Does recycling really make a difference in the long run?

I know there may seem to be an obvious answer but does recycling, not reusing and reducing, turn out to have a smaller carbon footprint after you factor in how much pollution was made to make the amount of power it takes to run the plant and to create the machines for the plant? I have always been puzzled by this and couldn't find any answers online so I was hoping someone on here could help me out.

reply to post by CKBURNS


I somehow doubt that recycling in the industrial sense is nearly as effective as re-use. The fact is that product waste can be repurposed in so many ways that going through the process of industrial recycling makes almost no sense.

What needs to happen is an awakening where people don't feel bad about purchasing products that add to the landfill or go through whatever plastics go through to be "recycled". Our own homes can be beautiful organized landfills. I use this method now.

Watch a movie on you-tube called "The Garbage Warrior"... Even if you don't want to go all out and build yourself a home out of garbage, you can use many of their methods to add quirky, functional, and very environmentally friendly additions to your home.

There are many layers to the process, but it is fun and truly rewarding hard work.

Boba

reply to post by Bobaganoosh


Reuse defenitly seems like a good way to go. Another thing you can do is if you want to reuse things to make new items, you can go to a website called instructables. It shows you how to make just about anything and many times it shows you how to make these items out of things you have lying around your house. I use it all the time and find many amazing things.

I kinda hate to say this, but it's true:
Plastic is just too dam easy. It's hard to get away from.






reply to post by Bobaganoosh

Originally posted by Bobaganoosh

What needs to happen is an awakening where people don't feel bad about purchasing products that add to the landfill.......

Is that what you meant to say?
or should you maybe have left out the 'Don't'?

reply to post by CKBURNS

...after you factor in how much pollution was made to make the amount of power it takes to run the plant and to create the machines for the plant?

If you are talking recycling of metals then yah, the savings is enormous both in cost and polluting the environment.

The difference being that it is much cheaper and cost effective to remelt steel than it is to dig up a whole new batch of Iron ore and refine that. Thats blasting, giant cranes and dump trucks, conveyors, rock crushers, mills...

Then pig Iron has to be further refined into steel and shipped out.

That goes for other metals too like copper and aluminum, each of which requires expensive and laborious refining before the end product. Simply remelting metal that already exists is a better option. As time goes on, the percentage of recycling old into new will increase out of sheer necessity.

This is a simple explanation, I gotta go.

reply to post by CKBURNS


In the long run, everything will need to be recycled, as that will be the primary source for raw materials that have been mined and depleted. It's not so much about "making a difference" as it is about sourcing materials for production.

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Naw, I meant it as I said it. My point is that there is nothing wrong with consumption if appropriate uses are made of the discarded waste.

As an example, I drink beer. I prefer beer in bottles over cans, cans can be easily recycled. Glass bottles are usually discarded and landfilled. I once felt bad because my preference for glass was making much waste. However, now I no longer feel bad because we reuse the glass bottles as building materials.

Using a tile-saw, we cut four inches from the butt of the bottle. Two four inch bottle butts are taped together at the cut edges making an eight inch cylindrical glass brick. The necks are crushed and the glass is saved for colored-glass mosaics in tile or grout or whatever your pleasure.

I am no longer ashamed of my consumption because I have reduced the amount of weekly refuse I discard to a 23 gallon bag about every 6 days. Not a bag every other day as it once was.

Hope that clarifies.

Boba

reply to post by CKBURNS


Will it make a difference in the long run? Nope. Not one bit. In 4 billion years our earth will be melted by the sun. So no matter what we recycle now it will all be a waste at the end. .I'm thinking way long term.

reply to post by Bobaganoosh


Nice ideas for re-using glass in practical and artistic ways, but i'm shocked that it just goes to landfill where you live - glass is emminently recyclable and always collected for such in a great many places.

Here is the episode (for some reason in 3 parts) of Penn&Teller Bulls**t about recycling (language and nudity).


They claim it uses more energy and releases more CO2.

My opinion is that we will reach a point where we will be digging up landfills in the future to recover materials that were thrown away.

Presently we ship hazardous materials abroad because it's cheaper to let another country deal with it than to dispose of it in hazardous waste landfills.

Unless Humanity can get off the Planet
it's a necessity an inevidebility... and the sooner we start
on a broader scale, the better.

It could create a BUNCH of J-o-bs,
and since Corporations are raking in record profits
I promise they can keep their [snip] clean environmentally,
for you and me.
And pay their employees well, for a change.

When's the last time you heard "Pays Well"?
They could do all these things and still.....
be stupid rich.

And Here Here!
to a thread title that's lays it's all out,
in one sentence, so you know what's up, right away.
I appreciate that. I'm not good at doing that .
But I appreciate it.

reply to post by skalla


There are no recycling initiatives where I live of any kind.

I have to take plastic containers 30+ miles to the nearest recycling collection point. Even that collection point is paper/plastic/aluminum... No glass.

PET soda-bottles and what-not are easy to repurpose as building materials, they are relatively uniform across the brand name spectrum, but it's the larger stuff that is a little tricky. Things such as detergent bottles, milk jugs,... they just don't crush well enough to be filler. I've thought about building a shredder so that I could use them as a fiber supplement in concrete, but that is going to take some time, which is running out.... LOL.

I like fixing old things up so they can be used again. That is real recycling, screw the manufacturers who death date everything. Recycling is better than tossing things in the dump though and it does make a difference in the long run. Mining destroys some of the earths properties but the plastic we make is much worse.

I liked soda pop in glass bottles made locally better than the crap in cans and plastic. I remember when plastic started to be accepted for food, people didn't really like the taste....we got used to it...that is not a good thing.

reply to post by Magister

My opinion is that we will reach a point where we will be digging up landfills in the future to recover materials that were thrown away.

In fact the metals consortium (Big Mining) sees cities as the future repositories of reclaimable metals.

Of course they would have to be destroyed first. Then mine the rubble.

reply to post by ManOfHart


You make a valid point.