

Recycling is Bullshit; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America Recycles Day - monkeygrinder
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/celebrate-zero-waste-day.php

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igrekel
Wow... I am surprised refillable beer bottles are so rare in the US. You drink
that much of your beer from aluminum cans?

Sounds strange because for me, beer in cans is just for camping... and even...

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tvon
If those charts are accurate, then bottled beer does not count as
"refillable", or at least I don't see how it could.

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thirdusername
The only way that graph could be accurate for Sweden is if any non-canned beer
counts as refillable. I say that with absolute certainty since we have a state
monopoly and government stores with the same stuff in them across the entire
country.

Glass bottles don't get refilled, they get recycled.

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MikeCapone
Recycling is bullshit only if you don't also try to reduce waste as much as
possible in the first place. If you use recycling as an excuse to generate
lots of unnecessary waste (disposable everything), then it can nullify a big
part of the positive effects in the first place.

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araneae
Recycling is bullshit even if you do try to reduce waste as much as possible.
(In fact, there's a TV show _called_ Bullshit that did an episode on
recycling.)

Not all of it, but enough of it to be pretty heartbreaking. Recycling metals
makes a lot of sense, because mining is energetically costly. Recycling glass
does too, because there's a lot of refining that goes into getting glass into
a usable form. And both of these are easily separated from the junk they come
in with.

Plastics, on the other hand, are a total nightmare. There are so many
different types of plastics, some of them are completely unrecyclable, and
people are usually too lazy or ignorant to sort correctly. What it means is
that a ton of energy and pollutants are devoted to separating them from each
other. Some calculations say that more energy is involved in recycling
plastics (incl. transport, etc.) than to make them from scratch from crude
oil.

Paper I'm still up in the air on. The end product isn't great, which reduces
its viability. Plus, the vast majority of trees used in paper production are
from tree farms. I don't know much about the rest of it.

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warfangle
Even metal is very difficult to recycle, especially cars - it's often very
difficult to separate the non-recyclable materials from the recyclable
materials.

Cradle to Cradle (McDonough) addresses these concerns. The book is printed
with a hot-water soluble ink on infinitely recyclable plastic.

Most recycled plastic bottles end up in carpet, which cannot be recycled again
- and is thrown out.

Paper I wouldn't be so concerned about if we used something a little more
environmentally friendly to farm and process - like hemp (the processing step
for tree-paper contains many noxious chemicals that are unnecessary in
processing hemp for paper).

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lionhearted
Waffling on whether to flag this one - the charts and some of the facts are
rather interesting, the political handwaving not so much.

Edit: Made that comment when I was only two-thirds of the way through. The
conclusion is very poorly thought out:

> Let's demand returnable bottles and deposits on everything

Let's refrain from conscripting people who don't agree with the author's
stance: The author can patronize companies like Starbucks and Whole Foods that
encourage bringing your own mug or shopping bag and give discounts for that,
meanwhile we avoid adding bureaucracy and hassle to people who make the choice
to go for a disposable cup or bag. The facts of the article are somewhat
interesting, the political side not so much.

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JoeAltmaier
Economic arguments, not "green" ones. Mostly about who pays for recycling.
Reminds me of passengers on the Titanic arguing about who will sit in front of
the lifeboat and who in the rear.

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steamer25
I believe economics largely obviates environmentalism. To the degree people
value clean water, clear air and all things green (even a mild climate), a
good economy will provide them. There are exceptional cases of, "you poured
your motor oil on my lawn" but I'm not as concerned as many are about systemic
environmental problems. Systemic economic problems do concern me so I found
the article interesting.

My theory is that if all of the recyclable resources are so scarce, why don't
they pay me for it instead of taxing me? Or why is isn't landfilling more cost
prohibitive if that space is so scarce?

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ZeroGravitas
One word answer from economics: externalities.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality>

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steamer25
Agreed. Economic systems that lend themselves to negative externalities do
concern me.

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ZeroGravitas
So is recycling only bullshit in the US? Or did some other completely separate
nefarious plot convince Norway and Canada to recycle while still using
refillable beer containers?

edit: just flicking through the Wikipedia references on this it appears all
the major government agencies around the world think that recycling will
directly save money even if you discount externalities. On the other hand you
have a 14 year old NY Times article by a professional contrarian which "relied
heavily on quotes and information supplied by a group of consultants and think
tanks that have strong ideological objections to recycling".

I shudder to think what kind of organisation has _ideological objections_ to
recycling, but they must have been busy as this seems to be a popular meme in
America. I don't recall hearing much about it in europe though, maybe one of
those libertarian things?

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ZeroGravitas
For any other Europeans confused by this, I looked into it. It _is_ a
libertarian thing:

The libertarian position summarized, in their own words:

"If recycling makes economic sense, we don't need to mandate it. And if it
doesn't, we shouldn't." -- <http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6158>

The other side of course is that recycling is a widespread and popular example
of government intervention to fix a market failure, which is of course
anathema for libertarians.

