i've lived in enough foriegn shit holes to see that Canada has alot to be envious of regarding its waste management. i find myself consistantly comparing the places that I visit to Canada's system and walking out disappointed in these countries. Canada's system not perfect and maybe we should listen to the inefficiencies of our system in order to improve upon it and make it better. Regression is not the answer but improvement and forward thought in perfecting it is and there's still along way to go and alot to clean up.

You haven't proved that landfills are poisonous, just to be clear, and they still aren't. The article I posted is a condensed version of the full report (to which I gave a link), so it's obviously not as descriptive.

From the original report:


Landfills today are lined with several feet of compacted clay, combined with a "rubber" geomembrane which closes them off from the water table. The garbage is covered each day with a layer of dirt.

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.

Very good point... I want to stress again, for anyone who reads this, that the article/report attacks household recycling (the bin at your curb full of paper), not industrial recycling.

The garbarge won't remain seperate from the water table if root systems break up the clay, or if there is anyother activity in the soil to disturb it.

Golf courses, tend to involve quite a bit of earth moving in their construction which would disrupt the landfills as far as their imperviousness to the water table.

The idea isn't to remove necessary packaging, the idea is to reduce the unnecessary parts or excessive bits, or to when given the oppurtunity, use packaging which uses less materials with the same result.

I don't think that this is anything that would be disputed. But the idea to reduce excessive or unnecessary packaging isn't any less of a noble idea.

I've got decent amounts of metals for every trip to the recycling plant.

Certain types of plastic and glass are self sufficient in their recycling. Many beer bottles to my knowledge are simply cleaned and refilled. And I fail to see how that would be problematic to do. Or somehow pollute more then melthing sand into glass.

The pollution created by smelting ore is immense. Many heavy chemicals

If that is the case wouldn't it stand to reason that 5 trucks pick up 40 tons of trash and 1 truck picks up 40 tons of recycling. Rather then 6 trucks picking up 40 tons of garbage. Rather then as the author claims that all trucks will be operating below capacity.

Well suppose you need 60 tons of steel, recycling won't change the fact that you use 60 tons, it might change the source of some of the steel.

And I've used papers for weed control, but your uses of the items you can reuse on your own, more often then not run out before ones supply does.

If my experience has not been that almost all recycling programs are self sufficient, if not profitable (the things that cannot be recycled readily tend to not be, hence why only certain types of plastic are recycled)

Household recycling, in my experience, has significantly reduced my families garbage (from composting to bottle deposits, etc.) with no cost to my town. Perhaps it would be beneficial to adjust for externalities and reanalyze certain recycling of certain items. To claim that recycling in general is a bad idea, because a few feet of packed clay will serve as an impervious barrier to trash for decades to come is inane.

Well the US DOI predicted they'd run out of oil within 15 years at least three times in the 1900s. The tar sands wouldn't have even been possible a few decades ago, but we've developed more efficient and innovative methods of extraction. If you want to look at a limit states analysis of the environment, we've got more problems to worry about before we could actually manage to consume all the oil we can recover.

Again, I'll say that recycling should only be used when a proper assessment has been conducted to assess its efficacy. And again the paper linked herein is not such a study. I'd like to see, for example, an analysis of energy costs to recycle paper versus energy costs to chop down a new tree and convert it to paper. This analysis should account for externalities, such as the abaility of the tree to sequester carbon, to stabilize soil and to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen -- things which are not currently accounted for in many assessments.

Well the US DOI predicted they'd run out of oil within 15 years at least three times in the 1900s. The tar sands wouldn't have even been possible a few decades ago, but we've developed more efficient and innovative methods of extraction. If you want to look at a limit states analysis of the environment, we've got more problems to worry about before we could actually manage to consume all the oil we can recover.

Well, there are such studies cited in the report, as I've said over and over, but not likely those which include the other benefits you've mentioned (CO2, erosion control, etc). However, if the majority of paper from virgin pulp is from plantations specifically for this purpose, they aren't going to last very long if you switch to recycling - that private land is going to be used for something profitable.

Anyway, all that said, I don't really think we're that far apart on the issue. My problem is not with the writer's contention, but with his ideology framing his findings. I don't have any problem agreeing that a lot of recycling, as currently practiced, is highly inefficient and done primarily for political expediency..

Oh I'm with ya buddy, I just went out and bought another garbage can and put my recycling bins in it.

I also bought a new chainsaw and I will go cut down every tree I have on my property up north and sell it for pulp.

Fight the power.

BN, if you haven't already, you should read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton.