DescentBB

Well if you live in Cleveland it maybe. Seems Cleveland has instituted a trash surveillance program, If your recycle can doesn't make it to the curb for a few weeks the trash men go through you trash and see if you are throwing away recyclables and if you throw away more than 10% you are fined.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20014 ... 7-1_3-0-20

Lots of cities have similar policies. Mine does.

Yea, that makes it ok.

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Aluminum is the only commonly-recycled household item that actually makes environmental sense to recycle. Many types of industrial recycling make sense as well, but the rest of residential recycling is just feel-good superstition. Often, recycling is actually bad for the environment because of the high amount of energy usage required for it.

Here's Penn & Teller on recycling:


Recycling is the law of the land in many places, because many places are stupid. Putting a tracking device in someone's recycling bin to catch them breaking a stupid law (workaround: put out your empty recycling bin each week) seems extra stupid to me. But if it generates revenue for the city, who am I to argue?

Bet51987 wrote:I expected that from Spidey even before I saw what he typed.

Anyway, recycling is a law in many, if not all, states like it is in mine and since I'm a big recycler I'm all for fining people who are too lazy to separate stuff.

So, how do you catch the people who are breaking the law? If the recycle bin hasn't been put out for weeks or is always empty that would be reasonable cause to suspect that person is throwing everything in with the regular trash.

I think the method used here is a good thing.

Bee

/me stands back and watches.

here it comes

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Bet51987 wrote:since you feel it's stupid to separate the two million TONS of plastic soda bottles thrown out each year what do you think should be done with it?

The Penn & Teller video addresses that subject. Pay special attention to the part where they talk about a thousand years worth of landfill space. Quit letting yourself be misled by decontextualized numbers like "two million TONS" and take the time to understand how much plastic that actually is, how hard it is to dispose of (not very), and what a tremendous amount of energy is wasted (and CO2 is released) in trying to "recycle" it. The world I imagine is *better than yours* because I'm not naive enough to think "two million TONS" is the only relevant piece of data.

The fact is, if something is worth recycling, you as a consumer can economically benefit from recycling it WITHOUT government subsidies or penalties. If the cost of throwing it in a landfill is too high, or the energy savings of recycling it vs making it new is substantial, recyclers will pay you to acquire it (like they do with aluminum and other metals, or like is often done with high-grade plastic on an industrial scale.)

Why is she always picking on me?

The comment goes to a small flaw in his logic, that being if everyone is doing something then it must be ok. My mother always said…”If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?” (a paraphrase) It’s a statement about group thinking, and its dangers, not a comment on the merits of recycling. But in fairness to Null, he may have been trying to make a different point.

She judged me without even knowing my stance on the issue.

The garbage company is doing that here too. I only put out my recycling tub every 3 weeks because there are only 2 of us generating waste and the recycle tub is HUGE. I don't even half fill up my small garbage can every week. If the garbage company thinks that I'm throwing away recyclables just because I don't put the tub out often enough, they're snorting something. I don't want them going through my garbage can either to check for compliance. Maybe I'll booby trap the thing if they start going through it.

They've also come up with a lame, not quite thought through recent idea, put all your wet kitchen food waste in the yard recycle tub for composting. Well, it's good intentioned, but the yard waste tub can't be sealed to keep out animals. How long before we start attracting wildlife to everyone's yard waste tubs, especially bears. Yes, Grendel, I know we don't have bears here -- YET. But we do have mice, rats, cougars and bobcats and they'll be attracted to any meat waste left in those things.

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Spidey wrote:Why is she always picking on me?

your just so special

Someone smart once said: \"We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.\"

Landfills will never need to be “cleaned up” unless they contain toxins, and recycling doesn’t address that issue. (not plastic and glass, anyway)

You know I recycle every week my container goes to the curb. With all the things my city tells me can go in it. I still don't want people going through my trash ever. I even shred all my personal documents and store them to light my winter fires. I still don't want people digging through my trash.

Some reading for you Bee

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-au ... nvironment

Perhaps Imam Obama could spend some porkulus money and invent another public sector Bureau that sifts through the landfills for recyclables. While he's at it he can force it be unionized and negotiate unsustainable salaries, health-care and pension plans for it.

Heretic wrote:I even shred all my personal documents and store them to light my winter fires.

Awww, the smell!!! Hertic, did you shred your old credit cards again!??

Not every one needs credit cards. If I can't buy it out right I don't need it.

\"IF!\"

Bee... Penn and Teller although it seems they are not to your liking, stated known facts about recycling. Because you don't like the messengers don't throw out the message. (Which you did).

I too don't see the sense in wasting $3.00 worth of energy and generating more CO2 to \"recycle\" 1/100¢ of plastic. It IS actually worse for the environment to do this. CO2 emissions is also a crock but that is another topic.

Where I live if you put anything outside of the house you will have wildlife tearing it apart within minutes. I return bottles and anything else I get money for and the rest goes in the trash.

If the Consumer,(Us)keeps on doing nothing and not complain to the manufacturers about recycling issues, they are going to continue pushing their crap down our throats and into our landfills. I'd like to see North America adopt Europe's WEEE model and really force the manufacturers to build quality goods or goods that are easily recycled. This system actually forces the manufacturers to make a better product or one that's easily recycled. The net result is recycling that works.

I see very little wrong with these laws; if you're trusting the city to do your trash pickup, you've got to agree to their rules. If you don't like it, dispose of it yourself.

Aluminum is indeed the only thing it is \"cost effective\" to recycle (big fan of Penn & Teller), but seeing the price of oil and knowing that oil will eventually run out, I can't help but think it's a good idea to recycle plastic, too.

Name one thing you bought in the last year, that’s made from recycled plastic.

I can’t name one thing…but I did print some tote bags made from recycled PVC/Polyester this year.

null0010 wrote:I see very little wrong with these laws; if you're trusting the city to do your trash pickup, you've got to agree to their rules. If you don't like it, dispose of it yourself....

a minor point here. There is another choice that people should remember to consider which is, the City (government) works for us so if their rules are dumb it serves us well to try and change the rules to be smart.

Maybe the best thing we can do for the environment is to push the city to recycle only what makes sense instead of helping them waste energy and fooling ourselves into thinking we are being green by submitting to their rules when we are actually doing more harm than good..

What about pushing the manufacturers to use more eco friendly materials ?

Spidey wrote:Name one thing you bought in the last year, that’s made from recycled plastic.

I can’t name one thing…but I did print some tote bags made from recycled PVC/Polyester this year.

I think my Giant bags are made from recycled plastic, which I in turn throw back into their bag recycling bin when I get enough.

Grendel wrote:What about pushing the manufacturers to use more eco friendly materials ?

Sure…where would you like to start?

I like my water in plastic bottles, glass is such a pain in the ass.

Spidey wrote:Name one thing you bought in the last year, that’s made from recycled plastic.

I can’t name one thing…but I did print some tote bags made from recycled PVC/Polyester this year.

http://www.enotes.com/science-fact-find ... ed-plastic

http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=5570791

Penn and Teller (despite totally un-necessary and crude verbage ... it's their lame way of trying to get attention, and I find it extremely offensive), make a fairly good point about the multiple ways the current recycling ways and promotions are flawed, but like the people they rip about it ... Penn and Teller also overlook (ignore?) some other VERY important facts, and gloss over a few things just like the people they rip. Just one example, they take the time to demonstrate a landfill that is very professional and does a good job of taking care of the waste, but that one landfill is very rare among landfills. Most landfills, especially around smaller communities, are nothing more a few separated piles and pits that get buried under dirt every so often, nothing more. Near where I live, a lot of area was/is impacted by the logging industry (a lot of it for milling paper), and yes, a fair amount of the paper you use currently was milled from trees grown on tree farms ... but there is still a lot of logging outside of tree farms. Oh, and most of those tree farms are in the US and Cananda. So, what about the paper that comes from mills outside of the US and Canada? (mostly South America) Are they milling from trees grown in tree farms? Mostly not. You'd be surprised just how much of the paper you handle is from trees in South America.

Penn and Teller should take more time to be accurate if they are going to rip someone else over something.

I'd find Penn and Teller's presentation of information more believable if they bothered to better validate their own statements instead of using only single examples ... and (if only just once) did it in a professional manner instead of crude and \"in your face\".

Years ago, Penn used to write a column that was published in a magazine called \"PC Computing\" and I enjoyed those columns, but since he decided to go crude and vulgar in order to grab attention ... I don't have much respect for them anymore. They should stick to doing magic tricks, that's what they know. They are NOT the professionals that are truly knowledgeable on the subject.

I agree TechPro. Penn and Teller were way more enjoyable when all they did were illusions, however they may be pulling off the best illusion yet by presenting themselves as jerks.

During their show they never claim to be unbiased or 100% truthful. It's a platform for them to tell you what their opinion is.

The problem with recycling is that for most materials its simply a lot cheaper to rip fresh material out of the ground. Compounding that is the fact that in the vast majority of cases, the recovery methods are crude, costly, and in some cases polluting. Aluminum is the obvious exception here, simply proven by the fact that people were recycling it long before recycling became the \"in\" thing to do. You save up a years worth of cans and take them to the local aluminum recycling center, you get a decent chunk of change for your trouble.

If some technology comes along that makes it economically feasible to recycle stuff like plastic, paper, and used computer parts, you can damned well bet that people will start recycling all of those things, including lazy ass jerks like me, who often cant be bothered to recycle aluminum cans (I don't drink enough stuff for it to be worth my time to keep a separate bag for them). Computer stuff especially would be a good thing to get an economically supported recycling program going because 1. the crap used to make them is highly toxic when it eventually ends up at the local landfill and 2. a lot of that stuff is scarce in the US, and if we can reclaim the used stuff and reuse it, that means we import less of it and help ourselves out by lowering our trade deficit.

What needs to happen is a lot of money needs to be thrown at researching reclamation methods for these materials that have either a high toxicity or relatively high/increasing scarcity on either a domestic or global scale. As for paper, we could simply enact and enforce an import restriction requiring that any imported wood pulp or paper products must be produced in such a way that it does not utilize deforestation. In other words, tell the rest of the world to use tree farms if they want us to buy their paper. Of course, the WTO would likely bring the hammer down on us for erecting a barrier to trade, but honestly, eff those guys. Free trade stinks. Fair trade is a lot better for businesses HERE.

Bet51987 wrote:I understand that the country "as a whole" certainly has enough land but several individual states haven't enough room

Translation: it's cheaper for some states to ship their garbage elsewhere than to buy the land to make a new landfill. That doesn't mean they "haven't enough room", it just means they haven't purchased enough room within their own borders because it's cheaper to purchase what they need from another state.

I'm not naive enough to listen to a pair of comedy illusionists and pass it off as scientific reference...

If you don't like Penn & Teller's take, then you definitely won't like George Carlin's take (I shouldn't have to give this warning, but people, this is NSFW):


You also might not like Steven Landsburg's take:
http://www.shrubwalkers.com/prose/list/not.html

None of this is scientific reference, of course. I assume you're competent with google and can find scientific references on your own. So I'm content to give my philosophy: putting a sensor in somebody's recycling bin and searching through their garbage to make sure they're engaging in your pet "save the planet" scheme that doesn't actually help "save the planet" is a remarkably stupid use of resources. There are plenty of things we could do that would *actually* be good for the environment; let's do those things instead of getting stuck on feel-good enviro-religious rituals like recycling water bottles.

That Carlin is a classic. He says it best. \"The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.\"

I've never recycled anything so this may be a stupid question, but what's stopping people from putting all their trash in the recycle bin?

ccb056 wrote:I've never recycled anything so this may be a stupid question, but what's stopping people from putting all their trash in the recycle bin?

nothing, I think, except availability of better technology
http://www.plasma-wr.com/

edit: this has got to be too expensive to be usable...

ccb056 wrote:I've never recycled anything so this may be a stupid question, but what's stopping people from putting all their trash in the recycle bin?

How would you like to sift thru dirty diapers and garbage, when trying to separate the stuff?

I'm ready.

Spidey wrote:

ccb056 wrote:I've never recycled anything so this may be a stupid question, but what's stopping people from putting all their trash in the recycle bin?

How would you like to sift thru dirty diapers and garbage, when trying to separate the stuff?

Would I get to be on the TV show Dirty Jobs?

Probably not.

You get as many dirty diapers as you want.