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Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

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Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#271

Post by drewbt »

There should be law that makes companies directly responsible for what happens to their packaging materials. Whatever a company brings into this world is their responsibility to recycle. Yes it adds overhead, but it makes people a lot more aware, and forces them to take responsibility of the impact they are having.

Why shouldn’t packaging be designed to be easily transformed into something useful, or even into functional community art projects?

A temple of coke cans for example. If they going to last forever it might as well be in a form that benefits communities.

Plastics have already been banned in certain countries.

Or are there to many lobbying in the wrong direction?

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#272

Post by JoeAltmaier »

pure-awesome wrote: post #266
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many folks are derailing recycling out of a misconception of the issues involved? Most I would guess. Not sure what black/green means. We have separate recycling pickup vehicles around here. They wouldn't run at all if there were no recycling.

Not the previous poster, but it seems "black" represents garbage truck whilst "green" represents recycling. The argument they were making is if your garbage weren't going to a recycling plant, it would be going to a landfill. Either way, the same amount of waste has to be transported from your home, so the same number of trucks would still be driving around.

Recycling is a trivial number of trucks. And far as I know, they don't crush the material. Also they keep it separate (paper/glass/metal) and the sections probably never fill evenly. So a pretty inefficient operation is my guess.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#273

Post by inflatableDodo »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #186
contactlight11 wrote: post #154

How about this information from CT's DEEP which quotes the EPA for the majority of it's information? Compared to virgin materials, using recycled materials more efficient by: - 40% for paper - 60-74% for steel and tin cans - 33% for plastics - 30% for glass - 5% for aluminum cans These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to accou…

> first step realize that happiness is not automatically linked to consumption I’ve always thought that framing the issue like this is both smug and dishonest. Smug because you’re essentially saying that people are wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort. Dishonest because reduce in this context will always mean a reduction in quality of life. Aside from being an ineffective way to con…

I don't know about smug, is more just a factual appraisal. People are very often wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort. That is clearly evident. This is also to be expected though, as we are all just making it up as we go along really.

As for reduction in the quality of life, you don't generally tell an obese person that their quality of life would improve if they could just eat more cake. Consumption and quality of life are not in a linear relationship.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#274

Post by opwieurposiu »

drewbt wrote: post #271

There should be law that makes companies directly responsible for what happens to their packaging materials. Whatever a company brings into this world is their responsibility to recycle. Yes it adds overhead, but it makes people a lot more aware, and forces them to take responsibility of the impact they are having. Why shouldn’t packaging be designed to be easily transformed into something useful, or even into functi…

Every house a beer can house!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Can_House

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#275

Post by MisterTea »

dwild wrote: post #254
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the in-home cost. My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. The energy, hot water, soap constituted a catastrophic reversal of any possible gain from the recycling. Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

>My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. That seems to be the issue, not the recycling program. > Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level). The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a b…

> The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a black truck instead of a green one.

It might not depending on the system in place. Many recycling programs require two truck routes to separately collect the trash and recycling. This doubles the amount of trucks and human labor but the trash load produced by each property stays the same.

In NYC there are separate routes and trucks to collect recycling. Saw the same thing in San Diego. One truck does the trash route, and some time later comes the recycling truck.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#276

Post by Scoundreller »

wastedhours wrote: post #225
jdnenej wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments should tax products for their disposal costs. Eventually everything needs to be disposed of so charge it at purchase time and remove the costs the individual pays later for garbage collection. This would mean products that don't use wasteful packaging become cheaper and people would buy less junk.

Every board room: "Just put some soil and seeds into this used plastic bottle and it becomes a handy plant pot - therefore it has an extended use and shouldn't need disposing of, hence zero disposal tax!"

I do exactly that with pails/buckets and plastic beer cups.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#277

Post by contactlight11 »

repsilat wrote: post #163
contactlight11 wrote: post #154

How about this information from CT's DEEP which quotes the EPA for the majority of it's information? Compared to virgin materials, using recycled materials more efficient by: - 40% for paper - 60-74% for steel and tin cans - 33% for plastics - 30% for glass - 5% for aluminum cans These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to accou…

> using recycled materials more efficient by: > ... > - 5% for aluminum cans I found this phrasing confusing. From the article you linked, >> Aluminum can be recycled using less than 5 percent of the energy used to make the original product. (EPA) I would say that's more efficient by 95%. (Thank you for providing the link!)

Yes, you are right! Each bullet point on their site tried to word it slightly differently so it was a little confusing. I messed up translating the aluminum one clearly. Thanks for pointing it out!

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#278

Post by drewbt »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #274
drewbt wrote: post #271

There should be law that makes companies directly responsible for what happens to their packaging materials. Whatever a company brings into this world is their responsibility to recycle. Yes it adds overhead, but it makes people a lot more aware, and forces them to take responsibility of the impact they are having. Why shouldn’t packaging be designed to be easily transformed into something useful, or even into functi…

Every house a beer can house! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Can_House

https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/green-architectura...

Or wine bottles.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#280

Post by hajile »

Enforcing landfills is a government problem, but recycling is a free market problem.

Mining 1 ton of iron takes 2 tons of ore plus another couple tons of coke and lime. It takes 4 tons of bauxite for one ton of aluminum (plus all the other things). There's also a huge amount of cost involved in reaching those tons of ore.

When mining a landfill gives bigger returns than the current deposits for the same cost of extraction, we'll see our recycling problem go away. Remaining burnables will simply reduce the amount of coal/coke needed to refine.

Government is critical in enforcing landfills though. Otherwise, trash winds up in little piles everywhere (or worse, in the ocean).

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