Most recycling is garbage: why the push to recycle more is a waste and does nothing for the environment

[Axulus]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals. Everything else is a big waste of time and money. The push by cities to recycle more wastes money and has no positive impact on the environment.

Affluent leftists like to push it however because it makes them feel virtuous and less guilty about their massive carbon footprints. Like a religious ritual that they want to force on everyone else.

 

[lpetrich]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals. Everything else is a big waste of time and money. The push by cities to recycle more wastes money and has no positive impact on the environment.

Linking to some comments. Axulus, is that all you can do?

Is Recycling Worth the Effort? - Scientific American

The EPA suggests that recycling in the U.S. reduces the same amount of greenhouse gas pollution as taking more than 38 million cars off the road.

The sound of recycling may prove music to the ears of future generations.

Do the Benefits of Recycling Outweigh the Costs?

But in 2002, New York City, an early municipal recycling pioneer, found that its much-lauded recycling program was losing money, so it eliminated glass and plastic recycling. According to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the benefits of recycling plastic and glass were outweighed by the price -- recycling cost twice as much as disposal. Meanwhile, low demand for the materials meant that much of it was ending up in landfills anyway, despite best intentions.

...

But in the meantime, New York City closed its last landfill, and private out-of-state landfills raised prices due to the increased workload of hauling away and disposing of New York’s trash.

As a result, the benefits of recycling glass and plastic increased and glass and plastic recycling became economically viable for the city again. New York reinstated the recycling program accordingly, with a more efficient system and with more reputable service providers than it had used previously.

So glass and plastic are not as economically recyclable as metals are.

Affluent leftists like to push it however because it makes them feel virtuous and less guilty about their massive carbon footprints. Like a religious ritual that they want to force on everyone else.

Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. But if they reduced their carbon footprints drastically, that would make them disgusting filthy Luddites, right? And being "affluent leftists" makes them class traitors, right?

Also, if they bought lots of solar panels for their roofs and used them to charge electric cars, that would make them disgusting filthy spurners of the only dignified way to get energy, right? That way being fossil fuels, of course.

 

[untermensche]

Capitalism ultimately pollutes everything.

We can either have capitalism or a future. We can't have both.

 

[lpetrich]

Capitalism ultimately pollutes everything.

We can either have capitalism or a future. We can't have both.

I don't consider capitalism an absolute evil, though I certainly don't consider it an absolute good. I must say that I like it when someone makes me seem like a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society.

 

[Bronzeage]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals. Everything else is a big waste of time and money. The push by cities to recycle more wastes money and has no positive impact on the environment.

Affluent leftists like to push it however because it makes them feel virtuous and less guilty about their massive carbon footprints. Like a religious ritual that they want to force on everyone else.

Is it ok if I dump my trash in your yard?

 

[Axulus]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals. Everything else is a big waste of time and money. The push by cities to recycle more wastes money and has no positive impact on the environment.

Affluent leftists like to push it however because it makes them feel virtuous and less guilty about their massive carbon footprints. Like a religious ritual that they want to force on everyone else.

Is it ok if I dump my trash in your yard?

Why would you need to do that when there are landfills? Or are you confusing not recycling with littering?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals.

So a lot of recycling then, is not garbage?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

from Wikipedia:

"The area of increased plastic particles is located within the North Pacific Gyre, one of the five major oceanic gyres."

 

[Axulus]

from Wikipedia:

"The area of increased plastic particles is located within the North Pacific Gyre, one of the five major oceanic gyres."

Another person who is confusing not recycling with littering?

 

[TSwizzle]

Most of the recycle programs are bullshit. I'm sick of them.

 

[Axulus]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals.

So a lot of recycling then, is not garbage?

Plastic, glass, food waste, yard waste, rubber, textile, and leather recycling isn't helpful. So if recycling campaigners just stuck to those three core items mentioned above I would be fine with it. But they aren't happy to stick with just those three, are they?

Once you exclude paper products and metals, the total annual savings in the United States from recycling everything else in municipal trash — plastics, glass, food, yard trimmings, textiles, rubber, leather — is only two-tenths of 1 percent of America’s carbon footprint.

...

In New York City, the net cost of recycling a ton of trash is now $300 more than it would cost to bury the trash instead. That adds up to millions of extra dollars per year — about half the budget of the parks department — that New Yorkers are spending for the privilege of recycling. That money could buy far more valuable benefits, including more significant reductions in greenhouse emissions.

In other words, it is actually a greener policy to stop recycling everything but paper, cardboard and metals and use the money saved to build solar panels, better public transportation, or what have you. Greens are actually harming the environment (compared to the better alternatives with those resources) by supporting their wasteful policies, on top of wasting our time sorting this stuff.

 

[untermensche]

Capitalism ultimately pollutes everything.

We can either have capitalism or a future. We can't have both.

I don't consider capitalism an absolute evil, though I certainly don't consider it an absolute good. I must say that I like it when someone makes me seem like a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society.

In most supporters of capitalism is a core of sadism that dominates.

People like capitalism because it fucks over so many people so regularly.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

Essentially, the only things worth recycling are paper, cardboard, and metals. Everything else is a big waste of time and money. The push by cities to recycle more wastes money and has no positive impact on the environment.

Affluent leftists like to push it however because it makes them feel virtuous and less guilty about their massive carbon footprints. Like a religious ritual that they want to force on everyone else.

Is it ok if I dump my trash in your yard?

Bronzeage, you fuck, you beat me to it! I use this same line on people who say recycling is a waste. But I usually add that I wish to dump my sewage in their yard as well. Lets face it, sewage is expensive to recycle. I can save a lot of money if we just dump it somewhere, like the end of a big pipe in Axulus's living room.

 

[Axulus]

Is it ok if I dump my trash in your yard?

Bronzeage, you fuck, you beat me to it! I use this same line on people who say recycling is a waste. But I usually add that I wish to dump my sewage in their yard as well. Lets face it, sewage is expensive to recycle. I can save a lot of money if we just dump it somewhere, like the end of a big pipe in Axulus's living room.

A religious fundamentalist who can't imagine there are choices other than dumping garbage on someone's property or recycling it. Sounds like you've drunk the kool-aid.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Bronzeage, you fuck, you beat me to it! I use this same line on people who say recycling is a waste. But I usually add that I wish to dump my sewage in their yard as well. Lets face it, sewage is expensive to recycle. I can save a lot of money if we just dump it somewhere, like the end of a big pipe in Axulus's living room.

A religious fundamentalist who can't imagine there are choices other than dumping garbage on someone's property or recycling it. Sounds like you've drunk the kool-aid.

Nice attempt at a diversion.

 

[Axulus]

A religious fundamentalist who can't imagine there are choices other than dumping garbage on someone's property or recycling it. Sounds like you've drunk the kool-aid.

Nice attempt at a diversion.

Arguing with a religious fundamentalist is futile. You can't seriously tell me you are unaware of the existence of landfills and modern incinerators?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Nice attempt at a diversion.

Arguing with a religious fundamentalist is futile. You can't seriously tell me you are unaware of the existence of landfills and modern incinerators?

And you seriously can't tell me you are unaware of the costs of not recycling.

 

[Axulus]

Arguing with a religious fundamentalist is futile. You can't seriously tell me you are unaware of the existence of landfills and modern incinerators?

And you seriously can't tell me you are unaware of the costs of not recycling.

Such as? I posted a whole article that talks about the very thing. Note I've already said I support recycling of paper, cardboard, and metal. I'm talking about all the other crap.

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. Composting facilities around the country have inspired complaints about nauseating odors, swarming rats and defecating sea gulls. After New York City started sending food waste to be composted in Delaware, the unhappy neighbors of the composting plant successfully campaigned to shut it down last year.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html

 

[Keith&Co.]

In most supporters of capitalism is a core of sadism that dominates.

I thought Polemic used to insist this was the basis of not becoming a vegan.

 

[Bronzeage]

Is it ok if I dump my trash in your yard?

Why would you need to do that when there are landfills? Or are you confusing not recycling with littering?

I'll take that as a no. If I was willing to pay to dump my garbage in your yard, what would be a reasonable fee?