What is Digg?94 Comments
- thefirelane, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Why bothere melting it down? In many countries you simply return the bottles back to the manufacturer, where they are cleaned, refilled, and fitted with a new label.
- threadmore, on 10/10/2007, -3/+15In summary, recycling is good, waste is bad.
- mos6507, on 10/10/2007, -3/+13If recycling isn't working properly, we should improve it like anything else, not just use this as an excuse to pollute.
- HunterTV, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11You have a short attention span, you ask others to do all your work for you, and it will cause you to fail at life. The end.
- lisaMaven, on 10/10/2007, -5/+15"Britain's bottle-makers already use as much recycled green glass as they can in their furnaces to produce new bottles. So some of the surplus glass is down-cycled into construction aggregates or sand for filtration systems. But WRAP's own analysis reveals that the energy savings for both appear to be 'marginal or even disadvantageous.'"
Another issue: recycling colored glass requires the high-temp burnoff of dies before the glass can be repurposed - releasing toxic pollutants. Also compare the energy requirements for this vs making new glass out of sand, something there is infinity of. - Rodman930, on 10/18/2007, -7/+15I would. America has more trees now than 100 years ago. paper farms grow back just like regular farms. The rain forest is a diffrent story but we don't get much wood from there.
- cactus476, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9I run a computer refurbishing/demanufacturing/recycling non-profit and we face the china problem all the time. It can sometimes be difficult to find a reputable recycler who doesn't ship old monitors and systems to China and Africa.
- Gir53457, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14Save a tree. Wipe your ass with a spotted owl.
- gooberdude, on 10/10/2007, -7/+15"The researchers then looked at more than 200 scenarios, comparing the impact of recycling with that of burying or burning particular types of waste material. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment."
Also, "something there is infinity of" is a very naive statement. Its what early America first thought of its natural resources, like its forests. I'm pretty sure no one would argue that there's an "infinity of trees" left for us to chop down now. - jaxcs, on 10/10/2007, -6/+13When is a tree not a tree? When it is a sapling, a tree without any commercial value, something planted in the median of a highway that serves only ornamental purposes. Fact is old growth forests are declining. Trees used for quality furniture or construction decrease in number every day. In a way I suppose you are right, but only in the same way that ketchup can be called a serving of fruit in a meal.
- Dpack1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6While i'm sure you wrote all that just to be funny you did make a totally invalid point in the argument for reusing glass bottles over recycling glass bottles.
Here in England we still get milk delivered to our door in a pint bottle made from glass. And i'm sure they've been reused 10's if not hundreds of times before eventually being discarded. - JigoroKano, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6I believe even P&T admitted that aluminum recycling is extremely efficient.
- drmangrum, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Why? They both have their own agenda's. Better to collect the facts yourself and then decide.
I think they are both correct though. Some materials are more efficient to landfill while others are more efficient to recycle. The hard part is knowing where that break point is. - Stegg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5They base that figure on reduced carbon emissions. From a purely economical standpoint, recycling is less efficient. If it were sustainable and more efficient, government wouldn't need to be involved - companies would just recycle on their own because it'd be cheaper that extracting new virgin materials.
- MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It's not too long, you are just lazy.
- swrlyhrly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Well you can't turn used paper into a tree but you can turn used glass back into sand. Just put it back when you're done and now we'll all have green and brown beaches :)
- sockdemon, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6I remember that episode, it was so fair and balanced, they never once used the word ***** to refer to someone who doesn't agree with them. I love *****, it's a great show, and for what it is, a tv show presented by a vegas act, it's surprisingly informative, witty and insightful; but, and this is the major caveat, applicable to almost all things in life: just because it's on TV, it doesn't mean it's true, the reverse also holds. If you really want to know, you have to check the facts yourself, or at least have them collated in a manner that isn't designed to pull in viewers: this article appears to do this.
- aloe, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5If your on a mac, highlight the text you want summarized, then go to the summarize menu (under the app menu) and hit summarize and OSX will do it for you. however this article is important and should be read.
- ramiro, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5You're full of *****. They are true libertarian "free-marketeers", not faux, you moron.
And what the hell matters if they participate on the CATO board?
You liberal types can not respond to the logical arguments and can only appeal to falacies "such person belongs/is paid by such and such organization".
If that is your default reply, then what the ***** are you liberals doing getting money from George Soros then? Hypocritical *****. - CaMason, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Recycling isn't just about trying to achieve a net energy gain for materials (compared to creating them from scratch), but also for reducing the amount of pollution created.
- JosephTHogan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6"Extracting metals from ore, in particular, is extremely energy-intensive. Recycling aluminum, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass."
-This article is inaccurate, and the proof is clear: If recycling is so good, particularly saving energy and requiring less energy than mining new materials, wouldn't our trash be extremely valuable? Wouldn't these miners of aluminum and such be willing to pay me for my aluminum trash collection? Wouldn't they sneak to my house every night and steal my trash before the garbage collectors, who i have to pay to collect it mind you, come to take it away? This is crazy... if recycling saves so much time and energy, businesses would come to our houses and collect our trash for free because to them it is supposedly valuable. - MillionsLivio, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Indeed they did, that can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oloM_dSoW4 - ramiro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Free marketeers are RIGHT. It is useless to spend energy recycling stuff if it doesn't provide a net gain. You end up creating more pollution than sending it to the landfill.
It is not rocket science. Every dollar is convertible to a unit of energy. If you save dollars, you are saving energy spent and consequently, reducing pollution. If you invest dollars on recycling with no returns, you're polluting more than if you had just sent the trash cheaply to the landfill.
Most environmentalists cannot even speak 2 sentences about the subject without complaining about free-market proponents. That shows they are merely anti-capitalist shills with all that anti-free-market talk under the guise of environmentalism. - lordmetroid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3How odd... Japan products are so wrapped into packaging it is absurd. I bought a candy bag which contained seperate bags to divide the content and inside those bags each and every candy was individually wrapped. Seriously!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Depends on what bias you want to buy into.
- 0xception, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Just did ... and again, no sources, and no hard/real evidence... again this doesn't mean they arn't true/right. but you can't make a point against recycling, by condemning them for not having researched the topic enough all the while doing the same in the other direction.
And as others have said, even if the current method of recycling is broken, doesn't mean it's a bad practice. With new technology we might find a very profitable business and model out of the system. but then again i tend to prefer to weigh evidence and opinions by experts in the field together rather then reading/watching one sided arguments back and forth by people who could easily cherry pick evidence to support their stance. personally arguments such as these can be fun, comical and entertaining.... but not informing. - cdnbambam, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Can see how recycling can not be cheaper to use than raw materials.In the town that I live the garbage pickup contract costs the city twice as much as the recycling pickup contract. The garbage pickup contractor uses the city landfill for free. So the recyclable material must be worth a bit of money. We also have curbside used oil pickup, and we recycle pizza boxes which most other cities don't. Now this material must have energy efficiencies or companies wouldn't be buying it.
- ramiro, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3You're full of *****. What the hell matters if they participate on the CATO board?
You liberal types can not respond to the logical arguments and can only appeal to fallacies "such person belongs/is paid by such and such organization".
If that is your default reply, then what the ***** are you liberals doing getting money from George Soros then? Hypocritical *****. - Sgurdcrimp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2why do we now recycle less glass than we did in 1990?
- 35263526, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I'd love to know how opposing governments forcing people to be moral makes one a fake ilbertarian.
- b612, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2here is your problem, the cost of energy is to low so while it does cost less to mine for these materials it still takes more energy. Many costs (particularly environmental ones) are not taken into account in the price the consumer pays for energy. In order to better reflect the true costs of energy these environmental factors as well as scarcity problems need to be added to the cost of energy. Only then when energy is at its correct market price will things like recycling become a profitable business. When this happens combined with increased efficiency in recycling than recycling will probably be a free or very cheap service that companies can make big money on.
- underdog5004, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2erm...kerbside?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3They did, and it is.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2To bad it falls short of that.
Lets ignore the fact that some of the methods required to recycle much of it produce plenty of their own pollution for now, but you fail to account for the cost (in terms of pollution) in transporting all of this stuff to seperate places on seperate trucks to be recycled. - AngryBacon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Lorries == British English for trucks.
- ThE0eNiGmA, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Don't feed the troll.
- Vash265, on 10/10/2007, -8/+10I just got done watching that episode...and it wasn't excellent. I doubt anyone can claim that ***** is entirely with out bias...or with out bias at all, but this was just idiotic. They gathered two people to speak for both sides of the issue, and after name calling for about half the episode, decided that recycling wastes a lot of money. Oh. And they said that trees were an unlimited resource. That's fantastic, because last time I checked, deforestation was a very, very large problem. A lot of those forests are being harvested for use in construction, but by allowing the tree farms that normally supply trees for paper to supply trees for wood used in construction instead...we're saving trees.
I really hate that arrogant, hypocritical *****. He has some good points, but...well, he's an arrogant, hypocritical *****(referring to Penn). - moracity, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I see many people saying "of course recycling is good", but they don't provide any sources to back up that claim. Has anyone considered the fact that recycling actually requires some form of energy and will invariably produce waste? Burning anything creates pollutants, toxic or not. Obviously, the long term goal is to only produce goods with items that can be efficiently recycled, but don't pretend that process of recycling as it is today is any better for the environment. In the mean time, what we need are stiff fines and penalties for people and localities that are not recycling. If you throw batteries into your kitchen trash, you should be caned.
- mwrl, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Recycling was okay when they paid me for it, now I have to pay for it. I'll pass thank you.
- Statia, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2http://www.duggmirror.com
- cfuse, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Plasma furnace FTW
- ibuprofane, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1In the situation you describe, you wouldn't be "saving" trees. Trees used in the production of lumber and paper are farmed just like any other crop. They grow until they're mature (a statistically advantageous size), then they're cut down. Recycling paper adds to the pool of available pulp, but the trees will be harvested regardless. If you want more trees, plant one on private property.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Its packed that way because its safe and keeps for a long time. I fail to see the problem with that.
- ramiro, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2You cannot even speak 2 sentences about recycling without complaining about free-market proponents. That shows you are a communist shill with all that anti-free-market talk under the guise of environmentalism.
Free marketeers are RIGHT. It is useless to spend energy recycling stuff if it doesn't provide a net gain. You end up creating more pollution than sending it to the landfill. - Terr01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Bringing us to our newest feature: Red beaches!
- sagemane, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"Wouldn't they sneak to my house every night and steal my trash before the garbage collectors, who i have to pay to collect it mind you, come to take it away?"
People do go around at night and steal recyclables; most collection companies have entire divisions devoted to catching them. And trash companies generally do not charge you to pick up recyclables, because they make money by reselling them. In San Francisco, we pay by the gallon for putting out trash bins, but you can request an entire dumpster for recyclables or compostables and not pay a dime. - 15charmaxwtf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Because there is no market there is no rational way to price things and to allocate resources. One outcome of that is there is less incentive to sell packaging that can be recycled, or that produce less dangerous waste. If everything costs the consumer the same to throw away there is no difference between something that may cost 1 pence to make but 10p to dispose of as opposed to something that might cost 5p to make but 2p to dispose of. There is less incentive to make things easier to dispose of. So as usual governments making new laws intervening into the market, which they previously destroyed.
Also here in England that you can get fined for dropping litter on the street, but you can't be fined for dropping litter on other peoples' property. Everything is so distorted and people wonder why there are problems. Rather than fixing the problem at it's root they just patch it up with another law. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Recycling is good. Fact.
But the more it's done, the better it gets. You should see how great Austria is at doing it. - bitcloud, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1that's because the ONLY people who are pretending there isn't a pollution problem are those with a conflict of interest.
Specifically Penn & Teller, who are, by their own admission, "free-marketeers" - b612, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1this is an old article, I remember reading it in the economist about a month ago.
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