Thu 13 Jul 2006
5 Simple Things to Save the World
Posted by Mark under General
[4] Comments
It can be overwhelming to want to save the world. I know… I’ve been there.
Not everyone has the time, energy, or especially the money to get onboard the Renewable Energy Train. Even if you are not yet able to install solar in your home/business or get that cool diesel car so you can have French-Fry smellin’ exhaust, there are little things that you can do every day. I made a short list, and provided a link to a much longer and more thorough list for those who want to do a little more.
Five Simple Things You Can Do to Help Save the World
July 17th, 2006 at 12:27 am
So what do you know about the argument that recycling has just as much, if not more, negative environmental impact as not recycling? For instance, it requires extra trucks, which require fossil fuels, which require plants to process, and then the trucks also create pollution, not to mention parts that need to be made and eventually disposed of. And then there are the plants that actually do the recycling which also require all the same stuff as the trucks, and the process also creates pollution, et al. So while we are saving space in landfills and perhaps (ideally, but not realistically) reducing the amount of new plastic, metal and glass that get’s created we are adding other stuff to landfills and polluting the air.
Basically, the point that was made to me was that it doesn’t actually make a difference. Which blew my mind. My own personal jury is still out on that, but I’m curious what you think.
July 17th, 2006 at 12:33 am
While I am no expert on the details of recycling, I think I can answer your question in part. First of all, different things are more or less profitable to recycle. That’s the reason that not all cities recycle plastic. It may very well be that if a city is not anywhere near a plastics factory it’s not worth it to recycle plastic (or whatever item you have where there is no nearby facility.) That’s something that I think one would have to look at in the specific case.
Apparently, most recycling programs are paid for by the recycling of aluminum, the profit from aluminum covers for the lack of profit of recycling the other materials. But in the abstract, and with aluminum cans especially, it’s easy to see why recycling is worth it. To make a new can, someone has to dig a hole, pull out aluminum ore, ship the ore (mostly waste, with a small amount of aluminum) to the refinery, pull the aluminum out, get rid of the leftover slag and waste products, put the fresh aluminum into the big melter to create aluminum sheet, and then ship the aluminum sheet to the can manufacturer. With recycling you can skip all the first steps and just go right to: buy recycled aluminum from the city, and throw it in the melter.
Since the specifics of some parts of recycling are hard to know for your city, when making broad recommendations recycling experts recommend that you try to buy your products with no new packaging (bulk items etc), buy containers with minimal or already recycled packaging, or look for products that come in aluminum, glass and steel containers since they are the easiest and most practical to recycle.
I think the argument that recycling doesn’t actually make a difference is primarily made by people who don’t want to recycle in the first place, or by people who have lost all hope and think it’s too late to make a difference. I’m not those people.
I hope that helps, let me know if I didn’t answer anything.
July 17th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Mark, you said “with recycling you can skip all the first steps” and while that may be true, those first steps are replaced by other first steps in the form of picking up the recycling in trucks, delivering them to recycling centers, having the stuff seperated and/or crushed et al, cleaning it all up (which is like refining the raw aluminum, no?), and then comes the actual recycling process which, to use your case of aluminum, requires some serious machinery to melt it down and mix it up with new stuff, etc.
Based on that, the argument that it doesn’t make much difference still stands, don’t you think? I’m not the voice of that argument, but it makes enough sense to me that I no longer argue for or against recycling (despite setting up a recycle bag at work so I can take all the plastic water/gatorade bottles we consume on set to be recycled).
It’s truly a conundrum to me.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:46 am
While there is certainly energy required for the pick up, sorting and crushing of cans, I assume that the melting and refining machinery is the same as with the raw ore. I have no inside knowledge of course, but after seeing mining in operation I can’t believe that recycling cans could use anywhere near as much energy as mining, and besides, if it did, no one would be in the recycling business. Even the most well-meaning business people still have to make a living. The fact that there is a recycling industry at all means that it is cheaper on the whole than making the containers from scratch.