Recycling is bad for the environment

[Greengod]

New Southwark scheme with separate food collection will cause more people to recycle which is in fact a bad thing. :-S

Recycling is in fact bad for environment YES hard to believe I know but its true! anything that encourages more people to do it is bad, Recycling just makes people think they are doing their bit. It makes people feel good. On a purely statistical basis recycling causes as much pollution as it intends to save.

Teller's report on Recycling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ In the show they asserted that the production of reusing the materials to make new things actually creates more pollution than just making something new from scratch.

Think carbon carbon ? carbon transport to the dump, where they?re put into a skip. It now takes 3 times more lorries to collect the separated rubbish than it used to take to collect unseparated rubbish Then a lorry comes along, picks up the skip, and drives (carbon, carbon) to the docks where the bottles are poured into containers and loaded onto a ship which steams halfway around the world (CARBON! CARBON!) to China, where they all get ?recycled?.

You know what happens in China? There?s actually not much of any use that you can make out of waste plastic ? it?s no good for food, so you can?t make new bottles out of it ? so half of it gets burned right away on huge, stinking bonfires ? so there goes our clean air. The other half gets shredded, drawn, and eventually rendered down into clothes (fleeces, blankets, and so on), loaded back on a ship, and sent (CARBON! CARBON!) back here, so we can wear our garbage.

And when our garbage clothes eventually wear out? What then? We throw them away (because not even the Chinese can think of anything to do with old woollies). It goes into landfill (because, remember, you can?t burn it). And says there for ? you have been listening, haven?t you? ? 24,000 years! Did you know that 75% of non-biodegradable landfill is clothes? So it ends up as landfill anyway, in spite of all that transportation and processing.

In fact, except for materials like metal and some glass, recycling is almost always bad for the environment.

Need proof? There is actually a lot. One of the best places to start is with a report from PERC.org, called the Eight Great Myths of Recycling; you can find a copy at http://people.clemson.edu/~wahoo/211/recycling%20myths.pdf

"One argument made for recycling notes that we live on a finite planet. With a growing population, we must, it seems, run out of resources. Whether the resource in question is trees, oil, or bauxite, the message is the same: The only way to extend the lives of natural resource stocks is by more recycling."

"In fact, we are not running out of natural resources.While recycling has the potential to extend the lives of raw material stocks, other activities, long practiced in the private sector, are already doing that. Available stocks of those resources are actually growing, and there is every reason to expect such growth to continue if the private sector is allowed to continue performing its functions."

Consider forests. The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests exceeds by a factor of twenty the amount of wood and paper that is consumed by the world each year. Perhaps partly as a result, temperate forests, most of which are in North America, Europe, and Russia, actually have expanded over the last 40 years."

You get the idea. What the paper is referring to is the fact that paper production has actually increased the number of tress being planted in the world for one argument about this point).

Paperless world Kindles ect will in fact kill tress

Conversely, (and here is where recycling can hurt the environment) because of paper recycling we are actually planting fewer trees, and since paper recycling is a toxic manufacturing process, it releases damaging chemicals into the environment.

Landfills Provides a "Green" Energy Source

The gases produced by a landfill can be used in place of non-renewable sources for generating electricity. The recovery can be used to replace coal and natural gas to generate water vapor to power electrical turbines. This makes it a renewable energy source. A landfill can produce enough gas to provide energy for a couple thousand homes. Since all landfill produce methane, landfill gas is truly a renewable source of energy.

So the new Southwark scheme with separate food collection will cause more people to recycle which is not good.

[expat]

That would be Teller from Penn & Teller?

I wonder if [people.clemson.edu] is connected with Clemson University in South Carolina who does a lot of recycling:

Clemson University recycling program recognized as 'outstanding' http://www.clemson.edu/media-relations/article.php?article_id=2687

[louisiana]

Admin, can we please have a thread entitled 'rambling nonsense from a first-time poster'? :)

[Pearson]

^ I don't buy into the post either.

But hardly a friendly or warranted reply from an 'old-time' poster.

[waynetta]

PREVENT the inconvenience of waiting for energy saving fluorescent lightbulbs to brighten up by simply leaving them switched on all the time.

[louisiana]

Pearson Wrote:

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> ^ I don't buy into the post either.

> But hardly a friendly or warranted reply from an

> 'old-time' poster.

As you will have noted Pearson, I don't tolerate fools gladly or otherwise.

'Old time'? You make me sound like a pensioner.

[woofmarkthedog]

Greengod Wrote:

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> New Southwark scheme with separate food collection

> will cause more people to recycle which is in fact

> a bad thing. :-S

BLA BLA BLA

> So the new Southwark scheme with separate food

> collection will cause more people to recycle which

> is not good.

__________________________________________

Great 1st post

( though I did only skim read it )

W**F

[holloway]

my flat mate is a nut case when it comes to recycling. his idea of recycling however, is to dump all recyclable waste into a corner of the kitchen and then expect some one else to lug it down to the recycling bins. i tolerate it to a point but eventually i crack and bung it all into a black bag and dump the lot in the normal bins. he has no idea i'm doing this. it's being going on for about a year. i know i should stop but it's so funny! he thinks i'm brilliant.