

Is Recycling Worth It? - endlessvoid94
http://sirwart.com/is-recycling-worth-it/

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jeremyt
This article doesn't address whether "recycling is worth it" or not, and
instead basically states a truism: If you have X amount of stuff, and you
divert Y amount of that stuff to other places, you will be left with Z amount
of stuff which is less than what you started with.

~~~
jobu
Penn & Teller did a decent job of digging into this a while back on Bullshit:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puVBFIciqGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puVBFIciqGU)

Basically some things are worth recycling (aluminum), some things break even
(plastic/glass), and others are a terrible idea to recycle (paper).

I would love to see a similar look into the composting movement that's going
on now. My suspicion is that it's a terrible idea due to the methane
emissions. In landfills the methane can be captured and used for generating
power (Yes this still creates CO2, but that's not nearly as powerful a
greenhouse gas as methane.)

~~~
dfc
I wonder if anything has changed in the more than ten years since Penn and
Teller covered the economics of recycling for an entertainment show on
Showtime?

ADDENDUM:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7779102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7779102)

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27182818284
>paper cups in the compost bin actually going to make progress towards zero
waste given the mountains of trash that end up in the landfill today

As far as space I don't know, but I do know for aluminum cans there is a
benefit in the amount of kilowatt*hours (Anyone else wonder why we just don't
say Joules in the US?) saved. I believe the number is crazy too, like > 90% of
the energy is saved by recycling the aluminum.

~~~
ralmeida
We say kilowatt-hours in Brazil too. Since it's a SI unit, I believe other
countries use this too. It's probably because it's a more convenient unit to
use when talking about electrical energy consumption, because 1 watt-hour is
the energy consumed by something that has 1W of power running for one hour.
One kWh is 3.6 megajoules, so it would be less convenient in this context.

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wtbob
Not at all what it says on the tin: it's illustrating that San Francisco is
reducing waste (a benefit, to be certain), but says nothing whatsoever about
the cost.

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nanofortnight
Bug report:

Graph does not work in Firefox.

Fix:

Change lines 93-94 to

    
    
                 td.insertBefore(div, null);
                 this.parentNode.insertBefore(td, null);
    

Rationale:

`insertBefore` requires two parameters in the spec:
[http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-
Level-2-Core-20001113/core...](http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-
Level-2-Core-20001113/core.html#ID-952280727)

Chrome and IE do not follow spec:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=964212](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=964212)

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greggman
I lived in the same 3 unit building for 7 years in SF. Not once did I ever see
the other tenants use the green compost bin except for once or twice a year
when trimming the yard.

That to me suggests that getting the compost and recyclables out of landfill
means removing people from having to do it.

I know apparently some cities do the separation at the garbage collection
site. That seems like a much better idea. Rather than trying to get 800,000
people to behave correctly just try to get a few companies to do it correctly.
Problem solved 100%

I saw this also as someone that worked at a big tech company that prides
themselves on hiring only the smartest and then watching how those supposedly
smartest could not correctly place things in the right bins. If even
supposedly smart people can't do it why would we think anyone else can?

Just move the separation to one or two locations and the problem only has a
few people (or robots) that need to be trained and only those same locations
need to be checked that their doing it right.

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vidoc
It would be hard to argue that recycling is not worth it. Now in a way, one
could say that recycling is just a brilliant way for goods manufacturers to
offload environmental management costs on the consumer. I sometimes feel like
I'm being manipulated as a useful idiot of capitalism.

The existence of products like this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Open-Smart-Plastic-Package-
Opener/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Open-Smart-Plastic-Package-
Opener/dp/B0012NLLMA)

.. just says it all

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bcoates
Given that paper waste is apparently compostable (or at least not harmful to
the composting process), would it make more sense to change the system to the
blue bin being "plastic, cloth, and metal", green being "food, paper, and lawn
trimmings", and black being "glass and everything else"?

This might not be 100% optimal but it seems a whole lot more user friendly and
I'm sure simplicity of the system increases compliance.

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nebulous1
I was kind of hoping for an analysis of what happens to whatever goes into the
compost and recycling bins, whether it's actually recycled and if so is it
done at all efficiently.

