See the recycling episode of “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit” or the relevant cracked.com article.
Also, if no one ever recycled, once we ran out of steel or whatever, couldn’t we just send the contents of the landfills through a machine that would extract everything useful from it? The landfill would have a very high concentration of whatever metals and such that we needed.
Short answer?
Besides aluminum?
Yep, pretty much.
Um, but wouldn’t that be recycling? Just much, much less efficient recycling, because of all the non-ferrous waste we would have to process to get at the useful stuff?
Maybe less efficient maybe not. Chomping through a landfill is probably more efficient than having all those trucks going around for centuries picking up people’s cans and stuff, which are often all mixed up anyway.
Obviously, I’m not knowledgeable enough on this subject to give a definitive answer, but that’s my guess.
No cites. I’m waiting for more savvy people to come along and argue among themselves.
Exactly what kind of elemental separating machine is this, and what sort of magic makes it function?
Recycling many materials is not economically positive, either because the raw material is more accessible than recycling from finished product (glass), or because separating desired material from other products is too energy consuming (some highly alloyed metals). This doesn’t necessarily mean recycling isn’t a good idea from other standpoints like reducing the volume of solid waste, eliminating environmental hazards (plastic), or processing potentially toxic materials (heavy metal and nuclear waste), but it does add to the total produce lifecycle cost. There are certainly many materials that are both much more easily recovered by recycling and which have finite known reserves, such as copper and titanium. These materials are not only unquestionably profitable to recycle but because of the limited natural reserves that exist it is necessary to recycle them. Recycli
So no, recycling is not “hogwash” in general, although certain types of recycling may not be profitable.
Stranger
Most people on these boards really appreciate a link to an article if it is mentioned in the post. It only takes a few moments and earns you good Doper points. Here is the cracked.com article mentioned in the OP.
As far as recycling goes, how are you sure that machine is going to be invented before we run out of steel? And why wait until we run out of steel to start recycling it? Seems to me it is much easier to presort the steel/aluminum/etc and recycle it now rather than waiting for a crisis. Otherwise it just seems that you are arguing that it is the next generation’s problem to deal with, which seems pretty shortsighted to me.
I agree that somethings are better left unrecycled. Paper doesn’t bother me quite so much because it is from a renewable resource, but I still recycle it and usually buy recycled paper unless quality is a concern. It’s not something I’ve really done much research on because, whether I want to or not, my city requires that I separate all of my garbage, and it takes so little time and effort that I really don’t mind complying.
The case for how much recycling does or does not save depends on the material. For some materials, like aluminum, it is pretty much a no-brainer as it is much less energy-intensive to make aluminum from recycled aluminum as from the raw ore. For other materials, it is more complicated. Here is one discussion although note that her statement about the manufacture of styrofoam using materials that destroy the ozone layer (CFCs) is out-of-date…
From what I understand, a lot of the feasibility of recycling changes depending on the economic situation. There are thousands of tons of cardboard sitting in warehouses because the economic downturn has severely diminished China’s need for high quality American cardboard that is traditionally recycled into packaging materials. In as much as it costs a lot of energy to ship cardboard to China, it used to be economically feasible. It is also more reasonable for west coast American cities to recycle cardboard due to easy access to shipping ports.
I know that the price of used newspapers has fluctuated dramatically. If demand is high, it makes sense to recycle it so long as the environmental damage is less than using raw trees. One also has to factor in the landfill costs, obviously.
Now, I’m also under the impression that glass has never really been cost effective to recycle. It’s heavy, and costs a lot to transport. It’s not as pure as sand so it can’t be easily made into the perfect glass that Americans demand. I’m still all for just dumping it in the ocean because it’s mostly just silicon dioxide which is sand and nearly completely inert.
That P&T epi was aired in 2004, and likely the research came from 2003. Even then, P&T agreed aluminum was worthwhile. Modern tech has made several others much more cost effective, and it will improve more as more communities get into it.
I think there’s also a meta-level reason that recycling is good, in that the more people who participate in recycling programs, even if those programs accomplish nothing in and of themselves, the more that shows that people are willing to do things for the environment, which gives more incentive for further development and research.
It’s a kind of voting-with-your-bottles.
Answers here may not apply the world over - in the UK, for example, landfill space is in short supply and therefore expensive, population densities are higher than the USA and and haulage distances are typically shorter - so other materials can be economically recycled - glass, for example - particularly as people are accustomed to separating it out themselves, before disposal.
But why would “do[ing] things for the environment” be deemed a good in itself, especially when in the first instance what is really meant is “[not really] do[ing] [any]thing [particularly useful] for the environment?”
Your post touches on the essentially feel-good, verging on self-righteous aspect of much of the pointless and indeed often counter-productive recycling sound and fury. The bottom line, to simplify, is that other than metal, most substances that are found in product X cannot be reconstituted to form a duplicate X – they can, at best, be shredded and used in some lower-down-the-food-chain product. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which just have to do with materials science (paper pulp threads get shorter and shorter when you re-pulp them, so your newspaper’s most likely second life is as one of those mushy cardboard school cafeteria trays, not a fine ream of stationery). And the stuff that can be usefully recycled, already was being recycled.
What you did there, Huerta88, was pretty close to quote-mining - MaxTheVool actually answered the question you asked in response, in the part of his post that you snipped off (after the comma that ends your quoted section).
Another reason why going through the process of recycling might be helpful is that it (hopefully) proves to companies that a consistent supply of resources is available. Few, if any, companies will be willing to risk money if they don’t know that people will supply them recyclables. After a few years it becomes easier to justify from a business perspective.
N.B. if I did not make this clear I was not criticizing or distorting his quoted point, taken as a whole, but playing a tangent off that I thought logically followed the conclusion he could have reached, but instead went another way. I know he didn’t say just do something, but rather just do something [because it might have a non-zero corollary benefit]. My questioning was of the broader “just do something” ethos that (IMHO) is a significant problem with a lot of environmental solutions (or for that matter, with the identification of a lot of dubious “problems”).
OK, fair enough.
I disagree with your position that all that is usefully possible is already being done though - I’m pretty sure there is more waste that can be economically and usefully recycled (at least, as I say, there is here in the UK, where the population concentration and landfill cost make a difference to the numbers).
The domestic waste stream is already well on its way - the area with lots of room for improvement is public waste receptacles - there are still lots of simple public litter bins here, into which all materials are thrown without sorting. Not that it will be easy to educate everyone disposing of packaging on the street to place it in the right kind of bin - because some of them are morons
We throw away a lot of stuff, a LOT of stuff. You don’t lose a tremendous amount of efficiency by sending the garbage trucks around for recycling, as long as each truck winds up near 100% full at the end of its run.
If you don’t think that running a full recycling program is worthwhile, it would at least be a good idea to have separate aluminum, plastic, steel, glass, etc. dump sites. That way the eventual “mining” of landfills would be efficient instead of wasteful. It would also preserve space in “general” landfills that need special treatment in order to prevent polluting the environment.
Depends on what you call recycling, I suppose.
Sure, scrap aluminum is worthwhile to recycle. Scrap steel maybe not so much, but at least possibly.
But, you know, I recycle a lot of vegetable waste from my kitchen into my compost heap out back to make more vegetables. That certainly benefits ME by making my garden grow better, which means I eat better.
I reuse paper grocery bags until they fall apart (then they also go in the compost heap), so that’s me recycling again. Probably not a huge impact, but not a negative, either.
If I’m getting rid of household goods that are still in good condition I don’t throw them out, I donate them to charity. That’s recycling, too. (And in bad times I go to thrift stores and boy am I glad other people also donate stuff they don’t want!)
Now, I’m not a fanatic about this - you are NEVER going to eliminate ALL waste - but recycling is more than just dumping stuff into a bin. It’s also an attitude of waste not, want not. That’s why it’s also expressed as “reduce, reuse, recycle” because it’s not just about turning old newspapers into new newspapers. As has been pointed out, the costs of materials, distances involved in moving it around, human labor, and other factors affect what does and doesn’t make sense. There are also other social goods besides profit - recycling opportunities can lead to less litter as people either throw less stuff away, or the downtrodden scavenge the litter for profit. Sorry, but yes, it can be a little complicated.
But, the point that municipal recycling programs can and do lose money is also valid. Nobody is getting rich off recycling, that’s for sure.
Nobody bothers to
[quote the Master]
(Is recycling worth it? - The Straight Dope) anymore?
We had this discussion last year here.