DO know, there is a major difference between a "dump" and a landfill. Landfills are designed to minimize or eliminate the problem of toxin seepage via the numerous layers separated by nonpermeable membranes. Landfills recover biogas, which is then used as fuel, for power generation, or for other uses depending on the needs of the municipality. Landfills are engineered for efficiency and effectiveness in municipal solid waste disposal.

A dump is a large pile of shit.

IMHO, the efforts of society are better spent in fighting for continuing and improving government oversight and standards for landfills, rather than increasing the burden upon individuals to engage in activity which has questionable effectiveness at best, and no value whatsoever at worst.

Landfills are our friends! I live less than a mile from our local landfill, and have no qualms about it. Seriously. If landfills WERE a blight, I'd have some knowledge of it, but our property values here in the shadow of the Lakeview Landfill are holding steady just fine, thank you very much.

[XemaSab]

37. Landfills are a dump

seperated from the water table by a few sheets of plastic. Also, most landfills don't do landfill gas recovery.

Landfill science is... evolving.

[bertha katzenengel]

13. BTW

If Penn & Teller finds that recycling aluminum cans is worthwhile, then by all means . . . because I believe everything P&T say, too.

Not.

I just brought them up because their show is thought-provoking, not because I believe everything they say -- any more than I believe everything any other source says.

But I appreciate the reply.

[benevolent dictator]

33. Recycling aluminum is good, and is probably actually done, since

it takes something like 95% more energy to get aluminum from ore as it does from recycled aluminum.

[phantom power]

9. I think of it as similar to my owning an electric lawnmower.

Some people like to tell me that I'm not changing anything, because the electricity I use to run it was mostly generated using fossil fuels.

But that's only part of the story. Even electricity generated with fossil fuels is more efficient and clean than if I used the same energy in a dirty gasoline lawnmower engine.

And, my lawnmower can run on electricity generated with wind-power, or solar, or nuclear. So it's still a step in the right direction.

I think recycling is like that too. Sure, it's probably not as big a win as some people assume, but when we recycle, we're moving the infrastructure in the right direction. We're producing a "recycling stream" that people on the back-end can improve over time.

And, even if some stuff isn't really recycled, some of it is too. So it's better than not doing it.

[dcfirefighter]

16. Get a reel mower

http://www2.yardiac.com/long.asp?tgs=14519872:21450623&cart_id=&item_id=889

Lawns tend to be water hogs and, depending on your lawncare regime, a chief source of nonpoint solution.

[skids]

54. He has one...

...he has to reel the power cord around. :-P

We had one when I was a kid. Needless to say, the power cord had quite a few sections with tape on it :-)

[zalinda]

14. Get the book Garbage Land

While Penn and Teller are okay, I don't trust them to tell me the truth. They have their own agenda.

zalinda

[bertha katzenengel]

15. Thanks, I'll check it out. And see post # 13. n/t

[necso]

31. I have wondered this myself,

both generally and locally.

The amount of effort required to sort out many recyclables of small worth (especially plastics, where (for some) you may have to find and check that little triangle thingie, and anything which is worth next to nothing) seems disproportionate to the return. (There are also questions of actual reuse, if not reuseablity, of some of these "recycled" materials)

"Skimming off" the easy-to-sort and the high-value seems like the obvious dodge to save money and get maximum return on investment. So I question (much of the) commercial recycling (at least beyond those who take limited, already sorted stuff).

(Whenever profits are involved, you have to figure that some (aspiring) profiteers will try to game the system, and that the profits, not the task at hand, will be concentrated upon. Unfortunately, because these profit-emphasizing types will likely outperform other competitors on the "bottom-line", then it is not unreasonable to expect them to dominate the "marketplace" -- unless everyone is held to the same rigorous standards of task performance, product quality, environmental and worker protections, etc. But that, of course, is exactly what these sleazy profiteers are trying to make sure doesn't happen -- and they will gladly move their businesses out of country -- use illegal, unprotected labor -- or try to change laws -- whatever, whenever they can, to avoid it.)

And one would think that there has to be some government budget line-item (or items) for government based recycling (unless they hide or obscure it, like they regularly do with other useful information these days). The dollar figure (relative and absolute) associated with this line item (or items) should give some rough idea if a serious attempt is being made -- or if a great deal of money is being stolen in the name of it.

Oh, and I scrupulously recycle (for money where I can get it) and compost. I have reasonable confidence that the stuff that I get paid for is being "recycled" (that is, these businesses sell it off, not dump it -- even if it is not actually being reused). And the composting ends with me (or my neighbors), so I am real confident in that. I have my suspicions about the rest though, since it's largely privately done.

But I have done this since college and I have no intention of stopping. And at least they should (well) segregate stuff in the landfills -- which they probably don't. (I can envision our descendants being reduced to mining our landfills.)

Improved technology could be of value here. I saw a program on PBS where they grind up electronics into (somewhat) reusable components. And while this is not necessarily directly applicable to the larger problem, improvements in system and process are there to be made... and should be. (Perhaps some machine (easily) recognizable system can be put in place, like reserving different colors for different plastics, or color bands maybe -- or something, anything, built into the product. And yes, conservation should be used where feasible.)

(Those descendants of ours are probably going to be cursing us at some future date. But it's not like we really care as a people.)

Checking into the exact nature of recycling (including the end use of the "recycled" materials) throughout the country seems like a worthwhile endeavor for activists.

Thrift is a virtue, and creating an endless stream of needlessly "consumed" (and "thrown away") materials runs counter to it.

[NNadir]

32. Recycling is a crock in some places, not all.

It really doesn't hurt though.

I understand that California newspaper and plastic recycling recovers about 25% of the waste, the rest making its way to landfills.

Still, as the price of oil rises - something I like very much - the utility of newspaper - which is a biologically sourced product - and plastic will also rise. Both of these are potentially wonderful carbon sources for reformers.

It is probably best not to screw with this habit. If it is not really working 100% today, it may work at close to 100% in the future. The infrastructure should be maintained.

[Township75]

36. Al cans can be recycled easily, plastics (polymers) are very difficult..

I have read the Al cans are easy to recycle and are worth it.

Plastic on the other hand, will likely never be easy to recycle...it is just the thermodynamics of it. Different types of plastics almost always do NOT mix, so contamination is easy. Additionally, the cost is much more than just making new plastic, so there need to be some research breakthroughs to make progress in this area. As of now, most "recycled" plastic really just gets grinded up, and put into roads to improved the weather resistance and road life time. So it is more of a reuse.

[brystheguy]

38. Even though it goes in a garbage truck, it can still be recycled.

Here in the Kansas City area, two trucks come on garbage day. The garbage truck and the recycle truck. They both look exactly the same (like a garbage truck). We used to have recycle truck where they sorted it as they put it on the truck, but that was too expensive. The sorting is now all done at a sorting facility. These machines fluff it all up and is able to separate a lot of the stuff without people having to touch it. People are still involved in the process though.

People here have followed these trucks and they do go to the recycling center and not to the landfill. The only thing that I do not like about this system is that you can no longer place glass in the recycle bins because the truck breaks the glass when it compresses the stuff and it somehow gets in with the paper at the plant. I still collect the glass and take it to a local place once a month or so.

[intheflow]

41. My dream is to have us invest in recycling like we do in war.

It's really all about how we spend our tax dollars, and what our priorities are. As a nation we actually could decide to fund recycling and reclaimation programs at the same levels as we fund the military-industrial complex. Indeed, I don't know why companies don't all do this accross the board anyway, since they could sell reclaimed/recycled products and make more profit. Also, all those engineers working on bigger and badder bombs could transfer their energy into finding ways to break down every bit of plastic/metal/whatever into 100% reusable products--thus generating more money.

I guess I'm just a crazy dreamer. But really, please do not stop recycling. In all likelihood, your local recycling services are good and true, as cities and counties are runing out of landfill space, are worrying about groundwater contamination, and don't have enough money in the coffers to ship waste off elsewhere.

[hunter]

44. Nah, let's just let our grandkids worry about recycling.

They can mine the landfills to pay our national debt.

"Back to the garbage mines, you wretched yankee peasant!"

Happiness will be finding an unopened can of SPAM and stuffing it down your pants while your overlord isn't watching.

[Throckmorton]

43. No Plastic has a lot of post-consumer value

Types 1 and 2 are sorted, baled, and shipped to china.

[SteppingRazor]

45. As Penn & Teller said on that show...

Recycling only works ALL THE TIME when the item recycled is a valuable commodity -- aluminum, for example.

In other cases, recycling actually creates MORE pollution (as in the case of recycling plastic, though it should be pointed out that, while it is more polluting, it also saves us from drowning in empty plastic bottles).

Or try out this scenario -- newspaper is now made from trees primarily grown on farms specifically for the purpose of being turned into paper. If everyone recycled paper, these farms would no longer be needed.
As such, if everyone recycled paper, there would be LESS trees in the world.
Is that a mind-blower, or what?

[phantom power]

46. Or, we could replace those tree-farms with old-growth forest.

[benevolent dictator]

47. Who says not needing tree farms would mean there were less trees?

It's called just letting the trees grow instead of cutting them down to make paper.

[SteppingRazor]

48. But those tree farms are on private land used for farming...

If farmers couldn't make money from them, they'd grow something else, not just let the trees grow.

[Viking12]

49. Tree farms are biological deserts....

..trees aren't in and of themselves necessarily good. On these monocultured plots there is little biodiversity. I own land surrounded by a tree farm. The contrast between the two sides of the fenceline is dramatic.

Moreover, farmers don't grow trees on tree farms, corporations do. In MN, the largest landowner is Potlach. If they couldn't make money on their land, they'd sell. Some would be converted for other uses, the rest would revert to a more naturalized state.

[SteppingRazor]

50. Fine and dandy. My point is...

You couldn't just "let the trees grow" if tree farms became unnecessary. The land is privately owned and would be used for some other purpose, whatever it may be. The fact that tree farms are, in general, more Big Agra than small farmer only helps the case -- corporations don't take losses for no reason at all. The point is, after all, to make money.

[Viking12]

51. My point is...so what?

Tree farms are to a great extent environmentally useless; they provide poor habitat and few ecological services. There is some evidence that the continual monoculturing is ultimatley harmful.

If they're converted to other uses, it wouldn't nbecessarily be a great loss. There is a presumption in your posts that trees = good. That is not necessarily the case.

[SteppingRazor]

52. In that sense, couldn't agree more.

It's not as though trees in and of themselves are an ecosystem, particularly when used solely for cultivation. I was just pointing out an odd point that was made in Penn & Teller's show. That's all.

By the way, Viking, I just saw over at the Grateful Dead Group that we have the same final Dead show -- 12/01/94, Denver. Duuuuuude! :toast:

[benevolent dictator]

53. Hmm... good point. nt