id' like to see the numbers on that... cullet is an important ingredient in glass manufacturing
Posted on 04/15/2012 1:45:30 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Throw away the green and blue bags and forget those trips to return bottles recycling household waste is a load of, well, rubbish, say leading environmentalists and waste campaigners. In a reversal of decades-old wisdom, they argue that burning cardboard, plastics and food leftovers is better for the environment and the economy than recycling. They dismiss household trash separation a practice encouraged by the green lobby as a waste of time and money.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Obama and Al Gore can cram it.
this whole thing was devised to make Algore wealthy.
I throw my garbage at my libtard neighbor’s yard.
Here in florida they hand out green bins for recycables. So then this massive truck runs through the neighborhoods picking up the contents of these bins. I’d wager the truck creates far more waste than the contents of the stupid bins.
mark for later
“Recycled bottles cost glass companies twice as much as the raw materials, “
I had no idea! I just figured glass would be easy to re-melt, and re-use! Search for Penn and Teller’s expose’ of recycling.
It all depends on what you’re trying to recycle. Its generally more economical to recycle metals but recycling paper is a complete and utter waste of time.
Old cotton can be used to make paper but I don't think they buy rags anymore.
P&T came to the same conclusion that only metals recycling held anything of value. Melting and recasting/rolling metal is much cheaper than digging and processing new ore. Everything else is Bullsh!t!
Well, well. It took them all this time to figure out that recycling, in some significant part, is a bust. Wonder how many decades it will take them to figure out that trying to manipulate the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is a bust as well?
id' like to see the numbers on that... cullet is an important ingredient in glass manufacturing
Here in Sunrise FL (dws’s district, and home of the Florida Panthers NHL SE Div winner) the city gave every home a giant wheeled 65gal bin (larger than my trash can. Must’ve cost a lot.
A woman in our office expressed her horror, when I threw away a plastic bottle one day.
I told her it takes more energy to recycle a plastic bottle, than it does to make a new one.
How do I know that, she asked?
Nobody pays me for plastic, like they do with aluminum. Sooo...since the cost of a mass produced item, made out of a commodity like plastic, is essentially the cost of energy to produce and ship...it is an easy conclusion to make.
I have similar suspicions that windmills take more energy to produce, than what they will ever generate.
BTW, she gave me the ‘you just shanked a baby panda’ look, and walked off.
I would agree except for glass. Why else would glass manufacturers simply send the jars out of bad molds right back to the furnace? Although transportation adds a bit to cost glass is recyclable.
On the other hand, I don't recycle. I refuse to simply give up my material so someone else can make money off of it. If they were to pay me for it I would go through the trouble.
Last week I threw a broken wooden chair into the plastic bin because it had a small piece of plastic under it and some enviromental nut pulled it out. I thought, Fine.
When they say plastic they are mental about it.
Recycleing cans and bottles is kinda like a welfare work program we pay for it with crv’s deposits and bums a drug addicts collect the stuff from our trash cans and recycle bins and from the streets and take them in for cash most urban areas you will never find a can or bottle anywhere
And, thus, it is the perfect liberal economic stimulus. Don't forget about the wages of the collectors and sorters. It's all wasted.
My previous employer had become permeated with the recycling disease. They even took away the wastebaskets from our desks to make us cut down on wastepaper (we all put grocery bags underneath them.) When I would occasionally ask if the company was profiting from all this recycling, I would be met with hostile stares.
Decades of recycling propaganda will not be easy to erase.
I agree, I think glass is relatively economical to recycle.
It really depends a lot on what you intend to recycle things into. Rubber and plastics are a decent filler for some construction materials like asphalt and concrete.
The state of California charges me 5 cents to drink out of a soda can.
I want (and get) that money back.
Fortunately for me, there’s a can/bottle redemption kiosk not far from where I live.
Here in the Bay Area (CA), we have a MONSTER recycling bin, a MONSTER yard waste bin, and an ITTY BITTY garbage can. The garbage can mostly gets the cat and dog poops, meat scraps, fireplace and BBQ ashes, burned out light bulbs and not much else. They take so much mixed stuff in the recycle bin that it is now our defacto garbage can. It’s actually pretty funny how it’s turned out.
There are three separate trucks that pick up the three different bins. In the good old days, there was one truck to pick up everything. All that extra diesel burned can’t be very good for the environment.
Here in the Bay Area (CA), we have a MONSTER recycling bin, a MONSTER yard waste bin, and an ITTY BITTY garbage can. The garbage can mostly gets the cat and dog poops, meat scraps, fireplace and BBQ ashes, burned out light bulbs and not much else. They take so much mixed stuff in the recycle bin that it is now our defacto garbage can. It’s actually pretty funny how it’s turned out.
There are three separate trucks that pick up the three different bins. In the good old days, there was one truck to pick up everything. All that extra diesel burned can’t be very good for the environment.
Half of the stuff I put in my recycling bin is pulled back out and left in my yard by the jackasses that are paid to pick it up.
Cost more. For every kilowatt of power from wind energy you need backup sources of production when the wind ceases. You cannot reduce the capacity of normal power plants.
Bloomberg came to NYC as its Mayor, 2002 Promptly Stated that Bloomberg did a study where Recyling with its energy and cost is a waste of time... then the Green Mafia gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse..
I’ve refused to recycle from the beginning. The dirty little secret is that most recyclables end up in the dump anyway has been known by anyone who wanted to dig since they started it, not to mention the tons of greenhouse gases created picking it up. Recycling was from the beginning mere pandering to the greenies for political capital.
A great friend of mine is a retired heavyweight from the environmental department of a major utility. He told me from day one of the recycling craze: “When they start paying you for your trash, then you will know that recycling is a worthwhile enterprise; otherwise, it is nothing but a feel good endeavour designed to appease the greenies.”
The company I work for did the same thing, and then gave us these little bitty green cans for the “trash I make.” So I stuck a Command hook on the side of the desk, hang plastic bags, and throw it all in the regular trash.
The Swedes are late. Al Gore has always been full of crap.
I think that if you believe all the CO2/GHG stuff, you would want to bury as much paper as possible. Paper is mostly carbon, and all that carbon was extracted from the atmosphere by the mostly farmed trees that it was made from. Same with plastic - putting the oil it was made from back in the ground.
In WWII, scrap metal drives were a net loss in economic terms, but it allowed the people to become personally involved in the war effort, and for that reason it was encouraged. I think modern recycling is mostly about the same thing - giving people a stake in green politics by forcing them to perform this daily ritual. A masterful example of brainwashing.
That said, I save ALL of my aluminium and when I have enough, I take it in a sell it. That’s called “beer money”.
It all was based on the fact that recycling aluminum cans was actually a good idea, but the model doesn't fit any other commodity very well, most of them not at all. Tons and tons of "recycled" newspaper end up in landfills every year because there is minimal market for the substance.
There are dozens of stories about how recyling has failed or does not work, but right now recyled paper - for newsprint is 126.00 a ton higher (167 vs 41.00)than in the summer of 2009. So if you kept all the newsprint and cardborad boxes for your neighbors, or your city during 2009 you would have made more money than any stock tip. Aluminim cans still fetch 50 cents a pound that aluminum goes into some very important products made in America...like cars.
I doubt it. At least we know that the old-fashioned windmills were worth producing, or it wouldn’t have been done. There wasn’t a surplus of energy to waste . . .IMHO windmills might cost more money per installed kw than fossil fuel-ed or nuclear power plants. But I don’t know that the energy budget for a windmill would be negative. Unless you don’t have a good use for the power when and as it becomes available - as would be the case if you tried to use it for air conditioning, for example.
Very good point. In my neck of the woods (Kansas), the utilities are required to have a ‘baseline’ of reliable power available, which equals or exceeds their peak demand.
And, as you might suspect, the Kansas wind has been eyed by the wind warriors.
So we are getting lots of wind farms, and higher power bills.
Last year our local government revealed the fact that they only recycle about 40% of the mass they collect with the recycling trucks.
The other 60% they load back into trucks and haul back across the county to the landfill.
So, not only do they collect more than twice as much as they actually recycle, they more than double the cost of collecting and disposing of the 60% that ends up in the landfill.
Six months after the truth of their flawed recycling program became known they applied for an increase in fees to cover the increased costs of running the program.
To this day they are still collecting tons and tons of recyclables they haul over to the county landfill.
Exactly! That was a great show they did on the subject. But the facts don’t matter to true believers. We had an article in our newspaper recently bemoaning the fact that our city isn’t recycling like other cities. Morons.
bfl
Several years ago, a retired doctor who had worked in the scientific field during his career, told me that there is a fact in usage of materials called “a tiring of materials”. In other words, there is a wearing down of components in machinery from constant usage over a period of years that results in all sorts of accidents and mishaps.
It would seem to me that using metals, or glass, or any material over and over and over would finally result in a weaker and more inferior product. (I look for those recycled plastic bags to finally get so weak after repeated recycling that they’d just get to where they were more holes than bags, and it’s no comfort to think that the jet engine on the plane you’re riding is made from recycled soda can tabs that have been recycled time and again for years.)
This isn't exactly true, the glass companies do benefit from recycling, but the environment and the tax payer do not.
It's the total cost and energy that's twice as much using recycled vs raw. It's just the government spends the money & energy instead of the glass company.
It's like if the government sent a limo to drive you to work everyday, yeah sure you'd save a lot in gas money but obviously the environment and taxpayer get screwed over.
Actually recycling glass is silly on its face, because what is glass? Glass is essentially cooked sand.
Sand, the 2nd most common stuff on earth. Only a brain dead Liberal would find recycling sand reasonable.
When I found out that every county I have lived in ran its recycling program at a net loss I do not bother. I haul a lot of stuff to the incinerator from my rentals and pay thru the nose to do so. The scrap metal does go to the recycle place in exchange for cash. If they won’t give you money for it it is not worth doing. Now usable furniture I put out to the curb and it seems to vanish quite quickly.
***I just figured glass would be easy to re-melt, and re-use!***
40 years ago, when the recycle movement began, some cities encouraged separating colored and clear glass for recycling. Lots of people did it and felt good.
Then it was found the city was picking up the separated glass and taking it TO THE DUMP! But it made people feel so good!
Twenty years ago one of my liberal college geography teachers did a study on recycling. His conclusion: recycling was a waste of time and money.
With metals, once you melt it down, its the same as new, but in some materials the impurities accumulate. Recycled Aluminium for example is never used in aircraft.
Recycled plastics are never made into anything as useful as the source, usually its blocks of hardened crud that can’t even support its own weight, and is used for decks that requires a wood deck underneath for all its support.
And paper, is also always an inferior product, the fibers get broken and shorter fibers make for weaker paper.
It isn’t mentioned here but cardboard boxes are the one form of paper recycling that is not a total waste, you can tell because bundles of scrap cardboard are worth buying to make new products from. Just a couple bucks per ton.
What a great story....
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