I just learned recycling is just another bull**** lie propagated by government!

[Lucas156]

The kicker is I'm paying monthly for this bull****! I can't say I'm too surprised seeing as the government got it all started. Turns out it costs more in energy and resources to recycle than it saves and we're not running out of landfills. Landfills are even producing clean energy! I'll be writing some letters for sure. The real motto should be "reduce, reuse, don't recycle". If you live in greenwood you're probably getting the same shaft as me.

 

[Jludo]

Ya, Penn and Teller did a great bit on how recycling is a scam.
I like when they point out that if it were at all profitable to recycle, companies would be paying to take your recyclables.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs60OoMxNmY

 

[Shadow8088]

companies DO pay for your recyclables... generally by the pound... but hey, if you're gonna drop it off at the curb, why should they pay you for it?

 

[nascarfantoo]

Recycling is not just about the energy cost, although is very important. It's also about conserving other valuable, natural resources. Not sure where proper balance is although I do recycle plastics, metals, paper and cardboard.

 

[ghuns]

In St Joe Co., we get to pay for the service whether we choose to use it or not.

 

[churchmouse]

We recycle metals from our projects doing HVAC work. They pay dearly for them so it is worth the effort for us to do so.
As to anything else.....go to the dump and watch those who pick out there, anything valuable is scooped up right away. If they (Gov/company's) want our plastics etc they can provide the means to get them. We would separate but I am not paying for the "Service"

 

[jdhaines]

For me it all comes down to convenience for me. It is convenient to have a second large container. On large recyclables like cardboard boxes, milk jugs, etc., it's nice to toss them in the large bin and not have them take up room in the trash. Since I'm paying for it anyway.

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

Some of you guys are real "if it's not black, then it must be white" kinds of guys.

To say that all recycling is a scam is a scam is, at best, poorly thought out.

Some recyclers do pay good money for many kinds of scrap.

How exactly would you define "running out of landfills"? If you mean that there are still plenty of places where we can dig a big hole and fill it up with crap, then sure we have plenty of potential landfills left.

 

[chris46131]

The kicker is I'm paying monthly for this bull****! I can't say I'm too surprised seeing as the government got it all started. Turns out it costs more in energy and resources to recycle than it saves and we're not running out of landfills. Landfills are even producing clean energy! I'll be writing some letters for sure. The real motto should be "reduce, reuse, don't recycle". If you live in greenwood you're probably getting the same shaft as me.

Do you mind sharing some more details? What exactly did you learn and from where?

 

[BogWalker]

I don't know about papers and plastic, but metal is definitely worth peoples' time recycling. Think, when it is originally formed they have to spend the energy mining, refining, and forming the metal. Well when it's recycled you skip mining and most of the refining and go right to melting it down and reforming it. Saves plenty of money, and that's why they're willing to pay good money for scrap metal.

 

[Jludo]

Metals are worth something, but most everything else uses more energy to recycle than it would take to produce new. Thus you are actually wasting resources to turn that water bottle into something new. The only reason companies pick up all that recycling is govt subsidies, aluminum cans are the only household waste worth recycling. Obviously metal waste in any industry is worth scrapping rather than dumping.

 

[IndyDave1776]

There is no blanket answer to the question of the validity of recycling. As previously noted, some things (i.e., metals, paper, cardboard) are profitable enough to merit recyclers paying people to bring them in. Other materials (i.e., plastics) not so much. The rub comes at the point where the green crowd is most concerned with the materials which are not profitable by virtue of their contention that those are the most harmful materials and also by virtue of the fact that the profitable materials are already being addressed by the free market (who in his right mind would throw a bunch of copper in the trash?).

The recycling programs in which you are dragooned into paying regardless of whether or not you use them, or the Illinois style programs in which you are presumed to have a minimum percentage of your trash in the recycle bin and fined if you don't are in principle much like ObamaCare in that you are perceived to have a problem (which may well be imaginary) and the .gov is going to solve it for you by mandating that you pay to 'solve' it yourself at greater cost than you could do it on your own.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I was living in Bloomington when they enacted their recycling program. Among the other things they used to sell/foist this upon the residents was that the land fill was about to fill up. It wasn't too long after the program began when the solid waste folks were seeking permission to receive garbage from new customers because their revenue had fallen too much.

 

[indiucky]

It makes one "feel better" and that is the goal of recycling...


This song from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" sums up the logic better than anything I have heard....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI4XLhY10VA

 

[poisonspyder]

I use 100% recycled plastic for one of my business products. It costs me about 10 cents per unit more for recycled plastic then new. The problem with household recycling is other than aluminum the cost is higher then new manufacture. As a society if it costs more we don't buy it because there are no morals or values left. It's every man for himself. Look at all the plastic products in the store and why not many recycled products? Most that are listed as recycled are only a small percentage to make the masses feel better.

I use 100 % recycled plastic in my yellow trash bags and the other three sizes. A trash bag goes to the landfill most of he time. Why won't hefty or glad switch to recycled? Because the almighty dollar. I sell 3 to 4 million units and I lost a lot of income using recycled, but it helps out. Big companies won't do that.

 

[Jludo]

I use 100% recycled plastic for one of my business products. It costs me about 10 cents per unit more for recycled plastic then new. The problem with household recycling is other than aluminum the cost is higher then new manufacture. As a society if it costs more we don't buy it because there are no morals or values left. It's every man for himself. Look at all the plastic products in the store and why not many recycled products? Most that are listed as recycled are only a small percentage to make the masses feel better.

I use 100 % recycled plastic in my yellow trash bags and the other three sizes. A trash bag goes to the landfill most of he time. Why won't hefty or glad switch to recycled? Because the almighty dollar. I sell 3 to 4 million units and I lost a lot of income using recycled, but it helps out. Big companies won't do that.

But where does recycling things like paper help out? The reason recycled paper costs more is that it takes more energy to produce it than to make new paper. If new paper comes from trees specifically farmed for making paper then why would we ever waste the resources it takes recycle paper?

Plastics I can understand a little better as oil is non renewable, but if it takes more oil to recycle a plastic bottle than it would cost to make the bottle new, are you really saving anything other than that space in the landfill?

 

[IndyDave1776]

But where does recycling things like paper help out? The reason recycled paper costs more is that it takes more energy to produce it than to make new paper. If new paper comes from trees specifically farmed for making paper then why would we ever waste the resources it takes recycle paper?

Plastics I can understand a little better as oil is non renewable, but if it takes more oil to recycle a plastic bottle than it would cost to make the bottle new, are you really saving anything other than that space in the landfill?

I can't say that I have done any great amount of research on the matter, but I can say that paper must be more cost effective than plastic given that a recycler will pay you for paper (at least a significant amount of it) and will not pay for plastic.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I use 100% recycled plastic for one of my business products. It costs me about 10 cents per unit more for recycled plastic then new. The problem with household recycling is other than aluminum the cost is higher then new manufacture. As a society if it costs more we don't buy it because there are no morals or values left. It's every man for himself. Look at all the plastic products in the store and why not many recycled products? Most that are listed as recycled are only a small percentage to make the masses feel better.

I use 100 % recycled plastic in my yellow trash bags and the other three sizes. A trash bag goes to the landfill most of he time. Why won't hefty or glad switch to recycled? Because the almighty dollar. I sell 3 to 4 million units and I lost a lot of income using recycled, but it helps out. Big companies won't do that.

I think it's great you've found a segment of the market to exploit and I don't mean that in any derogatory way. I'm all for consumer choice. Customers should be free to spend extra money or alternately spend less on more cost effective alternatives for whatever reason they choose. People choosing to spend less money on competing alternatives is not a new phenomena. It is natural for people to act in their own economic best interest...always has been.

 

[poisonspyder]

But where does recycling things like paper help out? The reason recycled paper costs more is that it takes more energy to produce it than to make new paper. If new paper comes from trees specifically farmed for making paper then why would we ever waste the resources it takes recycle paper?

Plastics I can understand a little better as oil is non renewable, but if it takes more oil to recycle a plastic bottle than it would cost to make the bottle new, are you really saving anything other than that space in the landfill?

It doesn't really help out. That's why I live in the country and just burn my paper trash. For the business I give it to the county for them to make the profit of cardboard recycling. Plastic use to be the waste of making gas, and now its reversed. We use way to much plastic and you hit the nail on the head. Paper is at least biodegrade with time and fertilizer for garden from burn barrel, not so much with plastic. Recycling household trash is nothing more than a feel good. Not the case with big businesses and metal scrap tho.

 

[Bunnykid68]

This seems appropriate even if it is long.

Checking out at Wal-Mart, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologised and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The assistant responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an elevator or escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocers and didn’t climb into a 200-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 2000 watts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back then. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV or radio in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief not a screen the size of Texas. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.

When we were thirsty we drank from a tap instead of drinking from a plastic bottle of water shipped from the other side of the world. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor when the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical socket in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish and chip shop.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?