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Some Inconvenient Truths About Recycling
Investor's Business daily ^ | 6-01-2018 | Editorial

Posted on 06/03/2018 10:58:37 AM PDT by Malone LaVeigh

Environment: It has become an article of faith in the U.S. that recycling is a good thing. But evidence is piling up that recycling is a waste of time and money, and a bit of a fraud.

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: environment; globalwarming; recycling
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To: Malone LaVeigh
it costs far more to recycle trash than to bury it

While not perfect, price is the most honest measure of greenness available. In a free market, price tracks closely to the total energy consumption involved. If something costs you more money, it is almost certainly less green.

But recycling is good for one thing: practice for wartime shortages. Tell libtards they need to sort their trash to support America's military. Suddenly they will notice the higher price.

21 posted on 06/03/2018 12:16:06 PM PDT by Reeses (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a government pat down.)
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To: 2banana

>>I remember talking to my trash guy on recycling. They lose money on all recycling except aluminum cans<<

More likely, you, not the trash guy, lose money on all recycling except aluminum cans.

If your trash guy works for the local government, the loss is made up by raising your taxes somewhere.

If he works for a private company, the company makes up for the loss by raising his fees, and that loss comes out of either your local government’s pocket (and yours via higher taxes) or out of your pocket directly if you pay for garbage pickup.


22 posted on 06/03/2018 12:16:44 PM PDT by Norseman (Defund the Left....completely!)
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To: mythenjoseph

Your town was making a profit on the backs of your, and your neighbors’, labor. And you were probably each working for pennies an hour to boot.

Recycling home garbage, as presently structured, is a scam that is only made possible by the need to virtue signal.


23 posted on 06/03/2018 12:20:14 PM PDT by Norseman (Defund the Left....completely!)
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To: beaversmom

>>I read an article about this many years ago. But I still continue to recycle. It’s an addiction. I really should stop.<<

Our township has two bins. One is for garbage, for which they charge by the bag deposited, and the other is for recyclables which is free.

It’s a good system but needs constant policing or people will toss their garbage in the recycle bin.

The modest cost of tossing garbage is an inducement to throw non-garbage items in a separate garbage can, but without the need to sort, flatten, etc., so there’s effectively no additional labor involved.

I’m pretty sure all the garbage company does is sort out the aluminum cans and dump the rest right now, given the Chinese situation, but I could be wrong.


24 posted on 06/03/2018 12:28:58 PM PDT by Norseman (Defund the Left....completely!)
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To: Reeses

Wartime shortages for packaging materials that existed at the time. For a different for of warfare fought with completely different weapon systems.


25 posted on 06/03/2018 12:35:15 PM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (There should be a whole lot more going on than throwing bleach, said one woman.)
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To: Reeses

>>While not perfect, price is the most honest measure of greenness available. In a free market, price tracks closely to the total energy consumption involved.<<

Bingo! We have a winner, folks!

Now if only they’d teach that in second grade instead of concentrating on gender reassignment and global warming.

As an assignment for those same second graders, they could look up the cost of electricity in countries that use the most renewable energy per capita versus the cost in countries that use the least per capita. That way, we’d be raising kids that wanted to steer clear of the renewable energy boondoggle as well.


26 posted on 06/03/2018 12:36:33 PM PDT by Norseman (Defund the Left....completely!)
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To: beaversmom

Those are about the only things.

All the rest, 86 it. I have 0 problems with junking regular stuff.


27 posted on 06/03/2018 1:37:31 PM PDT by wally_bert (I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone & West Germany)
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To: Malone LaVeigh

I’ve worked in construction year ago and knew then recycling was a total scam as well as a waste of time. Guys on garbage trucks used to say to me “The sh!t all winds up in the same place!’’


28 posted on 06/03/2018 1:43:07 PM PDT by jmacusa ("Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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To: beaversmom

I never have recycled. We bring our stuff to the dump (transfer station) which now has two guys on hire.


29 posted on 06/03/2018 2:13:41 PM PDT by Chickensoup (Leftists today are speaking as if they plan to commence to commit genocide against conservatives.)
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To: Malone LaVeigh

“The New York Times recently reported that, unknown to most families who spend hours separating garbage into little recycling bins, much of the stuff ends up in a landfill anyway.”

I really don’t see this as a problem as sometime in the near future when we’ve figured out how to REALLY recycle things, old landfills will become a hotter commodity than a gold or diamond mine.


30 posted on 06/03/2018 3:27:50 PM PDT by Shark24
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To: Malone LaVeigh

When I was a kid we took our empty soda bottles back to the store to get money for candy and stuff. We would scour the roadside ditches for soda bottles. No deposit no return plastic bottles and cans ruined it.


31 posted on 06/03/2018 3:36:37 PM PDT by aomagrat (Gun owners who vote for democrats are too stupid to own guns.)
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To: Malone LaVeigh

I avidly try not to buy food or anything in plastic, but its becoming very difficult. I wish I could just buy glass, paper or metal... the mountains of plastic is a trash nightmare.


32 posted on 06/03/2018 4:51:08 PM PDT by Katya
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To: Katya

Plastics burn beautifully in our trash to energy burner.


33 posted on 06/03/2018 4:53:22 PM PDT by Chickensoup (Leftists today are speaking as if they plan to commence to commit genocide against conservatives.)
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To: Malone LaVeigh

We still have a blue bin for recycling and a black bin for everything else, but years ago the town fathers said put whatever you want in whichever bin you want - except the Recycling Authority says don’t put plastic bags in their bins because it clogs their machines, and don’t put pizza boxes in their bins because it gets their machines all greasy, and don’t put old garden hoses in their bins because they get tangled in their machines - so I always put pizza boxes and old garden hoses, and especially plastic bags in the recycling bin.....


34 posted on 06/03/2018 4:55:44 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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To: JennysCool

That was when paper bags in supermarkets were replaced by plastic bags-— to save the trees. Not really replaced, but plastic became the choice. Big hippy movement. Look what happened. Now plastic is the baddie — as it should be.


35 posted on 06/03/2018 5:10:19 PM PDT by Exit148 (OH LORD, Your children need you. (Loose Chnge Club founder) Put yours aside for the next Freepathon!)
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To: Malone LaVeigh

Easy as just most lanfills “Deposit” recycling with the trash. I see them every day going in but no recycling going out.


36 posted on 06/03/2018 6:25:34 PM PDT by keving (We the government)
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To: beaversmom
Thank you for mentioning that!

I remember the Penn & Teller episode, because they laid out the facts.

Penn even admitted that he thought recycling seemed like a good thing.

But they discovered that aside from aluminum cans, "recycling" is a BIG waste of time and money.

37 posted on 06/03/2018 6:45:30 PM PDT by boop ("I said give me the brandy!")
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To: aomagrat
I always thought that deposit bottles, for milk and soda was a good idea.

I always loved drinking from those big, thick bottles.

Nothing like an ice-cold Coke from a deposit bottle.

Much tastier than from a thin plastic one.

I don't know why this isn't done any more.

38 posted on 06/03/2018 6:52:37 PM PDT by boop ("I said give me the brandy!")
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To: Shark24

I was thinking along a similar conclusion. Why not sort out the garbage in advance and dump it in mapped out sectors for future generations. Some day they will have figured out how to transform what is useless to us into materials we lack the technology to make. Future generations would thank us for it.


39 posted on 06/03/2018 7:07:34 PM PDT by jonrick46 (Cultural Marxism is the new cult of the Left.)
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To: beaversmom
I recyle because I think in the long run its good for the country, good for our household (less to go in the garbage) so there's a savings there...

either the recylers get the cardboard, newspaper, tin cans, glass bottles or the garbage man does...

of course I do keep the aluminum cans to get money for them on my own...

we also save brass,copper if its around. I take apart old computers, etc and bring the circuit boards in.

I'm just doing my little part.

40 posted on 06/03/2018 7:11:12 PM PDT by cherry
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