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Recycling


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2015 Oct 7, 11:04pm   2,230 views  6 comments

by curious2   ➕follow (2)   💰tip   ignore  

The national rate of recycling rose during the 1990s to 25 percent, meeting the goal set by an E.P.A. official, J. Winston Porter. He advised state officials that no more than about 35 percent of the nation’s trash was worth recycling, but some ignored him and set goals of 50 percent and higher. Most of those goals were never met and the national rate has been stuck around 34 percent in recent years.

“It makes sense to recycle commercial cardboard and some paper, as well as selected metals and plastics,” he says. “But other materials rarely make sense, including food waste and other compostables. The zero-waste goal makes no sense at all — it’s very expensive with almost no real environmental benefit.”
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Most of these benefits do not come from reducing the need for landfills and incinerators. A modern well-lined landfill in a rural area can have relatively little environmental impact. Decomposing garbage releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but landfill operators have started capturing it and using it to generate electricity. Modern incinerators, while politically unpopular in the United States, release so few pollutants that they’ve been widely accepted in the eco-conscious countries of Northern Europe and Japan for generating clean energy.

Moreover, recycling operations have their own environmental costs, like extra trucks on the road and pollution from recycling operations.
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Then why do so many public officials keep vowing to do more of it? Special-interest politics is one reason — pressure from green groups — but it’s also because recycling intuitively appeals to many voters: It makes people feel virtuous, especially affluent people who feel guilty about their enormous environmental footprint. It is less an ethical activity than a religious ritual, like the ones performed by Catholics to obtain indulgences for their sins.

Religious rituals don’t need any practical justification for the believers who perform them voluntarily. But many recyclers want more than just the freedom to practice their religion. They want to make these rituals mandatory for everyone else, too, with stiff fines for sinners who don’t sort properly."

See also last month's @mmmarvel thread, "Thou shalt not mix recycle and garbage ... or else"

#politics

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2   curious2   2015 Oct 7, 11:14pm  

As I see it, the two major parties have become rival patronage networks dominated by competing counter-factual belief systems: old tyme religion vs newfangled cults. The Republicans insist on bashing everyone's head with a Bible that most of them haven't even read most of, while Democrats conscript everyone into the Cult of Eternal Life Through Infinite Spending (all your past sins and smoking will be washed away, "no more pre-existing conditions," and you will dwell in the house of Obamneycare forever, with "no more lifetime caps"). Recycling is penance in the cult of consumption. Nevermind that these policies and their rationales lack objective foundations in reality: that is the point, a loyalty test, not a defect. Both sides reject evidence-based decisionmaking, because the goal is to divide and rule and thus maximize patronage potential at the expense of the demonized "other" side. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

3   indigenous   2015 Oct 8, 1:30am  

There is no government program necessary for this if it makes sense people do it no need for the additional charge on cans or bottles either. It is bullshit.

BTW, Dan why can't you post a vid that is at the right speed?

5   mell   2022 Nov 2, 1:42pm  

Patrick says

https://notthebee.com/article/do-you-feel-guilty-when-you-forget-to-recycle-something-welp-it-turns-out-only-5-of-all-our-recycled-plastic-actually-gets-recycled-according-to-a-new-report-

Only 5% of plastic actually gets recycled.

Haha of course. Our grandparents were right calling out this bullshit. Grandma 1 leftoids 0
6   Eric Holder   2022 Nov 2, 1:50pm  

Recycling is a good thing: recycling and compost bins are free and HUGE, whereas garbage bins are expensive and small. =))

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