Do you recycle??

[jczeroman]

Absolutely not.

[Trotskilicious]

isn't that the new libertarian fad "we hate recycling and organic food because it kills jobs"?

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by jczeroman

Absolutely not.

why

[jczeroman]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

isn't that the new libertarian fad "we hate recycling and organic food because it kills jobs"?

I think that's a stupid reason not to recycle.

[jczeroman]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

why

Quite a bit of "recycling" is tremendously harmful to the environment. Personally, I believe the long-term health of the planet and the human race is far too important, so I try and make discerning choices about what is done with my waste.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by jczeroman

Quite a bit of "recycling" is tremendously harmful to the environment. Personally, I believe the long-term health of the planet and the human race is far too important, so I try and make discerning choices about what is done with my waste.

so what do you do with it? and in what ways is recycling harmful?

[redbreegull]

throwing trash on the ground is one of the basest, most ignorant actions I can think of. trots, there's a reason you feel guilty all the time. it's because it is so fucking easy to not litter that there is no excuse for your Earth-hating actions

also jczeroman bringing the delusion as usual

[Eulogy]

i'm kinda bad about cigarette butts too. : / but i'm down to 0-2 per day (and a lot of times there are ashtrays available) so i think i'm close to not having to worry about that anymore. woooo.

[pale blue eyes]

Originally Posted by D.

It's so easy for me to do, I would have to be a real asshole not to - they give us blue recycle bins at home and at work there are designated recycling slots errrwhere

Same here. They used to not have too many recycling bins at work but I would always just take my bottles home.

[jczeroman]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

so what do you do with it? and in what ways is recycling harmful?

There are easily obtainable resources available for anyone interested to discover some of the major problems with conventional recycling.

[DiscoJon]

Originally Posted by jczeroman

Quite a bit of "recycling" is tremendously harmful to the environment. Personally, I believe the long-term health of the planet and the human race is far too important, so I try and make discerning choices about what is done with my waste.

WTF is wrong with you? I thought you went to U of O. Were you the lone conservative gun-loving nut-job on campus?

Please, tell us of your "discerning choices" of what you do with your waste.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by jczeroman

There are easily obtainable resources available for anyone interested to discover some of the major problems with conventional recycling.

Ok well I did a quick google search and it told me the only conventional recycling that could pose problems would be plastics of certain numbers. I don't really feel like diving into this in any sort of depth right now.

So if they're easily obtainable, and you know what they are, why don't you point me in the right direction?

Otherwise I'm going to go with....everyone else.


And also, you didn't answer my question as to what you do with yours. If you don't feel like telling us about it for whatever reason, then fine I guess. But it's weird to come in the thread and be all dick-swinging about it and then just leave it there without a real explanation.

[slunken]

the earth is green
but so is money
when a goth goes green it is called "dark green"

but I don't care about money
I just want whoever want this to see this
see this

"it's easier to let go
when there's nothing to hold on to"

[agenda suicide]

BUBBLE GUM MONSTER FROM GHOSTWRITER?!?

[PkPhuoko]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

i can't believe there are still those who don't recycle.

Do none of you watch Bullshit!

recycling does not help the enviorment

outside of aluminum the carbon footprint to maintain recycling outweighs the benefit.

would highly suggest checking out that episode of Bullshit! before anyone gets too smug about recycling

[PkPhuoko]

click the follow ups to watch full episode

[Eulogy]

i'm really not going to rely on penn and teller for my environmental science news

Magicians Penn and Teller are whizzes when it comes to performing offbeat, weird, funny and gross sleights of hand and other tricks. But they’re neither scientists nor fair and objective journalists (not that many of today’s so-called “mainstream” journalists are either). So it pays to view their scam- and myth-debunking efforts with a healthy dose of critical thinking.
Case in point: their Showtime channel program, “Bullshit!” I’ve watched most of the early episodes, and they’re highly entertaining, because that’s what Penn and Teller are: entertainers. But their fact-checking and analyses can leave much to be desired, as when — for example — they “debunk” global warming with the help of libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute ,.. without turning to real scientific sources like say, oh, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Their 2004 episode slamming recycling has been garnering big Internet traffic and lots of social networking hits … presumably because a lot of people take glee in seeing enviro-minded hippies put in their place. There are a few problems with the episode, though:

Recycling is B.S. … Except When It’s Not
After spending about 15 minutes making the case against recycling — it’s unnecessary, we’re not running out of resources, it costs more than it’s worth, it creates pollution — Penn and Teller acknowledge, yeah, it makes sense to recycle aluminum cans and other metals. So recycling isn’t entirely B.S., even in their eyes.
(The photo accompanying this post, by the way, is of cow dung cakes drying in the sun. In places like Punjab, India, where this picture was taken, even B.S., apparently, is not B.S. but a valuable source of fuel and fertilizer.)
Everything is Relative
At one point in the recycling episode, Penn and Teller rail on about the pointlessness of recycling plastics, which they say will make sense only when “there’ll be money for street people in picking up plastic.” You know what? There is … in the poorest slums of India, Bangladesh and other developing countries. It’s not that there’s no money in recyclables … it’s that a couple of pennies doesn’t make much difference to the average U.S. resident, which that amount could mean the difference between eating or not for a seven-year-old rag-picker in Mumbai.
The Times, They Are a’Changing
To bolster their arguments, Penn and Teller cite a 2004 study on recycling myths by Clemson University economist Daniel K. Benjamin. Benjamin identifies myth number five as this: “We squander irreplaceable resources when we don’t recycle.” And then, he continues, “What about non-renewable resources such as fossil fuel? Here, too, there is no reason to fear that we will run out. Despite repeated forecasts by the federal government and others that we shall soon run out of oil, it hasn’t happened. Indeed, as we continue to use more oil, the standard measures of proven oil reserves get larger, not smaller.”
Reading that today, in mid-2008, does any part of that paragraph strike you as, um, a bit off? (Hint: $147 a barrel crude.)
So maybe oil’s the exception, right? Except, maybe not. Also making the news for their increasing scarcity are gallium, indium, hafnium, platinum, helium, zinc, copper and, oh, water.
Recycling is Just One Piece of the Puzzle
Finally, I’ll grant the magical duo this: “recycling” alone isn’t the answer to our environmental and resource challenges. “Reduce” and “reuse” are also critical. By making plastic bottles that are thinner and lighter, for example, beverage companies could use 30 percent less resin and save about $1.5 billion on year on raw materials. And if the U.S. could start imitating some parts of Europe, we wouldn’t need to recycle … we could simply refill.
Of course, there will still always be some people who think refilling, reducing and reusing are B.S. too. Sigh.

Source: Planetsave (http://s.tt/12vnL)

[PkPhuoko]

If you're not going to rely on Penn and Teller perhaps you'd listen to the professors and experts in the videos

Don't discount their show... they source a lot better in their piece than Shirley Siluk Gregory did in the article you linked.

If you'll notice her article doesn't argue against the main points in Penn and Tellers bit about it being inefficient and the main selling points of it being fallacies promoted during the 80's

[Nimrod's Son]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

Source: Planetsave

oh sure don't listen to an independent tv show, listen to the guys with pure agendas

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son

oh sure don't listen to an independent tv show, listen to the guys with pure agendas

Penn and Teller don't have an agenda?

durrrrrr

[Eulogy]

is popular mechanics better?

1. We have to recycle because we're running out of landfill space.
That was the rallying cry for recycling advocates back in the 1980s, when the Mobro 4000 garbage barge wandered up and down the East Coast searching for a place to dump its moldering load. It's a bit of a red herring, though. After all, we have pretty much unlimited space to dump garbage--if we're willing. In practice, for every town that refuses permission to build a landfill, there's often another town eager for the revenues that a landfill site can bring.

According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA), the United States has about 20 years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills. There are, however, places where space is getting tight: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all have less than five years capacity, and the northeastern part of the country in general has the least available landfill space.

These regional variations point to a different motivation for the "recycle to save landfill space" argument. The average tipping fee at landfills in the Northeast region, according to the most recent NSWMA figures, is over $70 a ton, compared to a national average of just $34. In other words, even if the scarcity of landfill space turns out not to be a strong environmental argument for recycling, there can be powerful economic incentives to reduce landfill intake.

2. The trucks that collect recycling burn more energy and produce more pollution than recycling saves.
Collecting recyclables isn't cheap--it eats up about 50 to 60 percent of the budget of a typical curbside recycling program, according to Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. And the trucks burn gas and emit pollution as they go. That said, "You're going to collect waste one way or another," points out Jeff Morris, a Washington-based environmental consultant. A recycling program should allow garbage collection to become less frequent (or to use fewer trucks), offsetting the cost and energy involved. Plus, new truck designs can collect both recycling and garbage (at different times), avoiding the huge capital expense of an extra fleet. They can also self-dump specially designed bins, saving time and manpower.

But all that turns out to be pretty much irrelevant to the question of whether recycling makes environmental sense. Scientists have conducted hundreds of "life-cycle analyses" to compare recycling with other options like landfill and incineration, following the entire chain of events from the manufacture of a product (using either virgin or recycled materials) to its disposal. The dominant factor in virtually every case is the enormous amount of energy required to turn raw materials into metals and plastics compared to the energy needed to reprocess products that already exist.

A study by Morris found that it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. In contrast, the total energy for collecting, hauling and processing a ton of recyclables adds up to just 0.9 million Btu. The bottom line: We don't need to worry that recycling trucks are doing more harm than good.

3. Thanks to the sky-high prices of raw materials, cities are getting rich by selling recyclables.
Over the summer, prices for almost every kind of recyclable hit record highs, sparking a frenzy of activity in the recycling industry. "If you're wondering where all the used-car salesmen have gone, they're rushing into recycling," Jerry Powell, an industry veteran who edits Resource Recycling magazine, said in August. That translates to profits for many players--in fact, Powell says, "if you can't make money in recycling right now, you should get out of the business."

Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean that your local city council is getting a cut of the action. "Some cities are still locked in unfavorable long-term contracts and paying tipping fees," says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Council. That means that these cities have to pay to collect and sort their curbside recycling--and then pay someone to take away these now-valuable materials instead of being paid for them.

Given how much the price of recyclables has fluctuated in the past, these contracts made sense for cities when they were signed: Locking in costs allows municipalities to budget properly. But now, global contracts ensure a large fraction of U.S. recycling ships to China, so the recycling market has less volatility as well as higher prices. As municipal recycling contracts come up for renewal, cities like Chicago are finally able to turn their piles of cans, bottles and newspapers into a stable revenue stream.

Note: The turmoil of the last few months has hit recycling markets hard and dramatically reduced demand from China, so the outlook right now is considerably less rosy than it was over the summer - which is precisely why cities try to lock in long-term contracts with recyclers. They give up some revenue when prices are high, but protect themselves when prices are low.

4. All the paper, plastic, metal and glass dumped in recycling bins has to be painstakingly (and expensively) sorted by hand.
When municipal recycling was first catching on in the 1980s, it wasn't clear how carefully people would sort their recyclables. "Some towns used to have a dozen different boxes for different types of bottles, cans and so on," recalls Richard Porter, a University of Michigan economics professor who authored The Economics of Waste. Not everyone was eager to devote that much effort to sorting up front--but it was either that or pay people to do it by hand at the end of the line, which was prohibitively expensive.

These days, processors are beginning to move toward "single-stream" material recovery facilities, which allow homeowners to dump all their recycling in one bin and rely on machines to do the dirty work. According to Eileen Berenyi, a consultant who studies solid waste management, the number of single-stream facilities in the U.S. jumped from 70 in 2001 to 160 in 2007.

Such state-of-the-art facilities now feature magnets to attract steel, eddy currents to deflect aluminum, infrared spectrometers to identify different types of plastics, and a host of other sorting technologies. These plants are expensive, so they only make sense if 100 to 200 tons of recyclables are being processed daily, and they still require some human sorters to oversee the process. But the collection costs of picking up a single bin, rather than multiple ones, are much lower--and because it's easy for homeowners, the recycling rates are higher--so the overall economics of mechanized sorting pays off.

5. Most of the plastic put in recycling bins ends up in the garbage.
This one is true now, but changing quickly. Sorting plastics is tricky for recycling processors. Bottles can't be separated out with a magnet; small pieces like coffee-cup lids get flattened and mixed into paper bales; bags get caught in the spinning disks of sorting equipment, forcing frequent shut-downs. Trying to decode the recycling numbers on plastic products is also a pain for consumers.

As a result, it's true that most of the plastic we use does end up in landfill sites. Less than 1 percent of polystyrene containers (e.g. yogurt pots) are recycled, and even well-established recyclables like PET (e.g. soft-drink bottles) end up in the trash more than two-thirds of the time. But the problem isn't that recycling programs are dumping recyclable plastic into the trash--it's that they don't accept the plastics in the first place.

That problem is on the way out, though. This spring, San Francisco announced that its pioneering recycling program would begin accepting all rigid plastic, including anything from yogurt pots and clamshell containers to plastic toys and buckets. Other cities are also expanding the range of plastics they accept. New technology makes this feasible: Optical sorters use infrared light to instantly identify the chemical composition of a container, then a puff of air directs it into the right pile.

Recyclers also have to find a market for plastics once they're sorted--and that's starting to happen, too. San Francisco recently signed a deal to sell rigid 5-gal buckets, common in construction, to a company that will turn them into artificial lumber for landscaping.

Read more: Recycling Myths: PM Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling - Popular Mechanics

[Nimrod's Son]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

is popular mechanics better?

oh i don't give a crap about the actual argument, i just thought it was funny to use that site as your defense. you know, like if i posted a press release from BP to support a claim that the oil spill isn't that bad

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son

oh i don't give a crap about the actual argument, i just thought it was funny to use that site as your defense. you know, like if i posted a press release from BP to support a claim that the oil spill isn't that bad

everyone has an agenda.

you constantly post articles from the washington times and the new york post.

[PkPhuoko]

so the conclusion of the PM article is "Even though a lot of the 'myths' are based in fact, recycling isn't bad for the enviroment so you should still do it"

It's not a matter if recycling is bad, it's a matter if it is good.... and if you'd had watched the Penn and Teller piece they basically come to the conclusion that it's a wash and that it all comes down to "If recycling makes you feel good by all means do it, because thats about the only benefit you're going to get out of it"


So recycle away... just don't be smug about it because if you think you're saving the world you're a fucking idiot.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by PkPhuoko

so the conclusion of the PM article is "Even though a lot of the 'myths' are based in fact, recycling isn't bad for the enviroment so you should still do it"

Um, no, not really.

It's more like "it's not as good as people might think but it should still be done."

so maybe you're right and people shouldn't be smug about it. but it should still be done.

being smug about not recycling seems to be more obnoxious though.

[pale_princess]

i don't detect any smugness from anyone who recycles. for me it's just something i grew up doing and don't even really think twice about.

it could be a canadian thing, or a state-by-state thing; i was confused by the lack of public recycling bins when visiting certain states. it doesn't seem so odd to me that not all people recycle now as i learn of the different trash-collecting practices mentioned in this thread.

[PkPhuoko]

Originally Posted by pale_princess

i don't detect any smugness from anyone who recycles. for me it's just something i grew up doing and don't even really think twice about.

it could be a canadian thing, or a state-by-state thing; i was confused by the lack of public recycling bins when visiting certain states. it doesn't seem so odd to me that not all people recycle now as i learn of the different trash-collecting practices mentioned in this thread.

you grew up doing it because of an insane media campaign during our childhood that turned out to be not so true.

same type of hysterical horse shit that brought us 80's gems like satanic cults are gathering in your cities sewers and are going to sacrifice your kids, and watch out people are putting razor blades in candy.

[Eulogy]

Originally Posted by PkPhuoko

you grew up doing it because of an insane media campaign during our childhood that turned out to be not so true.

same type of hysterical horse shit that brought us 80's gems like satanic cults are gathering in your cities sewers and are going to sacrifice your kids, and watch out people are putting razor blades in candy.

you missed the best one

THEY'RE SELLING CRACK ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

[yo soy el mejor]

Anything you can do,
I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you.

No, you can't.
Yes, I can. No, you can't.
Yes, I can. No, you can't.
Yes, I can,
Yes, I can!

Anything you can be
I can be greater.
Sooner or later,
I'm greater than you.

No, you're not. Yes, I am.
No, you're not. Yes, I am.
No, you're NOT!. Yes, I am.
Yes, I am!

I can shoot a partridge
With a single cartridge.
I can get a sparrow
With a bow and arrow.
I can live on bread and cheese.
And only on that?
Yes.
So can a rat!
Any note you can reach
I can go higher.
I can sing anything
Higher than you.
No, you can't. (High)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I can. (Higher) No, you can't. (Higher)
Yes, I CAN! (Highest)

Anything you can buy
I can buy cheaper.
I can buy anything
Cheaper than you.

Fifty cents?
Forty cents! Thirty cents?
Twenty cents! No, you can't!
Yes, I can,
Yes, I can!
Anything you can say
I can say softer.
I can say anything
Softer than you.
No, you can't. (Softly)
Yes, I can. (Softer) No, you can't. (Softer)
Yes, I can. (Softer) No, you can't. (Softer)
Yes, I can. (Softer)
YES, I CAN! (Full volume)
I can drink my liquor
Faster than a flicker.
I can drink it quicker
And get even sicker!
I can open any safe.
Without bein' caught?
Sure.
That's what I thought--
you crook!
Any note you can hold
I can hold longer.
I can hold any note
Longer than you.

No, you can't.
Yes, I can No, you can't.
Yes, I can No, you can't.
Yes, I can
Yes, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I No, you C-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-N'T--
CA-A-A-A-N! (Cough, cough!)
Yes, you ca-a-a-an!

Anything you can wear
I can wear better.
In what you wear
I'd look better than you.
In my coat?
In your vest! In my shoes?
In your hat! No, you can't!
Yes, I can
Yes, I CAN!
Anything you say
I can say faster.
I can say anything
Faster than you.
No, you can't. (Fast)
Yes, I can. (Faster) No, you can't. (Faster)
Yes, I can. (Faster) Noyoucan't. (Faster)
YesIcan! (Fastest)
I can jump a hurdle.
I can wear a girdle.
I can knit a sweater.
I can fill it better!
I can do most anything!
Can you bake a pie? No.
Neither can I.
Anything you can sing
I can sing sweeter.
I can sing anything
Sweeter than you.
No, you can't. (Sweetly)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't. (Sweeter)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't. (Sweeter)
Yes, I can. (Sweeter) No, you can't, can't, can't (sweeter)
Yes, I can, can, can (Sugary)

Yes, I can! No, you can't!

[jczeroman]

Originally Posted by Eulogy

And also, you didn't answer my question as to what you do with yours. If you don't feel like telling us about it for whatever reason, then fine I guess. But it's weird to come in the thread and be all dick-swinging about it and then just leave it there without a real explanation.

The thread asks if we recycle. I answered the question. Everything else was follow up to other questions. I didn't come in here unprompted and start "dick swinging."

If I thought for half a second that anyone was actually interested in having a meaningful discussion about the pros and cons of certain kinds of recycling without just posting articles/videos back and forth over the top of each other, then maybe I would start discussing what I do with my own waste. Until then, I am happy to not waste my time.