Proving that garbage is not carcinogeous does not prove that it is not poisonous. The two are different notions all together. A chemical does not need to cause cancer in order to kill wild life, nor would it in order to make the ground unusable for many purposes.

The EPA itself acknowledges that the risks
to humans (and presumably plants and animals) from modern landfills
are virtually nonexistent.

Furthermore landfill sites are typically unsuitable for construction because it creates a poor foundation. So it truly does remove the land from use./quote]
Removed from use if you're only concerned with building condos or shopping malls. Very much in use if you consider the parks, golf courses, etc, that go over the sites after their use.



It's not only food - electronic equipment and other consumer products are also more susceptable to damage without protective packaging.

There is, obviously a certain level of excessiveness in some packaging, but such is the case in almost every aspect of Western culture; we are a people of excess.

But back to the food, the point was made (again, in the report) that packaged (processed) chicken generates less waste than if one were to pluck and gut their own chicken because the by-products (ie, the guts) are used for valuable products (like pet food), while at home, they would be merely disposed of.

I guess I should have made clear the distinction between household recycling and industrial/commerical recycling. It is much more feasible for large production industries to efficiently and usefully recycle their by-products than it is for households.


The question is whether the entire process of recycling paper (sorting, collection, transportation, sorting again, pulping, screening, cleaning, deinking, refining, bleaching, and rolling - not that simple) is more efficient and enviromentally friendly than using pulp wood. Those deinking chemicals aren't pretty, and neither is the waste (inks and adhesives).


You're right; some things (like copper, aluminum, and steel, to name a few) are worthwhile to recover and reuse. But what household has a big pile of copper to dispose of on a weekly basis? It's the things that aren't worthwhile, like glass, plastic and paper, that are a waste of resources to recycle. Similarly, larger industries have a lot to gain from recycling their waste (demolitions, for example)



Yes there is, if it means not wasting resources that could be put to more useful needs. It'd be like running a pump which consumes a litre of gas just to extract half a litre of gas - the results don't justify the expenditure. That's entirely the point of this report.



You're just simplifying the processes to suit your own argument. From the report:


Sure, you don't see the big ugly mine, but you also don't see the truckloads of toxic substances being carried out the back of the recycling plant. The pollution is increased, its just less obvious.


Well, in my province recycling day is one week, and the next garbage. It would depend on the volume of material being dealt with, I suppose.



I always thought it was about using less resources, period. If 'using the resource repeatedly' means using an unproportional amount of another, you're not really helping your cause.


Well, lots of people bottle their own beer, to use your very limited example, but in general, people reuse plenty of things - plastic shopping bags for garbage bin liners, newspaper for pet cages, plastic bottles for water... Reusing materials is always more useful than recycling.


Yes, at the expense of other 'things', which don't contribute, and sometimes harm, the very thing you're trying to protect.


Based on what? One of their professor's reports, which was prepared for a seperate organization (PERC), which you've misunderstood? I can hear the people at their admissions office crying from here.

Care to explain how mining and smelting ore is easier then seperating your trash?

Well, I'd like to see the math to back that up--this writer doesn't provide them.

It could well be. I'm not all that familiar with recycling processes. But with respect to, say, aluminum, does it really cost more to recycle one (there are smelters in BC in Trail and Kitimat, I believe) than to mine the bauxite in the tropics, put it on a freighter to Vancouver harbour, send it by rail to Trail, smelt it, and then truck it to a manufacturer?

Yes landfills are sometimes used as parks (a particularly good use, since a park will ensure no future excavation that would disturb the underlying fill). But these have become parks through good management - -the grass doesn't just grow over them. Leachate issues, for example, normally continue long after the landfill is decommissioned.

All landfills produce leachate that must be dealt with. Modern “dry tomb” landfills minimize fluid going in (from rain, for example) by covering areas that are not currently operational. Moreover, any leachate is drained out via collection pipes and sent to wastewater plants for treatment and purification. These steps make modern landfills
what William Rathje has called “vast mummifiers,” in which little biodegradation takes place (Rathje and Murphy 1992, 110; Rathje 2001). Still, there is some decomposition that creates methane gas as a by-product. This is drawn off by wells on site and burned or purified and sold for fuel.

The entropy/environment thing is a pet project of mine. (Incidentally, you got it backwards -- low entropy=high organization=good thing, so we'd be issung "high entropy" warnings!)

As for your "real an significant effect" -- it all depends on your definition of significant, I suppoe. A thermodynamic outcome of climate change may well be the extirpation or extinction of polar bears. Is that significant. I've enver seen one, so is it significant to me that there are no more polar bears. It may be significant to the bears!

The bottom line is: I'm not dismissing out of hand what the writer is saying. I am saying that (a) he doesn't back up his contentions with science, and (b) he seems to be advocating a free market policy position adn then selecting factoids to support his point of view.

Ooops goota go!

So... I wonder which oil, mining, logging consortium paid for that blog?

Here is an example of recycling at work.

Buddy takes his wood chipper, adds hydraulic pump, connects hydraulics to log splitter, modifies log splitter to compress wood chips into brickets.

Ok now we have a chipper/compressor of wood.

Buddy calls all his neighbours to drop off their old Christmas tree's.
Buddy chips and compresses the Christmas tree's.
Soon he has enough brickets to last the winter.
More tree's arrive, Buddy now sells brickets at much less cost than standard cords.
Tree's recycled energy saved.

Cost to run chipper/compressor.....approx 1/2 gal gas per full cord.

Have not worked out the actual calories used and calories saved, but I think there has to be some sort of energy saving in the process.

So... I wonder which oil, mining, logging consortium paid for that blog?

PERC - Property and Environment Research Center is the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research that brings market principles to resolving environmental problems. Located in Bozeman, Montana, PERC pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism, which is based on the following tenets.

Private property rights encourage stewardship of resources.

Government subsidies often degrade the environment.

Market incentives spur individuals to conserve resources and protect environmental quality.

Polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others.

Sounds great to me... The Christmas tree recycling industry is booming here, too (basically the same setup), so it is worthwhile... you have the business profit as proof. Obviously all recycling isn't bad, and I would never suggest that.

"In fact we are not running out of natural reosurces. Available stocks are actually growing"

Well, I'm not sure what you're referring to with regard to "these kinds of papers", but the point he made is valid. As far as the things we recycle in our homes are concerned (that's what the whole thing is about), we aren't running out of natural resources. Last time I checked, we don't have a fossil fuel bin out at the curb.

Even so, we aren't really running out of oil or other fossil fuels anyway. We're constantly developing better management of how we extract it, refine it, and use it, not to mention alternative fuel sources which will slowly decrease our dependence.

We have bigger fish to fry before running out of anything comes into consideration, like fresh water reserves (those are going down, and more dramatically than most people realize) and pollution.
[hr]
Not sure if you read the report, but did you notice why household recycling originated? There was a garbage barge from New York that got rejected from its destination due to rumours of medical waste. It caused a big commotion, and environmentalists used it as "proof" that there was a garbage crisis, and that the landfills were full. Some later study (I think it was the EPA) said that landfills were indeed filling up, but their methods were flawed. This claim was solely based on the fact that the number of landfills in the US was declining, even though their total capacity was increasing. Thus, recycling was shoved into the mainstream.