Why don't you recycle?

[Akucaen]

If the city made the slightest fucking effort to pick it up, then I would recycle happily.

[Grey Jorildyn]

As far as items with cash return value go, those number seem spot on. Seriously, find a water bottle that has a CRV, they don't exist. In my area people are actually dumb enough to think that if something doesn't have a CRV, it can't be recycled. I am dead serious...

Anyway, fuck recycling. Let's just build giant cannons capable of shooting large quantities of trash into space on a crash course with the sun. Then we can turn all the landfills into prime real estate for golf courses and shelters for the homeless! Bam, brb patenting this idea.

[Tekoa]

I rarely throw objects that can be recycled into the trash. At my former place of employment, we had no recycling at all so I would just take whatever bottles I brought in home to recycle.

[Absolutely Virtue]

It is alarming to me (although perhaps not surprising) that people are willing to take it at face value that recycling is not economically viable. Almost any source, from wiki to the government to the trade groups, will tell you that shit is situational, and that certain systems and industries are better than others. Is it our need to compartmentalize everything that fuels us to want a simple "Is recycling good or bad: check yes or no"?

The plastics argument is tough because of all the variables involved, but the recycled paper argument is over before it starts. The EPA says recycled paper uses 40% less energy than using virgin trees. Not to mention you are conserving natural resources (trees) at the expense of fossil fuels we shouldn't be so dependent on in the first place. Sure, it takes a lot of energy to round up all that paper and process it. But do you think the trees just walk down to the plant to be turned into paper? No, they're trucked in.

Darus Grey, what do you do for a living? You mentioned experience in the industry- just curious.

[ZarakiKujata]

The universe is in a constant state of entropy. Not recycling is my way of helping speed things along.

Spoiler: show

I do recycle though, bleeding heart libruhl and all that

[Darus Grey]

It is alarming to me (although perhaps not surprising) that people are willing to take it at face value that recycling is not economically viable.

Because it's not. If you took away the subsidies, it would stop happening, period.

Almost any source, from wiki to the government to the trade groups, will tell you that shit is situational, and that certain systems and industries are better than others. Is it our need to compartmentalize everything that fuels us to want a simple "Is recycling good or bad: check yes or no"?

Sustainable how? did you even read what I said? It is completely unsustainable because you're taking good material and turning it into garbage

If you have some plastic, I 100% guarantee you that no matter what you do, it ends up in a landfill anyways, because after being reprocessed several times it reaches a stage where it is literally useless, nothing but a sludge byproduct of recycling plastic...and goes to a landfill!

Let's look at paper... even the EPA can't dress up the fact.

Recovered fiber can be used to produce new paper products made entirely of recovered fiber (i.e. 100 percent recycled content) or from a blend of recovered and virgin fiber. Fiber cannot, however, be recycled endlessly. It is generally accepted that a fiber can be used five to seven times before it becomes too short (as a result of repulping and other handling) to be useable in new paper products.

Recycling isn't magic, it goes not reclaim 100% of material, and what it does reclaim, is lower quality.

The plastics argument is tough because of all the variables involved, but the recycled paper argument is over before it starts. The EPA says recycled paper uses 40% less energy than using virgin trees. Not to mention you are conserving natural resources (trees) at the expense of fossil fuels we shouldn't be so dependent on in the first place. Sure, it takes a lot of energy to round up all that paper and process it. But do you think the trees just walk down to the plant to be turned into paper? No, they're trucked in.

Care to provide any scientific studies to that effect?

Cause it doesn't take a genius to see that making new paper has one major step Trees -> Plant, and recycling has a couple dozen, with the material being transported 4-5x longer distances and going through many more mechanical processes. I had to ship corrugated nearly 200 miles, where it would be rebaled and shipped again...

EPA would never use false numbers because they have an agenda...would they?

Darus Grey, what do you do for a living? You mentioned experience in the industry- just curious.

Uh, I clearly said exactly what I do,

[drewbixcube]

I live in a small mountain college town where literally the students are the reason the town even exists anymore. We do have a recycling center and I usually take one of those fold up walmart clothes hampers and stack all my recyclables in there (usually cardboard boxes and milk jugs) and just wait until that fills up and make a run to our local recycle area. I really wish more of America would get off their asses and encourage/make it easier for recycling to become mainstream but hey, I'm a sustainable development major so I'm just labeled a hippie who gives a shit about my opinion

[Alleya]

Darus don't forget, on the paper issue, that trees are a renewable resource. There are vast tree farms maintained by logging companies that provide a huge amount of material. Essentially when you buy paper products that are not recycled, you are ordering more trees to be planted.

Also am I the only one who rolls their eyes at the term "virgin" materials? It's this kind of ridiculous anthropomorphizing that makes these environmental debates so teeth gratingly unbearable.

[Darus Grey]

Yeah I mentioned it in my first post on the matter.

The sheer amount of misinformation on the subject is staggering, so many people just blindly believe that they're making a difference.

If anything they're making it worse, because this false pretense of the myth of recycling likely leads people to keep consuming resources under the false assumption that their waste is actually sustainable.

The only way to permanently reduce waste is to stop making it.

[Anomander]

I agree with everything Darus posted. If we could improve our current recycling technologies to be more efficient, I would feel much better about recycling as a whole. That being said, I do it when convenient, but if I have to drive 50 miles to dump off my stuff, not gonna happen.

[Soa]

My father used to help run a paper processing plant in VA, which did both recycling and new paper processing, and he said recycling was cheaper and more cost effective overall than making new paper.

I don't know the specifics but I know that making new paper involves just as many steps as recycling it. I also know they had to get their trees from the west coast and the transport costs were extremely high.

[Takedown3]

OH NOES MAH TAXES, CANT HALP SVE THE WRLD CUZ ME MONIES

[#686578]

Still haven't come up with a good reason why we should use things that are less efficient, more polluting, and more costly over more proven methods until recycling can be improved.

[Syntex]

For me its that recycling is more hassle then not. Sure I take popcans back to the store and whatnot but its easier to throw bottles of water out then to do something with them.

I think this will really pick up when there is benefits slated towards the people who recycle in the forms of tax credits or something from the government or somewhere giving incentives to make people take the time to do it.

[Darus Grey]

My father used to help run a paper processing plant in VA, which did both recycling and new paper processing, and he said recycling was cheaper and more cost effective overall than making new paper.

I don't know the specifics but I know that making new paper involves just as many steps as recycling it. I also know they had to get their trees from the west coast and the transport costs were extremely high.

Of course it is, when he's buying bales for $3-10$/ton completely subsadized by taxpayer money using recycled pulp is competitive in cost TO HIM, ignore that they cost $200-$400 to make.

[Jeryhn]

Santa Cruz has a pretty good recycling program, so yeah, we recycle here.

That's probably due to the proximity to the Bay Area though. Recently they just passed a law there making recycling mandatory if I recall (dunno about composting).

[Absolutely Virtue]

Sorry, didn't see the bit about what you do. Apologies.

I see your bold font, CAPS LOCK argument against, and obviously plenty of people arguing for. I'm not saying the EPA don't distort things, nor am I stupid enough to take figures provided by recycling organizations at face value. But that same skepticism is also the reason I don't believe you based on your personal experience and position. I have tried through a few Google searches sent I made this post to find some good, unbiased information. But everything I see is obviously slanted either for or against recycling, and I don't have enough time to parse it all. I will say, however, that I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't believe for a second that recycling is ZOMG THE BIGGEST SCAM EVAR!!!!1

I do think we are in complete agreement that the best long-term solution is simply reduced consumption. If everyone stopped using so much disposable shit, we wouldn't have a problem. Take the plastic water bottle argument. Why the fuck are people still even using them? The plastic leeches into the water, and that's bad for you. The water that goes into them often isn't regulated, and chances are good it could actually be more impure than your tap water. And they're fucking expensive.

[Alleya]

Some people live in places with very poor quality municipal water. I've been in houses with fine plumbing where the water just plain tastes like rust. There's also the issue of travel--damn right I'm going to take bottled water to mexico. Don't forget emergencies (we get a few tornadoes here every year). And then probably the biggest reason to buy bottled water...........you can reuse the plastic bottles pretty much indefinitely to just hold tap or filtered water.

Also it's very interesting to me that you claim you try to be unbiased, then dismiss legitimate criticism as conspiracy theory, or in my case a "political agenda".

[archibaldcrane]

And then probably the biggest reason to buy bottled water...........

Irrational fear of tap water and the desire to feel like a member of the douchebag elite by drinking spring water directly from the mountain spring of "insert exotic land here"?

K, just making sure.

Bottled water is probably the greatest marketing trick ever accomplished.

[Alleya]

I list a ton of perfectly valid reasons to have bottled water, and you just jump in with a stereotype, disregarding them.

gg