The Great Recycling Swindle

For a while i've known one thing about the recycling i put on the doorstep, a lot of it will probably end up in landfills anyway. there is an interesting article in the telegraph that goes into it.

www.telegraph.co.uk.../earth/2008/03/02/earecycling102.xml

So we have local councils upping council tax to pay for the recycling van, a government subsidizing the recycling firms to do what they're in business to do and then they dump a great deal of our recycled rubbish into landfils anyway? This must save them a great deal of money is that why this is being done?

Absolutely disgusting. In general recycling costs more than it saves, aluminium is a great thing to recycle but the other items like plastic and paper tend to cost rather than gain and without the subsidies the companies involved would have more trouble making a profit.

I think recycling is important even if it isn't wholly economical, but companies that do receive government subsidies (i.e. our money) to carry out the process should be held very strictly to account. If they just dump the waste in landfill sites then their subsidies should be cut and they should be heavily fined so that the taxpayer gets their money back. If this bankrupts the business then so be it - they shouldn't have been taking our money for services they don't provide in the first place (it's basically embezzlement from the public purse). The management who took the decision to do this should be punished particularly harshly.

It's great that the public is taking a greater interest in how their taxes are spent and how their services are provided - the more people investigate and question, the better the governance of the UK (at all levels... national and local) will become. If we let our elected leaders just get on with it then some will abuse the system because they think they can get away with it - if we take an active interest, cases like this, Derek Conway and all the rest will be consigned to the history books for the most part. You can't completely eliminate corruption, but we can all do our bit to reduce it.

[edit on 4/3/08 by Ste2652]

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

---

In the later 1980s, my hometown (Louisville, Ky) took up the GREEN mantra. And that’s good. We must become aware that we are soiling our nest. And be reminded that we have only one nest. Going to Mars may give Bush43 a place in the history books, but for 99.44% of humanity, it is an unattainable goal. And horribly expensive. Say hello, China.

We bought new “garbage” trucks as we call them, with 4 compartments. Paper. Plastic. Aluminum. All others. We bought 1000s of colored plastic containers to distribute to homeowners. Blue. Green. White. Red. Like our War on Terror, color coded for quick reference. I happened to work for a waste water pre-treatment plant. We separated solids from liquids, sent the liquid down the pipe to the sewer - waste water treatment in new speak - plant and the solids went into a 30 yard roll-off. Those were periodically hauled to the cheapest landfill for emptying.

It was on a visit to our local landfill that I casually asked how the GREEN program was progressing. “It’s not,” he said. “We have buyers only for aluminum. The other garbage - waste - is dumped into the same pile.” Which reminds me of that wonderful Angle of Repose to which nature adheres.

So why don’t our public officials say, “Forget it?” Well, for one reason they have spent several millions of tax dollars and perhaps worse, have caused the former 2 times a week collection cycle to be reduced to 1 time a week due to the lower capacity of the new 4 compartment trucks and the extra time required to empty the more numerous containers.

I don't believe there was any more chicanery in the GREEN move than in any other instance where people are spending other people's money. I still believe in GREEN, but I hope we are more realistic next time we have an opportunity - urge - to help forestall the ruination of the planet.

[edit on 3/4/2008 by donwhite]

Well this one i have known about for a whlie but i never knew the figures. This has gotten me so annoyed i have written to my local MP about it. If our money is being used to subsidise a business for recycling (which it shouldn't be it's a damn business) then i want that money back. I also want the time i took to recycle goods to be compensated. At the very least i requested that my MP look into the matter and if it's true that they aren't doing what they are paid for then the local council should eliminate any sudsidies to the companies in question.

If people just started taking a notice in this country, if they started insisting to see public records on how every penny of our money is spent then we would have a far better country. Corporations have to account for every penny interally to help them "streamline" (shudders at the terminology). If the citizens insisted on receipts for everything and a breakdown of all costs then i am sure we would free up a shocking amount of money and get things running more smoothly.

That is a minimum we should expect from our elected leaders. I am greatly distressed however, that we on this planet have already passed those several tipping points from which there is no return. More than 30 years ago I read in a reliable monthly that the earth cannot sustain more than 2 billion people for a long period of time, in the style of the West. That foreboding prognostication was based on the fast rising use of chemicals to create the Green Revolution which raised agricultural production 2 or 3 fold. It was like a soap bubble, the story said, rising ever so nicely until it suddenly pops! The amount of artificial fertilizers used is rising every decade to keep the same level of production.

I am convinced that Malthus was correct overall in his theory, but that he was wrong in his timing. I believe Malthus used 9 or 10 generations to reach his dreaded conclusion. On that, he was probably half right. 18 or 20 generations will see Malthus’ forecast come true.

After the oil crisis of the mid-1970s - precipitated by the Yom Kippur War - American automobiles were down-sized. GM produced a whole line of middle sized cars that came standard with 2.4 liter 4 cylinder engines. Optional were 3.1 liter V6s. (For reasons I know not, GM could never make a good 4 cylinder engine over here). These engines replaced 7.4 liter engines. The government also helped. It ordered speedometers to register nor more than 85 mph. On the unproved theory people would not drive faster if they did not know how fast they were going. (70 mph was the national speed limit).

Such smaller sized cars and such smaller engines are no longer available here in the kind of cars Americans buy the most of. In fact, we now have a national speed limit of 155 mph; computer regulated engines being capped at that speed even if capable of more. I was in Orlando FL yesterday and saw the price of 87 octane gasoline at $3.59 per gallon. Self serve. What I save at Wal-Mart I give back at ExxonMobil. Or BP.

Last week, I read a short synopsis of a multi-national privately financed survey of the Earth’s oceans due out in full in 2010. Using 70% as the part of the Earth’s surface covered in water - 137,500,000 square miles - the investigators found “only 4% of the oceans in pristine condition.” About 5 million square miles around the 7th continent, Antarctica. And that ocean is now being invaded by Japanese whalers as I write. 80% of the remainder of the oceans are described as “severely impacted by human activity.” For example, the large amounts of CO2 we produce is absorbed by the oceans and forms carbonic acid which is making more and more of the ocean unfriendly to the plankton on which the whole food chain depends.

China is adding one new coal fired electric generating plant per week through 2009. Because it takes many years for the carbon cycle to complete, the Chinese argue with some justification that they should not be singled out for air pollution until the amount of Chinese generated CO2 in the atmosphere equals the amount of American CO2 already in the atmosphere. I’m sure India will concur in that logic.

So how is separating paper from plastic going to reduce the human footprint on the planet? And especially in time to make a difference?

[edit on 3/6/2008 by donwhite]

Quite simple, it won't. If you actually look into how these goods are recycled, they put tons of damaging chemicals into the enviroment just recycling it! Paper is actually one of the worst, they use multiple washes to get the ink out (some chemical washes) and then the sludge is often flushed down a river. Sometimes it is landfilled and other times it is chemically neutralised (using more chemiclas).

An excellentbut scary point you mentioned is the 2 billion figure. We ave a limited amount of space on earth and logically there is only so much space for people. This is very logical, if you continue adding to the population then eventually we can't sustain it. No scientist when you get them alone will argue with that, but to say it out loud you instantly get called a nazi.

I am not saying we should ever kill people to keep a sustainable population, merely that we should control the amount of people being born. I believe in freedom whole heartedly, don't want ID cards or car tracking etc. I can though see the logic of having to control the size of a population, if we don't start soon then we're going to face some terrible times.

Which is worse, controlled population by limiting birth rates, or when the population gets to big, famine, drought and disease killing literally billions of people. I know which i prefer.

Recycling paper is one of the oldest enterprises in the Green area that I’m familiar with. We have - I say “we” in the imperial way - endorsed paper recycling because we thought it saved trees. I now live in Florida and drive a lot to Georgia. Both states have tree farms in the region near to the shared border. A particular variety of pine tree is the product, and they are planted in straight rows properly spaced for ease of harvesting. Logical. I’m saying a lot to say this, I don’t think the motive for recycling paper is to save trees, but rather it must make the finished product cheaper or better or perhaps both? And, our Congress may have voted some tax advantage a long time ago that is still out there.



Conundrum. We (over here) pay farmers a subsidy to grow corn. We pay processors a subsidy to convert it into ethanol. We enacted a law forcing petroleum refiners to add up to 15% to gasoline. It is supposed to have fewer of the harmful by-products than straight gasoline. I’m not sure that is true. But we believe it. Then, as consumers of the end product, we pay full price for the gasoline ethanol mixture at the pump.

Ethanol contains about 70% of the BTUs of gasoline. Planting, harvesting, processing and mixing ethanol consumes more BTUs than ethanol contains. Go figure that! Even worse, corn is a high water consuming crop. The Ogallala Aquifer of the central United States is one of the world's great aquifers. The water held in it was put there after the retreat of the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago. We are consuming the stored water 10 times faster than nature replenishes it. And much of that water goes to grow corn. Someday not far away, water will be priced higher than crude oil. See en.wikipedia.org...



Well, I guess you could say too many people create more waste products than we can wisely or economically re-cycle, which condition can lead to political corruption, and therefore, the number of people on the planet is still “on topic” in an ancillary sort of way. A bit like the refreshing 6 degrees of consanguinity we’ve recently re-discovered over here. We really are all connected! China is the best example of a workable limit on population growth, the “one family, one child” plan adopted in the 1970s which has worked. India, unable to adopt such a plan, will surpass China as the most populated country by 2040. And India has but one-fourth the land area of China! Wow!



Over here, the Christian Children’s Fund - they claim 80% of the money collected goes to its stated purpose - but no one here audits charities - claims that 27,000 children die every day from starvation or diseases exacerbated by malnutrition. The anti-choice movement here has pretty much neutered the woman’s “right of choice” granted in the Roe v. Wade case. That group claims 1.5 million abortions take place here each year. That may be true. I have also read that a like number, 1.5 million, of spontaneous abortions politely called “miscarriages” also take place here annually. Yet our population is still growing at 5.5% per year. I don’t know if we count the 12-20 million “undocumented” workers said to be here. That must be someone’s estimate for surely you can’t take a census of them like you would those of us here legally.

Aside: I keep reminding my less hospitable friends here that those undocumented workers have self-selected the best and most heroic to come here. It must be a daunting thing to do. To work in a strange land, that speaks a different language, has a different culture and you might end up in prison for your trouble. We’ve got to be getting the BEST of the people here! End.

[edit on 3/7/2008 by donwhite]

Exactly, a great deal of paper is now being generated by tree farms and the amount is increasing as the companies have realised it's cheaper to do it that way.



The recycled paper is either not as good quality or just as good depending n how much they process it. It takes more processing to turn it into the same quality it once was and so it costs more. The governments subsidize the companies to do it though. The amount of polution caused is far greater than simply chopping down farmed trees.



Again more government madness. The ethanol growing is a pointless exercise, as the population increases we will need that land for food. As for water, well we are seeing shortages aroud the world, water is one of the resources that we cannot change sustainably. We can genetically engineer crops to grow more, we can get better fertilizers but we cannot grow water. The best we could do is start siphoning off the oceans (solar plants) but even that is limited.




China isn't the best model, they have ended up with a great deal of men and not enough women. We do nee controlled population though, it's a logical fact but few people wil address it out of fear of being called a nazi.




The problem is only going to get worse. Farming is starting to increase in places like Africa, which means irrigation, which means drying of lakes. Eventualy there will be no water left and we will see a mass dying of people. If we dont' address population as it is then the enviroment will have a natural way of doing it, a way which will kill millions.

[edit on 8-3-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

We must not pay the governments of this world when they're lying to us (and scamming us) entice us to participate in their businesses (such as their recycling business). There are enough legitimate businesses, who actually work hard to help all of us live well & live long without paying unnecessary taxes.