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| 11/22 |
| 2005/3/20-21 [Science/GlobalWarming] UID:36782 Activity:very high |
3/20 Is recycling household materials like glass and paper a good idea
or is it a waste of time and energy?
\_ I believe for glass it is mainly to keep it out of the landfills.
I don't think it takes that much less energy to remelt glass than
it does to create it originally. Of course, refilling definitely
saves tons of energy. As for paper, recycling that does make a
difference, and the more homogenous the paper is (newsprint for
example) to more the benefit is <-- non-scientific info, just
from reading a few articles here and there on recycling.
\- industrial recycling [like what ford does or some of what has
been mandated in germany] make sense often. these civic programs
are feel good vanity projects.
\_ Except aluminum. Recycling aluminum is quite profitable, and
it tends to subsidize all the crappy curbside materials like
glass, paper and plastic.
\_ As I understand it, recycling metal and plastic makes sense in
that the raw materials have to be dug out of the ground.
Recycling paper is not an energy-efficency issue, but a forest
managment issue.
\- if you want to save resources, try to generate less
trash and conserve power. poor people recycle without
civic programs. e.g. reuse the container your peanut
butter came in.
\_ In Hong Kong about two to three decades ago, when
aluminum cans and 250ml paper packages weren't popular,
the milk and beverage companies charged you a bottle fee
which is redepted when you returned them. Then the
which was redeemed when you returned them. Then the
companies sanitized the bottles and re-used them with
new caps. I think reusing is more efficient than
recycling in terms of energy (and maybe in terms of raw
material too -- I don't know if new material is needed
in glass recycling like in paper recycling.)
\_ Yup. The three R's in the correct order are: Reduce >
Reuse > Recycle. Yet people think recycling is the best
they should do.
\_ I hate people leaving three or four machines powered-on
when they leave work in the evening. No I'm not talking
about machines that run any automatic jobs late night.
\_ Yes! Thank you!
\_ http://www.bfifremont.com/newsletters/2005winter.pdf
"Between September 1994 and June 2004, enthusiastic Fremont
residents recycled over 180,191 tons of recyclables and
227,216 tons of organics." Sounds to me this civic program
has some real impact.
\_ It only has an impact if the "recycled" material is
actually put to use. That more or less means aluminum
cans, glass bottles, and newspaper. -tom
\_ The waste company in my area collects all paper products (newspaper,
cardboards, printer paper, ...), plastics #1 - #7, and all metal
cans in one same collection bin altogether. How on earth do they
separate them afterwards? By hand?
\_ yes, by hand. do you live in oakland? the smaller waste stream
companies hate this because the bottles break and tiny shards
of glass get in the paper and lowers the value of material
they can sell.
\_ I live in Irvine. They do this, too. I've always wondered
about the actual efficiency of their recycling program.
I have a vegan friend who goes to great lengths to sort
and categorize each and every container he goes through, and
then gives them all to the WMOC(Waste Mgmt, Orange County),
and I've wondered if he's just wasting his effort.
-nivra (not pp)
\_ Iraqis just started their own recycling program:
http://csua.org/u/bg0 (Yahoo! News)
\_ See, re-use IS better than recycling! |
| 11/22 |
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| csua.org/u/bg0 -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=10&u=/ap/20050321/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_recycled_weapons web sites) war are scattered across the green fields and gentle hills of the two cou ntries' common border. Long ignored, they are now being harvested by ins urgents who recycle them into crude but highly deadly bombs to use again st US and Iraqi troops. Special Coverage Saddam-era ordnance, repackaged as roadside bombs or bundled together to use in car bomb attacks, has been the leading killer of US soldiers in Iraq. Concerned about the growing trend, the military is paying Iraqis thousands of dollars for information about weapons caches. "The munitions that are stockpiled in this area will for some time to com e be a constant source of improvised explosive device material for someo ne that's willing to take the time to get them," Lt. Hart commands the 1st Squadron of the 278th Regiment from Athens, Tenn. H is unit patrols about 60 miles of the Iraq-Iran border where much of the 1980-88 war was fought. It is impossible to know how many insurgent bom bs originated from these weedy minefields. to limit munitions trafficking from the border westward into the population centers," Hart said. "If we do that, we wi ll have been effective in at least taking away some of the insurgency's logistical support base." Officials realize t hey are competing with insurgents and others buying old weapons, and the y don't want to start a bidding war. "We'd be naive to think we're the only ones paying them for munitions," s aid the 1st Squadron's Lt. Since the regiment's arrival in November 2004, locals have turned in over 7,000 munitions. Critics say the program provides incentives for poor, untrained Iraqis to do dangerous work. Advocates say Iraqis are helping to demilitarize the ir country and disable weapons that could be used to kill or maim civili ans and soldiers. The military has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Army Co rp of Engineers and private contractors to destroy munitions throughout the country. But there are still more than enough to guarantee insurgent s a steady supply for the foreseeable future. Estimates of the number of mines before the 2003 US invasion range betw een 8 million and 12 million. In the western half of the Diyala province , next to the border area, more than 1,400 improvised bombs have been lo cated since November 2003, according to US military statistics. The weapons remain a threat to life along the border, where roads are lin ed by piles of stones or sticks stuck in the ground primitive warnings of nearby danger. Anti-personnel mines can be seen jutting from the san d, and mortars and rocket-propelled grenades that skipped across the des ert a quarter century ago lie buried in soft beds of sand, still dangero usly sensitive. Iraqi soldiers said earlier this month they found the bodies of two sheph erds amid a herd of aimless sheep, the apparent victims of leftover muni tions. US soldiers patrolling near the border recently picked up 21 pieces of rusty munitions from a villager who flagged down the same group a few ho urs later to say he had also collected some 200 anti-tank mines. A sheph erd on the same road two days earlier stopped a convoy of Humvees to poi nt out a protruding land mine just off the road. The informati on contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewr itten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associ ated Press. |