Recycling: Myth?

[Godwynn]

From Penn & Teller's . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .!

The parts of the episode are here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Here are the highlights from the Show:

• Recycling Feels Good
• Recycling Uses More Energy Than What Is Saved
• There Are 3x More Trees Than There Were In 1920
• The Only Thing Recyclable That Is Good For The Environment Is Aluminum
• We Are Not Running Out Of Landfill Space

Does Recycling really work? Is it just propaganda? Does anyone have a source to counter these points? Should we really only just recycle aluminum cans?

I wrote this with an open mind. I don't know who to believe, my teacher from the 2nd grade or Penn & Teller.

 

[skadistic]

At the time of the show some of that may have been true. But each year it gets cheaper and easier to recycle. Its still infantile in its nature. While land fills can fill any space and we have allot of it to spare do we really want to fill it with trash?And its not a monitary cost that matters as much as a resource cost. Look at plastic. Its made from oil. Every metric ton of plastic you can recycle thats less oil needed to make new plastics.

 

[Phlegmak]

I haven't watched the videos yet.

I've been wondering about recycling myself. If it's really saving anything.

The only thing I doubt in your bulleted points is the landfill space. Landfill space is finite. I guess I'll have to see what is Penn's rationale for believing we aren't running out of space, unless he wants to turn vast pastoral fields into trash dumps.

 

[Godwynn]

At the time of the show some of that may have been true. But each year it gets cheaper and easier to recycle. Its still infantile in its nature. While land fills can fill any space and we have allot of it to spare do we really want to fill it with trash?And its not a monitary cost that matters as much as a resource cost. Look at plastic. Its made from oil. Every metric ton of plastic you can recycle thats less oil needed to make new plastics.

The Episode said the following:

1. A 35 square mile landfill is enough to take care of the United States' trash for 1,000 years. - I hope it is deep.

2. Most people don't take into account that the large trash trucks come and pick up the recyclables, using more gas. Things like paper that are recycled are actually worse for the environment since the recycling process uses chemicals and releases air pollution.

Those are not my views, they are the episodes.

 

[Godwynn]

The only thing I doubt in your bulleted points is the landfill space. Landfill space is finite. I guess I'll have to see what is Penn's rationale for believing we aren't running out of space, unless he wants to turn vast pastoral fields into trash dumps.

I am quite skeptical of their point that a 35 square mile area is enough landfill space for 1,000 years. I assume it will have to be very deep, and that our waste remains constant for the 1,000 years.

 

[Masquerouge]

At the time of the show some of that may have been true. But each year it gets cheaper and easier to recycle. Its still infantile in its nature. While land fills can fill any space and we have allot of it to spare do we really want to fill it with trash?And its not a monitary cost that matters as much as a resource cost. Look at plastic. Its made from oil. Every metric ton of plastic you can recycle thats less oil needed to make new plastics.

I agree. Even if it uses more energy that it saves right now (something that I doubt), getting into the habit of recycling is good - and the more people do it, the better we will become at it.

 

[Riffraff]

also remember that if we want to colonize space, we'll have to master recycling...

 

[Urederra]

I have read the statistics about trees before in a book (not Lomborg's one, although It might be there too).

Recycling feels good... thats very true.
Recycling uses more energy than is saved, Probably, but not everything is about saving energy, it is also about saving materials. (maybe there are more trees now than in 1920 is because we replant and recycle)
I hope that there are more recyclable things good for the environment other than aluminium.
Lands full of waste looks ugly.

I really hope that it is not just propaganda, although part of it is actually propaganda.

 

[El Koeno]

The Economist (hardly leftist "feel good" propaganda) ran a story on recycling awhile back. Read it here.

If you don't feel like reading much, the conclusion was that, in most cases, recycling is worth it.

 

[brennan]

A 35 square mile landfill is enough to take care of the United States' trash for 1,000 years. - I hope it is deep.

Given that it would take a 300 square kilometer area to allow the population of the US to stand with a square meter each I find that hard to believe. (being very approximate)

 

[Godwynn]

Lands full of waste looks ugly.

Penn & Teller showed a landfill that was covered in soil afterwards and had trees and grass replanted. Apparently they are turned into parks and golf courses.

Although I hate golf.

 

[skadistic]

The Episode said the following:

1. A 35 square mile landfill is enough to take care of the United States' trash for 1,000 years. - I hope it is deep.

2. Most people don't take into account that the large trash trucks come and pick up the recyclables, using more gas. Things like paper that are recycled are actually worse for the environment since the recycling process uses chemicals and releases air pollution.

Those are not my views, they are the episodes.

I've seen the eppy about 2 years ago. Those same trucks would still be driving picking up trash and dumping it to do nothing in a land fill. The space those recyclables take up could be better taken up by more organic decomposable food stuffs and turned into methane gas that can be used to run the paper plant that recycles most of its own water and chemicals. (There was a great special on History about green buildings the other day. ) The land fill that uses only food stuffs can be dug up later and sold as dirt where you can use the new hole again to make a methane mound.

I love Penn and Teller but they are off in this piece. They use a sort term look at a long term solution and with new techs coming out and new uses for recycled stuffs comes up ( like school uniforms) it becomes more and more viable all the time.

 

[ValentinianIII]

I'm just giving my opinion as an amateur carpenter. There may be more trees than in 1920 ,but their wood quality is much worse today compared to previous generations. Because there are more people in the world and the demand for wood in construction has risen, tree farms are forced to harvest trees at a young age. In addition, colder winters seem to give trees tougher composition.

Very often, I buy recycled wood from older buildings that have been torn down just because I find older wood to be much stronger and of better quality.

 

[ori]

Believe your 2nd grade teacher
Actually the story is more complicated:
Steel and Aluminum are a straightforward example of efficient recycling because you don't get any energy from burning them and it takes a lot of energy to get those out of the earth and into usable form. So they easily top the list of energy efficient recycling.
Paper is a fuel and as such you can get energy from burning it - and since it is a "biofuel" this energy is even carbon dioxide neutral, but you have spent lots of energy in producing paper from wood and it costs less energy to produce (lower quality) paper from paper so this is efficient as well.
Glass is better reused then recycled and here transport is usually the restricting factor when determining efficiency - producing glass from glass costs less energy then producing glass from sand, but this difference is often dwarved by the energy costs of collecting and transporting the glass to and from recycling facilities - so this is border line
Plastic is a fossil fuel so you get energy from burning it, you also preserve some fossil fuel by not burning but rather recycling it - in theory, however in order to efficiently recycle most plastics you need to sort them really pure and this is difficult from "household" wastes where a lot of different plastics are included, today it is usually more energy efficient to burn the plastic and make new ones from oil then to burn the oil and make new plastic from old plastic

Landfills are a waste of energy, pollute the environment and are a health hazard to humans and all other living things around them. There is no reason for them today

Spoiler apart from... :

some non-combustable residues need to be stored - but for those there is indeed enough space

Source for energy savings:
NRDC Note: they do not take into account energy costs of sorting the plastics and they don't show energy savings for many common plastics, like PVC, Polystyrene, Teflon, Polyamides, Polyacrylamide etc. thats for the reason that those plastics never are energy efficiently recycled, but when you collect them with the household waste to recycle PE, PET and PP which themselves might merit recycling you loose the energysavings by collecting and transporting those other products usually.
Bottom line: Metals and paper are good for recycling (paper looses quality in each cycle so this is no closed cycle), glass can be good - but you don't want to ship the glass bottle from Texas to Maine, the broken glass back to Texas and the new glass back to Maine if you want to save energy
Plastics are better burned for electricity then recycled unless you have a source of almost pure type of plastics - which can be the case in industry and building waste...

 

[brennan]

There Are 3x More Trees Than There Were In 1920.

Are they as big as the ones we had in 1920.

And BS.

 

[skadistic]

Its not BS


Since 1920 thousands of tree farms have popped up all over in places they weren't before.

 

[Fifty]

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

 

[Samson]

I suspect that a lot of recycling is wastful. The emfasis we have today on recycling seems to me to take the emphasis away from the really helpful paradyms of repair and reuse.

Why do we need a new bottle every time we buy washing liquid? Why does our food need so much packaging? Why are most consumer goods made specifically hard to repair? My suspition is that recycling is good for the economy short term (primarly BECAUSE it is wasteful) whereas repair and reuse reduces the amount of goods you need so is bad for the economy (in the short term).

 

[bob bobato]

What does a magician know?

 

[innonimatu]

My suspition is that recycling is good for the economy short term (primarly BECAUSE it is wasteful) whereas repair and reuse reduces the amount of goods you need so is bad for the economy (in the short term).

I agree with you. Just look at all the electronic junk being produced today. Meant to last two, three years - even if it could last more, that would bring less profits to the companies producing and selling these things.

Of course, part of this is also a result of rapid technological evolution, and that evolution does bring benefits. For example, flat screen TVs consume less power that the old CRT ones. On the other hand people have simply bought much larger TVs, offsetting the possible savings!
I guess most of us humans are just wasteful bastards, and while repair and reuse would be better recycling is the best thing we can do, at least until resources start really getting scarcer.