The Streets Division was poised to add 1,600 households and 25 to 30 businesses this summer to get more residents, events and businesses used to separating organics....I added the boldface. That phrase "get used to it" keeps coming up in the context of recycling/composting. We're being trained.
Dan Schwartz, a participant in the pilot program who lives near East High School, said he does some of his own composting, but he wasn’t able to compost bones, paper plates and pizza boxes, all items allowed in the city program.
“It’s unfortunate they’re stopping it, because it will be harder to start it up again and get people used to it again,” he said. He’s already contacted his alderperson and the mayor to complain, he said.
ADDED: Were disposable baby diapers allowed in this program? I'm guessing no, but if pet waste was allowed, why not? From the Madison website, a question:
Also, question, on diapers and sanitary products...these have plastic liners, should the interiors be removed from the liner part ew, but I'm willing to do that for the greater good or can the whole thing be dropped in?The answer is no diapers and sanitary napkins, because: "We do not want to face regulation as a sewerage treatment facility." Ironic, no? The city government doesn't like all that government regulation.
But here's an old NYT report of a dirty diaper composting program in Toronto. And here's the Toronto website, still saying put "Diapers, sanitary products" in the Green Bin. But not: "Dryer sheets, baby wipes, make-up pads, cotton tipped swabs, dental floss."
पोस्ट्स
८५ टिप्पण्या:
Recycling is just another lefty mania that has no rational basis - ALMTHNRB.
I'm surprised they couldn't spin this into a property tax increase.
Madison will not be #1 on the list of cities who feel best about themselves about how they think they recycle a lot.
All Progs know that the only discipline is perfect discipline.
They feed off people's natural guilt/atonement cycle built in during potty training. Be good little boys and girls!
Fake science based on false data is all the Progs need to feed that human need for fun and profit. Back when Judeo-Christian Religion did that job, and did it far better, that need was not screwing up everything.
Insert Obligatory Penn & Teller Video here
Don't you love the earth?
and not just for composting.
I could literally put almost everything in there
Nonsense sentence. Always true.
I could literally write about almost everything every day.
Anyway, the salient question: How much does it cost, and how much does it save. If it's a great program, then there should be a private-sector way to meet the demand, shouldn't there?
Oh -- so it doesn't pay for itself? Should I just pay for it out of my already high taxes so Kris Austin can feel good about the amount of garbage her (his?) diner contributes?
In one of my job assignments I looked for ways to use waste streams from small factories, often scraps of perfectly good raw materials. A few types of these waste have some value--metals, glass, plastics--but the dollar value was often low. And the labor it takes to handle the wastes often makes the project a net cost to the factory owner. I like the idea of wringing all the value we can out of raw materials but there are lots of places where our society has already optimized the process. Sometimes trash is just trash.
This--> http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/22/environmentalism-and-the-fear-of-disorde
via Instapundit a couple of days back.
Wait. They started this thing with no idea about how they were going to process the stuff they collected and then amassed over a million pounds of it?
Even for government waste that's garage grade stupid.
But I guess it was the intention that was important.
Recycling? Ha!! Liberals are so stupid when it comes to trash management. They should do like the Conservatives and just dump it all into the nearest river or stream.
I know how they feel. We are stuck with trying to process garage's bullshit daily with no filter.
I,m sorry. I meant to say madisonfella stupid.
My apologies to garage.
If the Koch brothers donated the filter would they refuse it out of spite?
Thank God. Where did the City think we were going to put the third bin? I guess they thought we'd get used to looking at all of the neighbor's (and our) trash cans sitting outside the garage. Then they could resurrect the bright idea of putting advertisements on them.
In Germany we were forced to recycle everything, and I mean everything, down to the kitchen scraps. We had a compost pile beside our apartment building. I got a warning when I put an envelope with our name on it in the wrong color coded recycling bag. The fine was 500 marks if I did it again.
Later that year it came out that they were taking everything we had so carefully sorted to the dump and not recycling centers because centers were overwhelmed and had no use for the junk. But still we sorted and I bet they still do. It makes everyone feel good.
Recycling is just another lefty mania that has no rational basis
Yes, because the earth has an unlimited supply of minerals and unlimited land to use for landfills.
Putting yard waste and vegetable scraps in landfills is completely insane. I don't know the details of Madison's plan, maybe it was poorly designed. But all they had to do was call any municipality in Germany to learn how to do it right.
Curious George is back. Thank goodness. Was hoping he didn't do anything drastic after the last Marquette poll came out.
"Madison will soon stop its popular pilot program to collect organic waste"
Popular with whom? Two people doesn't add up to popular.
In my ideal community, there would be heaps of trash, trash to be recycled by pouring it into Gaia's mouth, which is a volcano (S)cience!
Come to think of it, I had to go with Starchild to the Council of Elders to complain about all the raptors getting chopped up by the Metal Windmill in our village.
We waited in line for 18 hours and didn't talk to anyone. They gave us Carbon Credit coupon bonds for our trouble.
We're being trained.
You say that like it is a bad thing.
The important question is who was being paid to do it. In SF we have the same foolishness, but here there is enough money to keep it going.
It is corruption justified by the local religion.
madisonfella: "Recycling? Ha!! Liberals are so stupid when it comes to trash management."
Demonstrably so.
The way you tell garbage from treasure is that somebody will pay you for treasure.
Are they paying you for your recyclable stuff? No.
It's garbage.
Apply economics.
LOL
Freder at 10:07am: "Putting yard waste and vegetable scraps in landfills is completely insane. I don't know the details of Madison's plan, maybe it was poorly designed. But all they had to do was call any municipality in Germany to learn how to do it right."
Kelly at 9:57am: "In Germany we were forced to recycle everything, and I mean everything, down to the kitchen scraps. We had a compost pile beside our apartment building. I got a warning when I put an envelope with our name on it in the wrong color coded recycling bag. The fine was 500 marks if I did it again.
Later that year it came out that they were taking everything we had so carefully sorted to the dump and not recycling centers because centers were overwhelmed and had no use for the junk. But still we sorted and I bet they still do. It makes everyone feel good."
Thanks for the laugh Freder.
Pitch perfect lefty.
Next up: Why Chernobyl was really the fault of some capitalists.
It seems that even in Germany they are not "doing it right".
All actions have costs, and a cost-benefit analysis. Just because something has a potential benefit, such as preserving resources that may someday grow scarce, does not mean it is justified today. Maybe at some point it will be, but now it is not.
One of the things that makes rural Ohio the number one best city in the world is that we don't recycle anything.
A collection of photos of discarded TV sets by the road for the garbage man, over the years.
It's guilt free out here.
It is very much a bad thing to train people like this.
It trains people to behave irrationally, and to accept irrational justifications. What other stupidity are they being trained to accept ?
One can perhaps justify this arrogance if the benefits are certain, and certainly justify the costs, like when the US imposed public sanitation on the city of Manila in 1898. But that was done to a conquered people.
They stopped a $20.6 million dollar project because of $120k they didn't expect?
That's the most responsible governmental budget move i've ever heard. It makes no sense either here, so I'm incredibly suspicious that there are lots of reasons being buried and not talked about.
Later that year it came out that they were taking everything we had so carefully sorted to the dump and not recycling centers because centers were overwhelmed and had no use for the junk. But still we sorted and I bet they still do. It makes everyone feel good.
Yes there were initial problems with Germany's recycling program and indeed they were putting "recyclable materials" in landfills. But it is not still happening. I bet you were there in the mid to late nineties (you were obviously there before the introduction of the Euro). Things are much improved and they have reduced the number of separate recycling streams. When I was in Germany in '95-'97 we had three separate recycling bags plus compostable waste. Now all your recycling goes in one bag.
"All actions have costs, and a cost-benefit analysis. Just because something has a potential benefit, such as preserving resources that may someday grow scarce, does not mean it is justified today."
This.
It trains people to behave irrationally, and to accept irrational justifications.
Only in a crazy world we anyone claim it is rational to landfill yard waste. Yard waste decomposes to rich organic matter, which is wonderful for improving soil. If you put it in a landfill, it is contaminated by toxic materials, results in instability of the fill and contributes to potential leaching.
What Drago said.
And in Albuquerque the City just hauls the recycle material out to the dump site (way out of town and out of sight) and stockpile it alongside the regular dump and cover it with tarps and hope that someday someone will think of a way for them to make some economical use of it!
They stopped a $20.6 million dollar project because of $120k they didn't expect?
That's the most responsible governmental budget move i've ever heard. It makes no sense either here, so I'm incredibly suspicious that there are lots of reasons being buried and not talked about.
Freder: "Things are much improved and they have reduced the number of separate recycling streams. When I was in Germany in '95-'97 we had three separate recycling bags plus compostable waste. Now all your recycling goes in one bag."
Our resident leftist version of Lincoln Steffens, Freder, wants very much for you to know that he has "seen the future, and it works!!"
LOL
A collection of photos of discarded TV sets by the road for the garbage man, over the years.
It's guilt free out here.
Well you should feel guilt about putting a tv (especially a CRT) in a municipal landfill. They are chock full of hazardous chemicals (especially lead).
Nobody with any sense is going to take an unpleasant minimum wage job sorting recyclables, when they can do as well or better off welfare doing nothing.
Here is an analysis of curbside recycling.
"In this paper, we address the often contentious debate over state and local recycling policy by carefully estimating the social net benefit of curbside recycling. Benefits are estimated using household survey data from over 4,000 households across 40 western U.S. cities. We calibrate household willingness-to-pay for hypothetical bias using an innovative experimental design that contrasts stated and revealed preferences. Cost estimates are compiled from previous studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Institute for Local Self Reliance, and from in-depth interviews with recycling coordinators in our sampled cities. Across our sample of cities, we find that the estimated mean social net benefit of curbside recycling is almost exactly zero. On a city-by- city basis, however, our social net-benefit analysis often makes clear predictions about whether a curbside recycling program is an efficient use of resources. Surprisingly, several existing curbside recycling programs in our sample are inefficient."
In short, zero benefits
Consider some of the opportunity costs (granted, minor and marginal in this case, but still)
- Upper middle class parents or potential parents have yet another hassle in their lives.
Less willingness to add the additional hassles of another upper-middle class child. Birthrate is (very slightly) suppressed.
If you want to consider a much more substantial effect on this aspect, due to pointless officiousness, consider the massive middle class anxiety over urban public school assignments. Consider how many upper middle class children don't exist because of this burden of anxiety. In San Francisco at any rate it must add up to a thousand or two every year. Consider the cumulative loss to economic and technological development due to this missing talent.
Everything has its effect.
Observe the world, and use your imagination.
They should try composting BS. A town like Madison, with both a statehouse and university, has an endless supply. The main difficulty is ensuring that the compost reaches a temperature high enough to kill the malignant memes that infest it. But the benefit to society would be enormous.
Unexpectedly! this didn't work out.
Too many unforeseen things happened.
This is known as bad luck.
"Thanks for the laugh Freder.
Pitch perfect lefty."
You beat me to it, Drago. I read those two and thought, "How often are you refuted before you even open your pie hole?"
Of course, that doesn't stop him from pretending like all is sunshine and roses now.
On the other hand, I guarantee you it doesn't work any better in Germany than it does anywhere else in the world. Poor Freder and lefties, they are constantly being introduced to "bad luck".
There ideas would work if it weren't for bad luck!
From Reason:
A popular new psychological model, compensatory control theory, argues that people are highly motivated to perceive the world as meaningful, orderly, and structured. When people perceive the world as being less orderly. . . they strive to compensate for the anxiety and stress this produces. Often this entails attempting to achieve personal or external control. With personal control . . . “it is the feeling that people are able to influence their environment that provides them with the notion of an orderly and navigable world.” With external control, “it is the feeling that an external source (e.g. an intervening God or a powerful government) exerts influence over their environments and the world in general that provides similar perceptions of an orderly world.”
A threat to one source of order boosts the motivation to affirm the other. Instability in government, for example, produces more efforts to achieve personal control.
And my counter-theory of course is:
The Earth is too big to fail.
Freder Fredson said...Only in a crazy world we anyone claim it is rational to landfill yard waste. Yard waste decomposes to rich organic matter, which is wonderful for improving soil. If you put it in a landfill, it is contaminated by toxic materials, results in instability of the fill and contributes to potential leaching.
No, you only have half the equation there. You are discussing the benefits, and to that extent you are correct. One must also consider the costs, however. If it costs more to reclaim the yard waste (separae collection, sorting, washing, etc) than the end product is worth it is rational to throw it away. The fact that a given product has some value does not mean costs in excess of that value should be take on to produce the product. Considering all the costs and benefits of recycling it's likely many items should be thrown away.
A quick test for the net benefit of recycling a material is to ask whether the "free" market has assigned it a positive residual value--you can sell aluminum cans to a private company but not common paper products (as far as I know). In most cases if someone can make a buck off of "trash" they will, so for the most part you can find a buyer for items that have a postiive net recycled value.
Freder Frederson said...
"Recycling is just another lefty mania that has no rational basis
Yes, because the earth has an unlimited supply of minerals and unlimited land to use for landfills.
Putting yard waste and vegetable scraps in landfills is completely insane. I don't know the details of Madison's plan, maybe it was poorly designed."
So you'll take it at your house, then.
Fantastic.
I like how you take your commitment to the environment seriously.
What's your address?
In short, zero benefits
No they found "the estimated mean social net benefit of curbside recycling is almost exactly zero."
Look at their definition of "social net benefit", it is extremely limited. Basically, they calculated the net cost of the recycling program and then conducted a survey to find out how much people were willing to pay for recycling. Turns out they were both approximately the same ($3.00 per household per month).
Freder, wants very much for you to know that he has "seen the future, and it works!!"
I haven't seen the future. I have seen the past separated by over ten years. I lived in Germany from '95-'97 and then again in 2009-2010. Both the collection and processing of recyclables improved greatly in that span.
And I wasn't just some outside observer. My job both times was ensuring that the U.S. military complied with applicable environmental regulations.
Frederson said,
Yes, because the earth has an unlimited supply of minerals and unlimited land to use for landfills.
Putting yard waste and vegetable scraps in landfills is completely insane. I don't know the details of Madison's plan, maybe it was poorly designed. But all they had to do was call any municipality in Germany to learn how to do it right.
And right on cue, the ghost of Parson Malthus rises from its thoroughly discredited notion of humanity to dig the hole deeper.
Sewerage = system of sewage treatment facilities.
Freder Frederson said...
We're being trained.
You say that like it is a bad thing
It is a bad thing because they're not qualified to train anybody.
Freder Frederson said...
A collection of photos of discarded TV sets by the road for the garbage man, over the years.
It's guilt free out here.
Well you should feel guilt about putting a tv (especially a CRT) in a municipal landfill. They are chock full of hazardous chemicals (especially lead)
Drive through an industrial park. it's that place at the edge of town with big buildings where there are businesses that actually make things.
look in their dumpsters and then complain about what your neighbors throw out.
Freder Frederson said...
"In short, zero benefits
No they found "the estimated mean social net benefit of curbside recycling is almost exactly zero."
Look at their definition of "social net benefit", it is extremely limited. Basically, they calculated the net cost of the recycling program and then conducted a survey to find out how much people were willing to pay for recycling. Turns out they were both approximately the same ($3.00 per household per month)."
Which is exactly the opposite of what municipal recycling were sold as. "It won't cost you a thing. everything will get sorted and sold."
Turns out the majority of the stuff isn't worth shit. Except for the metals.
$3.00 huh? Absolute bullshit.
You're wife or girlfriend on the pill? Congratulations she's a major polluter.
If it costs more to reclaim the yard waste (separae collection, sorting, washing, etc) than the end product is worth it is rational to throw it away.
You are assuming that the true cost of disposal is covered by the tipping fees. It isn't.
In the 70s and 80s, I lived in both the Philippines and S. Korea. In both places, people would buy your garbage. In the Philippines, a guy driving a wagon pulled by a carabao would come around and go thru your trash and pick out what he wanted and pay for it. We let our housegirl keep the money. In Korea, contractors bid on the right to haul off military trash. All the dumpsters on base had signs saying that it was illegal to remove items from the dumpster because the contents belonged to the contractor. So, if we really want to do recycling right, all we have to do is continue to drive our economy down to third-world level. Then the rag pickers and dump scroungers will pay us for the privilege of recycling our trash. Or maybe you or I will be one of them.
Freder Frederson said...
"Well you should feel guilt about putting a tv (especially a CRT) in a municipal landfill. They are chock full of hazardous chemicals (especially lead)."
The lead in a CRT is in the glass, to raise the refractive index. It is chemically inert. You would need to melt the glass to get it out. This is not the only thing Frederson is wrong about.
"
You are assuming that the true cost of disposal is covered by the tipping fees. It isn't."
You are assuming that my time costs nothing, and is yours to waste as you see fit. It isn't.
You are assuming that the true cost of disposal is covered by the tipping fees. It isn't.
The true costs are the actual costs involved. Nothing is assumed.
What you are referring to are the aesthetics. What you like to term,"the costs to society".
Again. If it were profitable you would not need to force people to do it.
$3.00 huh? Absolute bullshit.
Read the study cited by St. George, it is their number, not mine. Frankly, I was surprised it was so little.
Which is exactly the opposite of what municipal recycling were sold as. "It won't cost you a thing. everything will get sorted and sold."
That's bullshit. You weren't told that.
look in their dumpsters and then complain about what your neighbors throw out.
Just because the disposal of used electronic components is generally unregulated in this country, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.
And industries, if they produce a threshold amount of hazardous waste, are subject to stringent handling, storage, and disposal regulations. Illegal disposal of hazardous waste carries both criminal and civil penalties (the civil penalties can be up to $25,000 per day per violation)
What you are referring to are the aesthetics. What you like to term,"the costs to society".
Again. If it were profitable you would not need to force people to do it.
No I'm not. I'm referring to closure costs and long term monitoring--not to mention the potential of future remedial costs if containment is breached. Also, what you pay for disposal often doesn't even cover the cost of disposal, the difference is made up by general revenues.
Reminds of the Bullxxxx episode of Penn and Teller about recycling. The kept giving people more and more different colored trash bins, which required more and more sorting to see how much people were willing to do.
Recycling was created after the myth that we were out of landfill space. Now we can't stop. It's like ethanol. There is no rational reason for ethanol, but it will never ever stop.
""Thanks for the laugh Freder."
You want a real giggle, ask him what happens to the waste heat of an incandescent light bulb.
That's bullshit. You weren't told that.
Nope. Not bullshit.
That's the way it was sold.
"We're going to make so much money selling scrap paper,plastic,glass,and metal we won't have to charge for pick up."
Economics got in the way.
Freder Frederson said...
look in their dumpsters and then complain about what your neighbors throw out.
Just because the disposal of used electronic components is generally unregulated in this country, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.
Spoken like a true envirofascist.
And industries, if they produce a threshold amount of hazardous waste, are subject to stringent handling, storage, and disposal regulations. Illegal disposal of hazardous waste carries both criminal and civil penalties (the civil penalties can be up to $25,000 per day per violation)
Is your wife/girlfriend on the pill?
Recycling was created after the myth that we were out of landfill space.
In some parts of the country, especially the Northeast, that is not a myth.
You would need to melt the glass to get it out.
wrong
A collection of photos of discarded TV sets by the road for the garbage man, over the years.
You may not realize it, but your friends down South from Kentucky come by a freecycle any left appliance overnight.
I've seen the pickups. The market is working!
Freder Frederson said...
You are assuming that the true cost of disposal is covered by the tipping fees. It isn't.
I am absolutely not assuming that-almost the exact opposite in fact. I am asserting that in order to determine if it is rational and efficient to recycle a given material one must consider all of the benefits as well as all of the costs. I am not counting only the direct fee/payment/accounting cost of disposal. You stated that yard waste is beneficial and valuable. I agree that it may have value. I assert that this fact alone does not tell you whether it is rational to recycle such material, however. If the total cost to recycle the material is more than the value of the end product of recycling that material then it is rational to not recycle it.
The total cost includes those borne by the individuals recycling the materials (their time/opportunity costs in sorting it, handling it separately, etc) as well as the municipality's costs to recycle the material. The total benefit includes the book value of the material as well as the saved landfill space, toxic runoff, etc. For an even comparison you would have to do the full cost/benefit on using the landfill, as well.
I don't know if it is economically rational to recycle yard waste (and the answer is probably "yes in some cases/communities, no in others"). I do know that just because recycled waste has some value does not automatically mean it is always rational to recycle it.
Additionally my point about looking at the market value of recycling inputs as a quick way to tell what's worth recycling just means if the cost for an individual firm to recycle a given waste product is lower than the cost of their output (such that they can make a profit) you know that the direct book value of the product exceeds the direct book cost of the input + the cost to actually recycle it. Given that, it's a fair assumption that the net benefit outweighs the net costs (since the net financial benefit outweighs the net financial cost ie there's potential for financial profit). Theoretically it would still be possible that the net total benefit (to society as a whole) was lower (if the post-recycled material had some sort of large negative externality associated with its existence or use, say) but as a quick cost/benefit test it works well.
I am asserting that in order to determine if it is rational and efficient to recycle a given material one must consider all of the benefits as well as all of the costs.
Actually, that is not what you said in your original post. You should re read it.
Spoken like a true envirofascist.
Are you contending that there should be no environmental regulation?
Freder Frederson said...
You would need to melt the glass to get it out.
"wrong"
I stand (well, sit) corrected. All you would need to do is grind the tube to a fine powder and soak for several hours in a mixture of acetic acid and sodium hydroxide, then store it for a while in nitric acid.
Freder, have you ever looked in a gutter? When people in tire shops put tires on a wheel, they put lead weights on them to balance the wheel. Those weights fall off, and they end up in the gutter. I used to collect them and melt them down. Those gutters drain into the storm sewers, not into clay-lined landfills. Maybe you should twist your knickers around that for a while.
PS; They don't make 'em like they used to. Modern flat-screen monitors are not CRTs.
"...can't afford a $120,000 filter..."
And yet Madison can afford to pay Art Ross, Madison's dedicated pedestrian-bicycle coordinator, year after year after year.
It seems that agencies have money to pay people but plead poverty when it comes to buying the tools for the agency to actually accomplish its goals.
Could it be that employees vote but "filters" don't?
Naaahh, couldn't be.
you know that the direct book value of the product exceeds the direct book cost of the input + the cost to actually recycle it.
You don't even account for the disposal cost if you don't recycle it.
Maybe you should twist your knickers around that for a while.
If you are not worried about lead in the environment, you just haven't been paying attention. We are much better off now, thanks to the elimination of lead from gasoline and almost all paint.
Eliminating lead wheel weights would indeed be beneficial. They have been banned in the EU since 2005, and in several states including California, Illinois and New York.
Freder Frederson said...
Spoken like a true envirofascist.
Are you contending that there should be no environmental regulation?
I'm saying you're not qualified to make a decision on what to compel your fellow citizens to do with what belongs to them.
"If you are not worried about lead in the environment, you just haven't been paying attention. We are much better off now, thanks to the elimination of lead from gasoline and almost all paint."
It is true that there is solid evidence connecting tetra-ethyl lead from gasoline, and lead compounds in paints, with reductions in IQ, and possibly with the high crime rates of the last century. The lead in those products is in a biologically accessible form, and those products are used in areas where ingestion of that lead is quite likely. But there is zero evidence connecting lead tire and fishing weights, lead bullets, or other solid lead objects with such effects. If I were to worry about a widespread, chemically accessible lead source, it would be car and boat batteries. But of course, those are recycled already, because it makes economic sense.
The fact that something is banned in California is pretty good evidence that it is harmless.
Lets ban lead in bullets.
Freder Frederson said...You don't even account for the disposal cost if you don't recycle it.
Sure I do. Not recycling has a cost. Let's call that L.
Recycling has a cost. Let's call that R. Recycling has a benefit. When you're done recycling you have a product, let's call that S. The net cost of recycling a given number of units is therefore R-S.
My point is that it is possible for a given combination of low L,high R, and low S that L < R-S.
Your original post indicated that it shouldn't be rational to not recycle a given product. I am pointing out that since recycling itself is costly (as the article in question demonstrates) your assertion is not necessarily correct. I emphasized that when adding up economic costs you have to include more than just financial costs (on both sides)--for the individual at least it's almost certainly cheaper (in terms of time spent, hassle, yard space occupied by a smelly composter, etc) to not recycle and that "savings" has to factor into the comparison.
----Yes, because the earth has an unlimited supply of minerals
Well yes there is an unlimited supply of minerals.
Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon–Ehrlich_wager
You religious enviro-whackos
Recycling can be good, but Freder illustrates that there is nothing so good that it can't be overdone to the point where it's nearly worthless.
Recycling aluminum cans is very good -- the difference in energy between making new aluminum cans out of old aluminum cans versus making new aluminum cans out or bauxite ore is huge. Recycling other cans is also good, and so is recycling plastic items with a 1 (PETE), 2 (HDPE), or 5 (polypropylene) in the little triangle. Plastics with a 3 or 4 are more problematic and generally the costs and risks outweigh the benefits. With a 6 or 7 the best one can do is incinerate the plastic and use the heat to generate electricity (cogeneration).
Freder gives himself away at 3:49 when he implies that in his mind the alternative to over-regulation is no regulation at all. Everything his way, all the way, all the time, or chaos.
That's a true Prog.
Recycling aluminum cans is very good -- the difference in energy between making new aluminum cans out of old aluminum cans versus making new aluminum cans out or bauxite ore is huge
It's mainly because the alum. used to make cans is a special alloy. That's why cans are separated from
other alum.
Industry has been recycling its waste decades before the environmental movement came along.
Recycling aluminum cans is very good -- the difference in energy between making new aluminum cans out of old aluminum cans versus making new aluminum cans out or bauxite ore is huge
It's mainly because the alum. used to make cans is a special alloy. That's why cans are separated from
other alum.
Industry has been recycling its waste decades before the environmental movement came along.
"Recycling aluminum cans is very good"
Actually, no. Aluminum cans are a bad idea. It would be cheaper to make beverage cans out of steel, and the technology to do it has existed for decades. However, California passed a law against steel beverage cans. Why? Because the recyclers lobbied for it, saying they need the money from the aluminum. And anyone who wants to sell things in CA has to follow CA law. So, huge quantities of aluminum (which is basically crystalized electricity) are wasted all over the world in order to subsidize the California recycling industry.
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