

The Future of Garbage Is No Garbage - alexlambrakis
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/future-garbage-no-garbage-152428840.html

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nakedrobot2
"Recology, a waste-management company based in San Francisco, is working with
the city of San Francisco to help it become the country's first zero-waste
city - in a scant seven years."

Why do people (and journalists) fall for this PR trick? Great, they are trying
to tackle the problem of garbage. Are they going to transform the behavior of
people, business, industry, and change a major element of urban infrastructure
in 7 years? No way! Why even bother writing this as the first paragraph of the
article? I feel like I'm being lied to by a sleazy ad man, rather than being
told an interesting story.

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gfodor
Why do you assume that this is anything other than an ambitious goal?
Recycling/composting in and around SF is a very prevalent cultural phenomenon
with a lot of momentum.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Recycling/composting in and around SF is a very prevalent cultural
> phenomenon with a lot of momentum._

No doubt, but how does does the recycling compare to their crazily wasteful
suburban sprawl profligate consumption lifestyle? Are they attempting to
change the latter as well?

Recycling, composting, etc, are often good things, but can in some cases also
be _harmful_ , when they become a justification: "It's OK that I live like
this, because I recycle!"

Recycling is usually a very imperfect process, and is often vastly inferior to
re-use, or even better, simply not using in the first place...

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joe433
How much does San Francisco's garbage collection cost? Is it more expensive?
Is recycling the be all and end all? I know cost isn't everything... reducing
the monetary and environmental expenses of mining is very important, but on
the other hand scrap glass is cheap ($3 per ton!), undesirable and is an inert
substance that doesn't impact the environment in a landfill. Instead of having
and advertisement for "recology" we need to have a more open and honest
assessment of the benefits of recycling, the cost of recycling, and the
benefits and costs of not recycling. Hacker News, and the world, deserve
better.

