Post by R.I.O.T. on Dec 13, 2006 12:52:39 GMT -7
At our show on the 8th- our drummer Chedder made the comment that recycling was doing more damage then good on the environment and then sited some facts to back it up. That spurred some heated comments and challenges to prove it. Now what you believe and feel about the subject is fine, I just thought I'd post some information:
We are taught that there are really good reasons to recycle; landfill shortage, saves trees, saves energy & money, helps the environment. Thats not really what the experts are saying though:
"In fact, there is no landfill shortage. If all the solid waste for the next thousand years were put into a single space, it would take up 44 miles of landfill, a mere .01% of the U.S. landspace." (1)
"There is another problem with conserving landfill space: We have plenty of landfill capacity and there is no reason to conserve it. Claims of a landfill shortage are based on a 1980s study that the EPA acknowledges was flawed. It counted the number of landfills, which was in fact shrinking, rather than landfill capacity, which was and is still growing. So today, the U.S. has more landfill capacity than ever before, according to the National Solid Waste Management Association." (2)
"Supply meets demand, if tomorrow we suddenly stopped making bread from wheat, there would be less wheat in the world one year from now. The supply would have fallen drastically. If everyone stopped eating chicken, the chicken population would not grow but fall. The same logic applies to the relationship between paper and trees. If we stopped using paper, there would be fewer trees planted. In the paper industry, 87% of the trees used are planted to produce paper. For every 13 trees "saved" by recycling, 87 will never get planted. It is because of the demand for paper that the number of trees has been increasing in this country for the last fifty years." (1)
"curbside recycling programs require more trash pickups per week. This means more trucks on the road generating more air pollution. Due to mandatory recycling, New York City had to add two additional pickups per week and Los Angeles has had to double its fleet of trash trucks" (1)
"It takes as many trucks to collect perhaps four to eight pounds of recyclables that a typical household generates as it does to pickup the 40 pounds of refuse created by the same residence. This reality creates situations as have emerged in the city of Los Angeles, where officials now figure the city's fleet of garbage trucks is twice as large as it would be without recycling, 800 rather than 400 trucks. Similar economics are at work in cities everywhere." (2)
"The issue has been closely examined by the Franklin Associates Div. of the Eastern Research Group. Franklin has for years prepared the national characterization of municipal solid waste published by the U.S. EPA. It also has looked at the cost per ton of handling recyclables through curbside pickup. One of Franklin's conclusions is that curbside recycling typically costs 55% more than simple disposal because it consumes huge amounts of capital and labor per pound of recycled material. Recycling proponents sometimes claim that curbside recycling is worthwhile because it conserves space in landfills. The mayor of my own community once remarked approvingly about how his recycling program had reduced tippage fees for landfill use. What he did not mention was that the recycling program was subsidized out of tax receipts. Its true cost far exceeded any savings." (2)
"the recycling process itself generates a great deal of pollution. Recycling newspapers requires old ink to be bleached from the pages. This is a chemically intensive process that generates large amounts of toxic waste, as opposed to the benign waste that would result from simply throwing the papers away." (1)
And to see Penn and Teller explain it: video.google.com/videoplay?do...8370503499886&
This is just some of the information out there but experts agree that the only thing that will save money and energy to recycle is aluminum. Not to mention that buying recycled materials for manufaturers is more expensive then buying new materials, but why? All material to be recycled is donated to recycling plants so final product prices should be lower, but its not. Plus pblic moral has pushed manufactores to use recycled materials so the extra expense is passed on to the consumers (all of us). Just something to consider next time those 3 R's (refuse, reduce, reuse) get thrown your way.
But I want to hear ya'lls input, this is ment to be a topic of discussion and not a one-way "this is how it is" thing.
(1)- Roy E. Cordato, Economics Professor at Campbell University
(2)- Leland Teschler
We are taught that there are really good reasons to recycle; landfill shortage, saves trees, saves energy & money, helps the environment. Thats not really what the experts are saying though:
"In fact, there is no landfill shortage. If all the solid waste for the next thousand years were put into a single space, it would take up 44 miles of landfill, a mere .01% of the U.S. landspace." (1)
"There is another problem with conserving landfill space: We have plenty of landfill capacity and there is no reason to conserve it. Claims of a landfill shortage are based on a 1980s study that the EPA acknowledges was flawed. It counted the number of landfills, which was in fact shrinking, rather than landfill capacity, which was and is still growing. So today, the U.S. has more landfill capacity than ever before, according to the National Solid Waste Management Association." (2)
"Supply meets demand, if tomorrow we suddenly stopped making bread from wheat, there would be less wheat in the world one year from now. The supply would have fallen drastically. If everyone stopped eating chicken, the chicken population would not grow but fall. The same logic applies to the relationship between paper and trees. If we stopped using paper, there would be fewer trees planted. In the paper industry, 87% of the trees used are planted to produce paper. For every 13 trees "saved" by recycling, 87 will never get planted. It is because of the demand for paper that the number of trees has been increasing in this country for the last fifty years." (1)
"curbside recycling programs require more trash pickups per week. This means more trucks on the road generating more air pollution. Due to mandatory recycling, New York City had to add two additional pickups per week and Los Angeles has had to double its fleet of trash trucks" (1)
"It takes as many trucks to collect perhaps four to eight pounds of recyclables that a typical household generates as it does to pickup the 40 pounds of refuse created by the same residence. This reality creates situations as have emerged in the city of Los Angeles, where officials now figure the city's fleet of garbage trucks is twice as large as it would be without recycling, 800 rather than 400 trucks. Similar economics are at work in cities everywhere." (2)
"The issue has been closely examined by the Franklin Associates Div. of the Eastern Research Group. Franklin has for years prepared the national characterization of municipal solid waste published by the U.S. EPA. It also has looked at the cost per ton of handling recyclables through curbside pickup. One of Franklin's conclusions is that curbside recycling typically costs 55% more than simple disposal because it consumes huge amounts of capital and labor per pound of recycled material. Recycling proponents sometimes claim that curbside recycling is worthwhile because it conserves space in landfills. The mayor of my own community once remarked approvingly about how his recycling program had reduced tippage fees for landfill use. What he did not mention was that the recycling program was subsidized out of tax receipts. Its true cost far exceeded any savings." (2)
"the recycling process itself generates a great deal of pollution. Recycling newspapers requires old ink to be bleached from the pages. This is a chemically intensive process that generates large amounts of toxic waste, as opposed to the benign waste that would result from simply throwing the papers away." (1)
And to see Penn and Teller explain it: video.google.com/videoplay?do...8370503499886&
This is just some of the information out there but experts agree that the only thing that will save money and energy to recycle is aluminum. Not to mention that buying recycled materials for manufaturers is more expensive then buying new materials, but why? All material to be recycled is donated to recycling plants so final product prices should be lower, but its not. Plus pblic moral has pushed manufactores to use recycled materials so the extra expense is passed on to the consumers (all of us). Just something to consider next time those 3 R's (refuse, reduce, reuse) get thrown your way.
But I want to hear ya'lls input, this is ment to be a topic of discussion and not a one-way "this is how it is" thing.
(1)- Roy E. Cordato, Economics Professor at Campbell University
(2)- Leland Teschler