# Why recycle? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 19, 2009, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879 "2009-12-19T18:51:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/21 "2009-12-23T15:01:13Z")
Where I live people contract with private companies to pick up their trash. There is no recycling. So, we save our glass/cans and haul them every so often to a collection site. However, the bins there are typically overflowing and the area is not kept up at all. Sucks. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/22 "2009-12-23T17:44:40Z")
> [@groman](#): > > And where, pray-tell, do these “resources” like glass, carbon, aluminum go when we “use them up”? You wouldn’t rather reuse what we have now, rather than toss it into landfills and dig it up in a few decades, centuries, what have you? I nominate your descendents to be Head Refuse Scavengers, then. > [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Ummm it WILL turn into something cool. I seed it in deep water (off a wharf AND when kayaking) and the tides carry it away. Also my town’s harbor is not used for swimming. By “might” I meant something along the lines of, “unless it gets carried back to shore early and some poor asshole steps on it while it’s still sharp.” Perhaps you’re right, and no one ever goes diving in your harbor and no one goes walking along the shore and the glass has no possibilty of working its way anywhere that people will be until it’s already worn down. Having lived in Milwaukee all my life, and more than once having narrowly avoided impaling some bit of myself on a piece of broken glass that some moron probably chucked into the lake for the same reasons as you, albeit probably in a higher-traffic area, I’m a little sensitive about the subject. ---
**Author:** ![groman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@groman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groman)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/23 "2009-12-23T20:56:58Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > You wouldn’t rather reuse what we have now, rather than toss it into landfills and dig it up in a few decades, centuries, what have you? I nominate your descendents to be Head Refuse Scavengers, then. I would much rather reuse – but definitely not because I’m afraid we’re going to use up all the resources. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/24 "2009-12-23T21:05:44Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Cite please? > > Every time there is a thread on recycling, someone shows up to post this claim. I have in fact heard this claim from people living on different continents, and it seems unlikely that this kind of insanity (specifically providing receptacles for recycling (they’re not free you know) and then dumping it all) is an intercontinental issue. Given that it is an extremely convenient thing to believe if you don’t want to recycle, I strongly suspect it of being an urban legend. [These](http://www.recycleforkirklees.org.uk/greenBinsScheme.html) are provided where I live. Black bins are provided for everything else and they’re collected on different days. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/25 "2009-12-24T05:47:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Having lived in Milwaukee all my life, and more than once having narrowly avoided impaling some bit of myself on a piece of broken glass that some moron probably chucked into the lake for the same reasons as you, albeit probably in a higher-traffic area, I’m a little sensitive about the subject. ShotFromGuns…there’s a difference between salt and freshwater…Saltwater turns glass into beachglass faster then freshwater. I also drop it in deep water/ as far away from the shore as possible…Plus where you live its more likely that the glass you stepped on was just randomly smashed there from the shore. ---
**Author:** ![CTburns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@CTburns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CTburns)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/26 "2009-12-24T06:08:31Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > With many recycled products (and I’ll admit I’m not really sure about paper and glass), it’s cheaper and uses less energy to use recycled materials than raw materials. > > With stuff like glass (which is made out of sand, and there’s no sand shortage), the advantage is keeping it out of landfills. If you happen to live in a big city where the trash has to be trucked to landfills hundreds of miles distant versus local recycling facilities, there is also an energy saving there. Glass bottles cost much more to ship to market than plastic, given their significant weight difference. The load is heavier so it uses more fuel to bring it to market and to the recycling center. Plastic is beneficial as far as it’s weight savings, but from what I understand we recycle jast a fraction of recyclable plastics, and that impacts our landfills and enviornment. Have you heard of “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” an area near Hawaii where all of the plastic in the Pacific ocean is drawn to by prevailing currents. It is supposed to be twice the size of Texas, and a vast wasteland of floating plastic debris and particles. Please recycle whatever you can, for the sake of the enviornment. Rich ---
**Author:** ![CTburns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@CTburns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CTburns)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/27 "2009-12-24T06:15:06Z")
> [@janeslogin](#): > > In our community we have three receptacles provided by Waste Management. The one for garbage and two for recyclables. The Waste Management people then collect them and toss them together into the same truck and take them and dump them all together in the same dump. You might want to complain to WM and your town governance about this practice. Your town could be getting paid for the recyclable wast that it produces. ---
**Author:** ![Hokkaido\_Brit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d26b3c/32.png) [@Hokkaido\_Brit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hokkaido_Brit)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/28 "2009-12-24T14:23:38Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Cite please? > > Every time there is a thread on recycling, someone shows up to post this claim. I have in fact heard this claim from people living on different continents, and it seems unlikely that this kind of insanity (specifically providing receptacles for recycling (they’re not free you know) and then dumping it all) is an intercontinental issue. Given that it is an extremely convenient thing to believe if you don’t want to recycle, I strongly suspect it of being an urban legend. > > (Also note that things being put on the same truck does not mean they’re being mixed. Any sanely designed recycling/trash pickup truck will have different compartments for different things.) In my town in Japan, we have two different pickup days. One day is for burnable rubbish and one is for non-burnable, which is further divided into three pickups a month for plastics and recycle-ables and one day a month for big non-recycle-able stuff. We do not have bins provided, everything must be separated, washed and bagged in bags printed by the city and sold at local supermarkets. The price of the bag is the rubbish tax, and they won’t take anything that isn’t in the right bag. I missed the plastics/recycle day several times due to work and had a lot of garden rubbish so we went to the dump ourselves. Despite having separated glass (by colours) plastic, aluminium, pet bottles, and steel, the man took it off us and chucked it in the same area. They might have come back to deal with it later but I don’t know. Then he told us to go to the actual landfill bit to dump the non burnable stuff and the burnable stuff. There we nearly had some bags of garden rubbish rejected because there was too much soil clinging to the roots (burnable) but they took it and chucked it into landfill A. Then they took the other bags and chucked them in landfill B. So, in our city I have seen with my own eyes that burnable stuff is not burned, and that the landfill stuff is all jumbled up together. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/29 "2009-12-24T21:03:31Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Cite please? > > Every time there is a thread on recycling, someone shows up to post this claim. I have in fact heard this claim from people living on different continents, and it seems unlikely that this kind of insanity (specifically providing receptacles for recycling (they’re not free you know) and then dumping it all) is an intercontinental issue. Given that it is an extremely convenient thing to believe if you don’t want to recycle, I strongly suspect it of being an urban legend. > > (Also note that things being put on the same truck does not mean they’re being mixed. Any sanely designed recycling/trash pickup truck will have different compartments for different things.) It is not a legend-it is simple economics. The trash company is paid to collect recycled materials. So they do. But the worth of the materials is so low that it is cheaper to pay the dumping fee and dump the materials in the landfill. Unless they are prohibited by contract from dumping the materials, they will do so. Simple. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2009, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/30 "2009-12-24T21:50:05Z")
The food waste I recycle into my compost heap results in better vegetables from the garden. Since between 1/4 and 3/4 of our vegees are home grown out back, this is a direct benefit to me. The aluminum and steel cans I haul to the recycler I exchange for money, which is of benefit to me. I have calculated the cost of driving them there vs. what I get, and it is a net profit for me. Usually worth 1-2 tanks of gas for the car. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2009, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/31 "2009-12-27T06:57:13Z")
Recycling often is cost effective to the households that the OP talks about: for example, we don’t have (public) trash pick up in town, so your options are either contract the one guy who serves the town for $4/bag, or pay $1.25 for town bags and bring stuff to the transfer station yourself. The recycling center takes paper, cardboard, cans, bottles etc and you don’t have to pay anything for that - they don’t go into town bags, if that was unclear. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/32 "2009-12-30T19:27:02Z")
> [@groman](#): > > I would much rather reuse – but definitely not because I’m afraid we’re going to use up all the resources. I wouldn’t use the word “afraid.” It’s a simple fact that the resources on one planet are, for all intents and purposes, **finite**. It’s certainly not the \*\*only \*\*reason to recycle, and it might be planning in the extreme long-term, but it’s a very, very valid reason to recycle. (In fact, when you come down to it, \*\*all \*\*reasons for recycling ultimately boil down to the finiteness of the planet: if we had infinite resources and infinite space to store discarded items, there would be very few things we’d recycle at all, because most of them are easier to make from raw materials than to process from something that’s been previously used.) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/33 "2009-12-30T22:06:52Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Yes…its a good way for cities and towns to make money. A lot of recyclers are selling their stuff to China which apparently has a HUGE appetite for recycleables. > It’s basicly…one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. China is taking our trash, and reusing it…heck what’s not to like about that? What kind of trash do you mean? I know China is recylcling certain kind of plastics into new fibers to make for example fleece sweaters and pullovers. I haven’t heard of other kind of trash being shipped there. > [@](#): > > What I do with glass, is smash it in the harbor. Then it becomes beachglass. If you are serious, please stop immediatly. Glass shards are a danger to beach goers and marine live, and glass is valuable for recycling. (Do you not have a deposit system on your bottles, to bring them back, wash and re-use them?) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/34 "2009-12-30T22:12:13Z")
> [@groman](#): > > I never got the point of recycling paper. As far as I know, most paper is made from trees grown for the purpose of becoming paper. This takes carbon out of the atmosphere and puts it into paper. Since I’m guessing tossing paper into a land fill prevents the carbon from reaching the atmosphere AND requires new trees to be grown. Can the energy savings of making new paper out of used paper really outweigh sequestering that much carbon in a landfill? I mean certainly some of it will leak out as the landfill decomposes, but it’s probably much slower than the rate at which we grow new trees for paper, right? First, you have to be sure that the paper you throw away instead of recycling is put into a landfill and not burned. Second, every calculation by enviormental organisations stresses that recycled paper uses less water and less energy than paper made from fresh wood. Third, better than chopping down full-grown trees only to produce paper and sequester the carbon is to let the trees live, or use the wood for something more substantial, like building purpoises - chopping down Rainforests in Northern US of redwoods to make paper hankies for Japan is a huge waste. Fourth, you assume that each new paper that is produced also a tree is planted to compensate. This is sadly not the case, a lot of trees cut down are not in plantations, and are not replanted. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/35 "2009-12-30T22:19:05Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#): > > Ummm it WILL turn into something cool. I seed it in deep water (off a wharf AND when kayaking) and the tides carry it away. Also my town’s harbor is not used for swimming. There’s still marine life that gets harmed. > [@](#): > > The glass is also basically heated sand. The problem is first the sharp shards, that can cut, not the material. > [@](#): > > It’s a good thing to do, since it creates a cottage industry. (beachglass jewelry is VERY popular around here) It does not harm the environment the way plastic wrappers or plastic bottles do… But it harms it another way. If you do like beachglass so much, make your own at home. Take a PVC pipe, fill with glass shards, some sand and ocean water, build a small wooden stand to hold the pipe, close both ends and connect to a tiny motor, like from an old turntable. Run in the basement for a few days/ weeks, and you have your own beachglass. (You can also use this to polish ordinary stones into shiny pretty looking ones. You start with rough sand and progress to finer-grade over the weeks.) ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2009, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/36 "2009-12-30T22:27:01Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > … if we had infinite resources and infinite space to store discarded items, there would be very few things we’d recycle at all, because most of them are easier to make from raw materials than to process from something that’s been previously used.) You mean infinite raw resources, or also infinite energy? To take aluminium as first example, melting it from raw bauxite takes tons of red earth and uses a huge amount of energy; melting already existing aluminium down to make new uses a fraction of that energy. And composting veggies (waste on farms) correctly to get new earth (our city recycling centers sell now flower earth they make from all the veggies and cut grass collected in our brown bio-trashcans) is more energy-efficient and makes more sense than making fertilizer from oil. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/37 "2010-01-04T17:51:53Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > You mean infinite raw resources, or also infinite energy? Both. > [@](#): > > To take aluminium as first example, melting it from raw bauxite takes tons of red earth and uses a huge amount of energy; melting already existing aluminium down to make new uses a fraction of that energy. Yup, that’s why I said “most,” not “all.” There are some things that are cheaper and safer to recycle than to make new; that doesn’t apply to a lot of other materials, however. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/38 "2010-01-04T18:40:21Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > Cite please? > > Every time there is a thread on recycling, someone shows up to post this claim. I have in fact heard this claim from people living on different continents, and it seems unlikely that this kind of insanity (specifically providing receptacles for recycling (they’re not free you know) and then dumping it all) is an intercontinental issue. Given that it is an extremely convenient thing to believe if you don’t want to recycle, I strongly suspect it of being an urban legend. > > (Also note that things being put on the same truck does not mean they’re being mixed. Any sanely designed recycling/trash pickup truck will have different compartments for different things.) These guys are tracking it: [http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/index.php?id=1](http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/index.php?id=1) I read a news story a few months ago about how a large percentage of recycling in a city (I want to say Washington DC) ended up in the landfill, but my google-fu has failed me. I think the controversy was that it was private haulers making an economic decision when recycling prices were low. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2010, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879/39 "2010-01-06T13:08:33Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > These guys are tracking it: > > [http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/index.php?id=1](http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/index.php?id=1) > > I read a news story a few months ago about how a large percentage of recycling in a city (I want to say Washington DC) ended up in the landfill, but my google-fu has failed me. I think the controversy was that it was private haulers making an economic decision when recycling prices were low. About a year ago there were a series of news stories on recycling. The conclusion is that when the Chinese market for recycled goods dried up so did the Western recycling market. In a few places it still made economic sense to recycle simply because of the high cost of dumping the material in a landfill, but the cost for the recycled material did not cover the cost of collecting it. here is a cite from the N.Y. Times, free registration may be reqquired: > **[China’s Big Recycling Market Is Sagging (Published 2009)](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/business/worldbusiness/12recycle.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=cost%20of%20recycling&st=cse)** > > China’s export downturn means a lesser need for recycled waste from the U.S., and trash is piling up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-recycle/521879.md?page=1)