Recycling is... bullshit?

[poxpower]

Ok so yeah I saw the Penn and Teller show about recycling and since I usually agree with them and I assume they've done a better research than I have, it raises questions.

What was said on the show:

- There's more tree now in america than ever before because we grow them for the paper industry, it's stupid to recycle paper to save trees because they grow back anyways and we're just wasting money, time and polluting with various chemicals to get the paper usable again.

-There's more than enough space to put all our garbage, the "landfills are getting too full" thing is just some blown-out-of-proportion propaganda. We could put all the garbage in america in one huge super-landfill in the desert or something and it would be pretty insignificant.

- Recycling aluminium is actually economically viable.

So yeah basically the claims are that recycling paper/plastic is a waste of money and the environment isn't in danger at all.

=====

So seeing as I don't really know shit about recycling other than what I've been told constantly in school, what do you guys think about it?

[LazyDrunk]

At 4/6/08 10:56 PM, poxpower wrote: So seeing as I don't really know shit about recycling other than what I've been told constantly in school, what do you guys think about it?

It makes the sense the way Bullshit presents it. Aren't plastics petroleum products? Wasting gas to transport plastic, then more to reprocess it . . . bah, those who can afford it at least slow waste accumulation, however miniscule it would be.

Bauxite needs to be mined, so that makes sense to recycle. One ton of aluminum will hold it's value longer and won't depreciate itself like plastic.

As far as paper products go, the raging superwildfires tearing through unlogged tracts should speak for itself. Think factories pollute? Try 100 millions acres of scorched earth.

[LazyDrunk]

depreciate

deplete

[Earfetish]

I went out with an environmentally conscious girl who studied Environmental Science and showed her that episode and she was like 'yeah, I know, we've been taught all this, but aluminium cans are still good'.

[n64kid]

You're forgetting liberal guilt.
"Oh those poor trees are being cut down, let's reuse them as much as possible."

But the costs of recycling plastic and aluminum are quite beneficial.

Extracting aluminum is costly, and requires a shit load of energy. Recycling uses about 5-20% of the energy needed to extract new aluminum from ore.

Plastic is cheap, and recycling plastic is not, but making plastics require a lot of water, so by recycling plastic, you recycle water. Also benzene pellets are made out of oil, which is used in plastics. Recycling helps reduce the amount of oil used as well.

[SolInvictus]

did they compare it according to North American recycling capabilities or world? apparently some of the Scandinavian countries have some pretty effecient recycling technologies.

[poxpower]

At 4/6/08 10:57 PM, Grammer wrote: Recycling is good

good point.

At 4/6/08 11:03 PM, LazyDrunk wrote:

At 4/6/08 10:56 PM, poxpower wrote: So seeing as I don't really know shit about recycling other than what I've been told constantly in school, what do you guys think about it?

It makes the sense the way Bullshit presents it. Aren't plastics petroleum products?

Yeah. I don't know how many tupperwares you can make with 1 gallon of gas. I hope it's a not a lot because garbage trucks don't run on hobo farts.

As far as paper products go, the raging superwildfires tearing through unlogged tracts should speak for itself.

Fires are a natural event, the forests have replenished themselves and wil keep doing so in the future and even faster now since there's firemen specially dedicated to putting out forest fires to minimize the damage.

The people who really burn a shitload of trees are the south americans who burn down the rain forest for no profit other than the land they get to raise cattle afterwards. That's a real giant waste but hey, they're fucking poor and I would do the same thing if I were them.

At 4/6/08 11:08 PM, n64kid wrote:

Plastic is cheap, and recycling plastic is not, but making plastics require a lot of water, so by recycling plastic, you recycle water.

Well you still have to pay to clean the water. I'd rather drink it than clean some dirty TV dinner trays.

At 4/6/08 11:19 PM, SolInvictus wrote: did they compare it according to North American recycling capabilities or world?

Probably just the U.S.A.

[n64kid]

At 4/6/08 11:41 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 4/6/08 11:08 PM, n64kid wrote:

Plastic is cheap, and recycling plastic is not, but making plastics require a lot of water, so by recycling plastic, you recycle water.

Well you still have to pay to clean the water. I'd rather drink it than clean some dirty TV dinner trays.

I was actually alluding to water bottles. Which are generally used once, then discarded.
Water used to recycle are often less than 1/3 of the water used in creating more plastic.

Water and oil could be saved if more people recycled plastic

[poxpower]

At 4/6/08 11:45 PM, n64kid wrote:

Water and oil could be saved if more people recycled plastic

Is that all plastics or just bottles?
Anyways it never seemed to me like it would be that hard to recycle plastic. You just melt it back into pellets.

But the point on paper made the most sense to me :o It does seem like a waste.

[SolInvictus]

i have one way of recycling water bottles with minimal energy usage and material loss; refill the damn things, it was just tap water to begin with.

from the Bullshit episode on bottled water.

[BeFell]

At 4/6/08 11:41 PM, poxpower wrote: Fires are a natural event, the forests have replenished themselves and wil keep doing so in the future and even faster now since there's firemen specially dedicated to putting out forest fires to minimize the damage.

Actually modern forest fires are no longer natural events. Before man got involved forest cleared out brush and dead wood that accumulated on the forest floor but usually left living tees alone as the fire didn't get hot enough to burn the moist wood. Since man has been fighting forest fires the brush and dead trees which had previously been removed through natural fires pile up in levels nature would never have allowed before man started putting out fires. Since there is so much more fuel in the forest it means the fires burn hotter and longer meaning it can take out living trees and cause massive detestation. These fires are also too powerful for man to extinguish meaning the best we can hope for is containment.

One solution to this problem is permitting loggers to harvest forest on the condition that they remove the brush and dead trees from the areas they are not harvesting. This would restore nature's intention of removing these items, prevent the super fires which destroy wildlife habitat and cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing. Then of course the loggers and those who work in the paper industry would be happy because they would be able to feed their families.

Of course this solution has been attacked by environmentalists on the basis of being too damn logical. I believe this is the same logic against removing protections on timber wolves even though their population is growing to the point of being detrimental to themselves and other wildlife. The too logical card was also invoked in the DDT issue despite the fact that lab tests which proved its danger were never duplicated and millions in the third world have died of malaria since DDT was banned from use for mosquito abatement. I don't think environmentalists really care about they environment at all they just like to be on the news for suing the government.

[CommanderX1125]

At 4/6/08 11:58 PM, SolInvictus wrote: i have one way of recycling water bottles with minimal energy usage and material loss; refill the damn things, it was just tap water to begin with.

from the Bullshit episode on bottled water.

That was a great episode, I love the water hose, as well as the "food" they were serving, or was that a different episode..... Anyway, your method makes the best sense, but I have to ask, how many people really drink bottle water? Generally, the only people I've met who regularly drink bottled water are people who are either attempting to lose weight, or people who are stuck up. The people who drink Fiji water seem particularly rude.

Anyway, to stay on topic, recycling plastic is not a good thing according to this group.

[LazyDrunk]

At 4/6/08 11:41 PM, poxpower wrote:

As far as paper products go, the raging superwildfires tearing through unlogged tracts should speak for itself.

Fires are a natural event, the forests have replenished themselves and wil keep doing so in the future and even faster now since there's firemen specially dedicated to putting out forest fires to minimize the damage.

Right, but the fires the American southwest saw in '03 weren't your average savannah fires either.

"It is estimated that insurance claims could top $100bn [...] 81 planes and helicopters from at least six states were launching major and ground and air attacks on the blazes[...] 650,000 acres of land has been burnt."

Lots of it will grow back, but some areas won't, and some were never intended to burn in the first place. Yeah, arsonists lit a few of them, but the fuel for the megafire and the lack of access to overgrown areas is what made fighting those fires even costlier. Logging roads and selective cutting benefit everyone, even if it's at the expense of a few shy critters. Those fuckers rarely survive the inferno anyway, so why not?

Don't even get me started on the '07 fires.

The people who really burn a shitload of trees are the south americans who burn down the rain forest for no profit other than the land they get to raise cattle afterwards. That's a real giant waste but hey, they're fucking poor and I would do the same thing if I were them.

Yeah, who wants to die trying to remove the jungle wildlife sans fire? I can't blame 'em either.

[liquidfire666]

At 4/6/08 10:56 PM, poxpower wrote: Ok so yeah I saw the Penn and Teller show about recycling and since I usually agree with them and I assume they've done a better research than I have, it raises questions.

What was said on the show:

- There's more tree now in america than ever before because we grow them for the paper industry, it's stupid to recycle paper to save trees because they grow back anyways and we're just wasting money, time and polluting with various chemicals to get the paper usable again.

Ya, but think about it how much can a tree thats 100 years old produce compared to a tree thats 5 years old, killing trees is not to bad but killing trees that are very old leaves us with young trees that dont produce nearly as much.

-There's more than enough space to put all our garbage, the "landfills are getting too full" thing is just some blown-out-of-proportion propaganda. We could put all the garbage in america in one huge super-landfill in the desert or something and it would be pretty insignificant.

100% True there is so much land but think about 200 years from now we will be fucked beacuse we will be slowley running out of land.

- Recycling aluminium is actually economically viable.

Helps landfills to recycle aluminium beacuse it isn't biodegradable.

So yeah basically the claims are that recycling paper/plastic is a waste of money and the environment isn't in danger at all.

The environment isn't in danger at the moment but you have to think of the future

=====

So seeing as I don't really know shit about recycling other than what I've been told constantly in school, what do you guys think about it?

I dont know to much shit eather about recycling but i did do a big project on it once for school.

[Cuppa-LettuceNog]

Don't trees take a few hundred years to regrow?

=/

[promontorium]

At 4/7/08 02:30 AM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote: Don't trees take a few hundred years to regrow?

=/

Paper Birch grows full size within 60 years, and doesn't live past 160. Average tree life (all species) is about 50 years. Trees don't have to be very old at all to be harvested for wood.

[promontorium]

Certainly the episode specifically covered the U.S. and was accurate. The thing to note is the elements on this planet aren't changing very much. Whatever we don't recycle and dump, can always be reclaimed by future generations if necessary. On the subject of trees you must look at other circumstances, Capitalism shows it to be more economically (and inherently ecologically) viable to grow crops instead of picking them wild. This is also true for meat, farming animals is cheaper than hunting. And for big industry, raising fish is cheaper than fishing. This is also true for harvesting wood. When a forest is cut down for wood, location, natural terrain, random growth, and vegetation all become obstacles. When wood is grown specifically for harvesting, it saves the grower enough money that a solid and continuous business can be created and controlled. This is why paper comes from trees grown for paper. Unfortunately other markets haven't caught on to this yet, and industrial housing and furniture wood comes from forests all over the world. You can't really recycle housing and furniture wood back into more housing and furniture wood, so it all gets lossed.

There are of course other circumstances that can make recycling necessary. I first saw this episode when I lived in Japan. Japan has a big issue with recycling because they don't have the natural resources to begin with. When I lived there I was required to sort all my trash into potentially five or six clear plastic bags. Because recylcing is necessary in Japan, a lot of trash (including paper) is valuable, so homeless people will dig it out sometimes. They would show clips on the news of people gathering paper stacks in a truck to go sell at a recycling center. Incidently, because recycling is a real issue, all trash services in Japan are free.

[Angry-Hatter]

At 4/6/08 10:56 PM, poxpower wrote: - There's more tree now in america than ever before because we grow them for the paper industry, it's stupid to recycle paper to save trees because they grow back anyways and we're just wasting money, time and polluting with various chemicals to get the paper usable again.

I'd just like to take the opportunity to say this.

Hemp.

Hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp hemp.

Industrial hemp.

You can make 4 times as much high quality paper using one acre of hemp plants as you can from one acre of trees. Hemp grows seasonally, so you can harvest that one acre over and over again instead of waiting 5-10 years for the trees to grow large enough for paper production. Also, as you don't have to transport as much crude material (i.e. big trees), there's not as much pollution.

You cannot get high from industial hemp. You could try to smoke it, but all you'd get is a headache. There is absolutely no reason for hemp to be illegal.

[Elfer]

At 4/6/08 11:48 PM, poxpower wrote: Anyways it never seemed to me like it would be that hard to recycle plastic. You just melt it back into pellets.

Yeah, but to do that, you'd have to heat it just enough to melt it without breaking down the polymer chains, while at the same time getting it hot enough for all of the air to rise out of it in a reasonable amount of time, or find some other way to get the air out of it.

It's a lot more fiddly than you might think.

[morefngdbs]

I recycle my plastic bottles as well as the glass ones & cans ...because they pay me money too !

Everything else is garbage, & I usually take it to the big garbage cans you see at the mall parking lots & in the city. Paper/cardboard I burn in my wood stove.

So I say getting paid to recycle is ok.
other wise don't bother.

[Heinrich]

I am a supporter of recycling because my main reasons are that it conserves resources for future generations.

Facts about recycled materials copied and pasted from what I can find on the internet:

-PAPER
http://www.ornl.gov/adm/ornlp2/recyinfo.
htm#paper
For every ton of paper recycled your office will:
save 3.5 cubic yards of landfill
save 17 thirty foot (pulp) trees
save 7,000 gallons of water
save 380 gallons of oil
save 4100 kwh of energy
eliminate 60 pounds of air pollutants
save about $160 in ORNL disposal and hauling costs.

http://www.recycling101.ca/facts.html
About 40, 000 trees are cut down each day just to produce the newsprint for Canada's daily papers.
Recycling newspapers and magazines reduces the need for mining clay soils, which is used to make newsprint pulp.
Old newsprint is made into new newsprint (so the Sunday comics you're reading now may be the Sports pages you read two months ago!).

-Aluminum Cans
http://www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/EMD/solidw aste/recycle.html
About 3% of USA's electrical energy is used for producing and packaging. Recycling one can can save enough energy for one 100-watt lightbulb for 3.5 hours. The amount of energy taking to make a brand new can will make 20 recycled cans.
It also reduces enviromental damage caused by aluminum mining along with logging and manufacturing raw materials.

http://www.newtonkansas.com/dep/san/page 14.html
Total U.S. supply is 20.8 billion pounds.
We use about 392 cans per person.
Aluminum cans typically have a recycled aluminum content of about 55%.
62.8 billion or 63.5 % of aluminum cans are recycled annually.
Recycling aluminum saves about 95% of the energy it would take to produce aluminum from its original source, bauxite.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough electricity to run a TV for three hours.
Aluminum recycling is so efficient that it can take as few as 60 days for a can to be collected, melted down and made into a new can sitting on a grocery store shelf.

-STEEL
http://www.newtonkansas.com/dep/san/page 14.html
Steel cans account for more than 90% of all food cans.
The average American uses 142 steel cans (22.75 pounds) annually.
Steel cans constitute 1.3% of discarded Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) by weight.
By volume, steel cans made up 1.8% of landfilled MSW.
In 1997, more than 70 million tons of steel scrap was recycled for a 65.2% recycling rate.
More than 37 billion steel cans, weighing 2.9 million tons, are annually used in the U.S., 55.9% are recycled.
Through recycling each year, the steel industry saves enough energy to power 18 million homes.
Recycling one ton of steel saves 2,500 lbs. of iron ore,1,400 lbs. of coal, and 120 lbs. of limestone.
Flatrolled steel for tinplate is produced in basic oxygen furnaces from raw material that is normally 20-30% scrap (including most, but not all grades of scrap).
Steel can sheet manufacturers currently use more pre-consumer than post-consumer scrap.
Two million tons of steel cans are landfilled annually.
Steel cans are easy to recycle due to their magnetic properties and the limited number of potential contaminants in the remanufacturing process.
Detinners specialize in removing the tin from steel cans for resale in tin using industries.
Steel scrap from detinning is either sold to the steel industry or to the copper precipitation industry. Eight detinning plants are currently operating in the U.S.
Iron and steel foundries are an emerging market for steel cans. Foundries use scrap as a raw material in making castings and molds for industrial users.

http://www.couglesrecycling.com/htm/bene fits.php
Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years.
A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining waste by 70%.

-GLASS
http://www.couglesrecycling.com/htm/bene fits.php
Recycling 1 ton of glass saves 9 gallons of fuel oil.
1 glass bottle recycled saved enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 4 hours.
Recycling glass reduced air pollution by 14-20% and saves 25-32% more energy than making glass from virgin materials.
Recycled glass containers are used for new glass containers, fiberglass insulation, road bead (aggregate), concrete block, and glassphalt (asphalt).
Glass is a product that never wears out. IT CAN BE RECYCLED FOREVER!

-COPPER
http://www.couglesrecycling.com/htm/bene fits.php
Manufacturing copper using copper scraps saves an estimated 85% in energy costs.

-Plastics
http://www.couglesrecycling.com/htm/bene fits.php
95% of all plastic bottles manufactured are from PET (soda bottles) or HDPE (milk jugs & detergent bottles), 48% and 47% respectively.
HDPE and PET bottles showed the highest recycling rates of any plastic bottle types, at 23.8% and 22.8%.
Americans use 4 MILLION bottles per year, yet only 1 out of 4 bottles are recycled.
Plastics accounted for 9.9% of municipal solid waste generation by weight in 1997.
5 recycled PET plastic soda bottles make enough fiber to fill 1 ski jacket, make 1 extra large tee shirt, or 1 square foot of carpet.
The most common use for recycled PET is textiles. 56% goes into the manufacturing of fiber for things such as carpet and clothing.
HALF of all polyester carpet made in the USA is made from recycled PET.
HDPE (milk/detergent bottles) have many uses including plastic pipe manufacturing, plastic lumber (see www.everlastlumber.com), flower pots, trash cans, and new bottles for non-food applications.

http://www.couglesrecycling.com/htm/bene fits.php
Together, in 2003 Alone, CRI and their Customers Have Saved:
Paper Product Recycling:
We saved 1,000,000 trees
379,151,118 gallons of water
26,446,278 gallons of oil
33,529,082 pounds of air pollution
174,785 cubic feet of land fill space
232,875,753 kilowatts of energy (enough kilowatts of energy to heat almost 28,000 homes for 1 full year).
Aluminum Can Recycling:
We saved 2,554,090 gallons of gasoline
Saved enough energy to power one hundred 100-watt bulbs for 124 years
Tin Can Recycling:
We saved 2,500 ton of iron ore
1,000 tons of coal
Plastics Recycling:
We recycled enough PET to make 4,591,944 square feet of carpet, t-shirts, or filling for ski jackets
We recycled enough HDPE to produce 1,299,953 linear feet of plastic lumber (this amount could cover 9,000 average decks with decking boards)
Glass Recycling:
We recycled enough glass to save 33,401 gallons of oil
We also prevented the mining of 2,468 tons of sand, 803 tons of soda ash, 803 tons of limestone, and 280 tons of feldspar.
Just to recap, the most important values in recycling:
Recycling conserves our precious natural resources.
Recycling promotes clear air and clear water.
Recycling saves money and creates jobs.
Recycling saves energy.
Recycling saves land fill space.
You, ALONE can make a difference by recycling just 1 bottle, aluminum can or stack of paper.

Pollution reduction:

http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/
airwaste/wm/RECYCLE/FACTS/benefits4.htm
-In 2004, recycling reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2 million metric tons of carbon equivalent.

Economic Reasons:
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingm eansbusiness.html
Regional studies of employment and the remanufacturing industry indicate that recycling activities employ more than 2.5% of manufacturing workers. Extrapolating these findings to the entire nation, recycling and remanufacturing activities could account for approximately 1 million manufacturing jobs and more than $100 billion in revenue.7 Indeed, according to a recent study of recycling's national economic impact, the U.S. Recycling Economic Information Study, in the year 2000, the recycling and reuse industry sustained approximately 56,000 operations that employed over 1.1 million people, generated an annual payroll of nearly $37 billion, and grossed over $236 billion in annual revenues.

[LazyPint]

At 4/8/08 08:07 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote: You cannot get high from industial hemp. You could try to smoke it, but all you'd get is a headache. There is absolutely no reason for hemp to be illegal.

That's really interesting. What's the difference between industrial hemp and the kind you can get high on?

[CatherineElizabeth]

This is my theory why recylcing, being a proven fact that it DOES NOT save energy, resources, or the enviroment, is still thrown around by enviromentalists like religous dogma.

1. They are simply too stupid, too ignorant, or too involved in enviromental doublethink to challenge the facts and continue to spew their stupid falsehoods. They just don't want to admit they are wrong.

2. There are special interests involved, and someone is making a quick buck off tax-payer money.

[robattle]

Now that I think about it, yeah we can cut down trees and replant them for paper.

But really now paper biodegrades way fast comparded to other stuff so that can just go into the landfill.

But Of course people really should replant after logging, otherwise that shit called brush takes over and it burns faster than trees.