Published on Thursday, September 20, 2007
Recycling not without several flaws
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Last updated on 00/00/0000 at 12:00 a.m.
This is in response to Wednesday’s column on recycling by Michelle Gilbert.
I think one of the most followed notions (often blindly, I might add) in our society is that recycling is “always good and never bad.” This couldn’t possibly be further from the truth.
There seems to be an awful lot of people pushing the idea of recycling extremely hard, and strangely, these are some of the people who know very little about it.
Let’s start with some facts. First of all, sure, recycling creates jobs. Terrible, terrible jobs with disgusting working conditions and subpar pay. I don’t know about you, but I’m fairly confident stating that we, as a nation, could do without more of those.
Secondly, a lot of people use the argument that, in the case of paper, it “saves trees.” Of course not. What most people don’t realize is that paper used and sold is made from trees grown in what are literally known as “tree farms.”
I’m not kidding. Their sole purpose is to grow trees used to eventually create paper. (And yes, that does debunk the, “But what about our rainforests?!” argument as well.)
Thirdly, energy consumption. Don’t even get me started. The general population in this country fights so hard to be “eco-friendly” that it only fights blatant threats and is completely oblivious to the slightly more inconspicuous. Recycling requires energy, period.
A lot of energy. I’m talking more energy than was required to make the original product in the first place. That’s right, it takes more energy to create that milk jug for the third or fourth time than it does to just make a new one.
Oh, that’s right, and you don’t have to pay an employee to work a terrible job to make the first one, either.
I won’t even get into the fact that, through recycling, foreign materials are (in small amounts, sure) mixed with formerly “pure” ones, creating a potentially harmful container that you’re eating/drinking out of.
Of course, there are exceptions. Look at a can of soda sometime. There’s a reason that you pay (and receive) a can/bottle deposit on it; aluminum (and some forms of plastic) items can be efficiently recycled.
That’s why they carry some monetary value; it’s worth it to make the effort. But paper? Cardboard? Not worth it.
Look into recycling yourself and draw your own conclusions. Me? I’ll be the one smirking when you gasp at me for throwing an entire stack of paper in the garbage.
Josh Marsh
Junior, music
Recycling may have flaws but it's better than not recycling.
This letter is in response to Thursday's letter to the editor by Josh Marsh.
I don't know where Mr Marsh got his facts but in my experience recycling is far from being one of the most followed notions in our society. I, for one, wish it were because then the technology would exist to recycle in a consistently cost efficient manner.
Mr Marsh started with some facts, stating that we shouldn't recycle because it creates "Terrible, terrible jobs with disgusting working conditions and subpar pay."
Mr Marsh, just because you would rather not do these jobs doesn't mean they aren't necessary and that someone will not want to do them, or choose to do them. Believe it or not there are some people who volunteer to do some of these jobs. Some people feel strongly enough about recycling and saving the environment that they willingly do these terrible, terrible jobs without monetary compensation.
Driving a garbage truck filled with recyclables and dumping it into a landfill is also a terrible, terrible job wouldn't you say Mr Marsh?
Mr Marsh is right about some of our paper coming from tree farms but that certainly doesn't mean that we should dump recyclable paper into our rapidly filling landfills does it? If done right, recycling can pay for itself. The problem is that it's not always done right.
Michael Shapiro, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste, said: “A well-run curbside recycling program can cost anywhere from $50 to more than $150 per ton…trash collection and disposal programs, on the other hand, cost anywhere from $70 to more than $200 per ton. This demonstrates that, while there’s still room for improvements, recycling can be cost-effective.”
Of course recycling uses energy but to state that it takes more energy to reuse a recyclable item than making the same product from raw materials as Mr Marsh states is simply not always true.
It seems that if Mr Marsh would have his way we'd dump everything into the landfill except for aluminum cans and a few forms of plastic. He says that recycling everything else simply isn't worth the bother or the expense.
It's true that some things are more expensive to recycle than others but that's only one side of the issue. On the other side of the issue is our at near capacity landfills. What's the expense of this? What do we do when there's no more room for landfills? What do we do when the water tables where our drinking water comes from are polluted by these landfills? Perhaps Mr. Marsh wouldn't mind living next to a landfill? I, for one, would mind. When it comes to sparing the earth any more scars of human habitation, perhaps it is worth paying the price asked of us until the proper technology is available.
If we can dump the minimal amount into the landfills and recycle all other items, we are not only sparing the resources they originate from…we are sparing the land itself the burden of our vast consumption. In fact, I wouldn't mind paying a little more for products that use recyclable materials and minimal packaging just to encourage its production and use.
In closing I'd like to tell the smirking Mr Marsh where to put that stack of paper as he's throwing it into the garbage, please put it into the recycle bin instead.
Albert Lundgren
Psychology Staff
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