Throwing apple cores out the window: littering?

[hudley]

*Originally posted by Telemark *
**Just as an aside, Edward Abbey used to throw his beer cans out of his car. He said that once you built a road, trashing a place, any garbage you throw out the window is negligable.

Not that I subscribe to this logic, but I always found it strangely appealing. **

Dang it Telemark! I wanted to point out the Abbey philosophy.

I guess it all depends on your version of what litter is. If you are a true environmentalist who views pavement as garbage, then putting a beer can next to it doesnt matter. If you view litter as an encroachment on your civilized landscape, then an apple core is litter too.

Back in my rabid environmental days I had a professor who zinged me good. He was giving an oral test, he asked a question and we had to write down our answer, which was our opinions on certain issues. He asked that if you are a park manager ( i studied Parks and Recreation) and you came along some graffiti written on a cliff face, would you remove it and why. Of course I answered yes because to leave it would harm the experience of visitors to the park. The next question was “Would you do the same if the graffiti was 2,000 years old?” Made me think…

I also used to be heavily into recycling, particularly cans. Now when the Green nuts chastize me for not doing so, I point out to them that my view of recycling is a much longer term view than theirs. Their program involves immediate reuse of aluminum, which uses a lot of electicity and is not cost efficient. Aluminum is found in great abundance and is simple to mine. My version of recycling involves storing my aluminum in a known location (landfill) until the time when alumininum is no longer easy to obtain. Then we can go and get the aluminum and re-use it when it is more efficient than mining it.

[Hari_Seldon]

*Originally posted by hudley *
**

I also used to be heavily into recycling, particularly cans. Now when the Green nuts chastize me for not doing so, I point out to them that my view of recycling is a much longer term view than theirs. Their program involves immediate reuse of aluminum, which uses a lot of electicity and is not cost efficient. Aluminum is found in great abundance and is simple to mine. My version of recycling involves storing my aluminum in a known location (landfill) until the time when alumininum is no longer easy to obtain. Then we can go and get the aluminum and re-use it when it is more efficient than mining it. **

Aluminum ore is plentiful. But it requires a humongous amount of electricity to refine, much more than recylcing refined aluminum does, I’ll bet. So recycling is surely better.