Recycling.

timmi

timmi

Active member
i heard something the other day from a teacher that kind of disturbs me. hardly anywhere in the united states recycles? i know florida doesnt have a recycling program. i think that is rediculas.

do you see that as a problem? i guess growing up where i did in ontario, recycling was just something that you did. didnt even think about. but you guys must have an amazing amount of waste considering generally for me, we have 2 boxes of recycling for every 1 bag of garbage.

usa is going to be facing a huge amount of problems very soon for waste management if they dont change their ways. detroit is already trucking their garbage into ontario, and filling up our used open mines with it. (over 6 hour drive to where the mines are, times the hundreds of truckloads they must be shipping, thats also a huge toll on the environment).

i realize i could be totally ignorant, and the majority of the states could recycle, i guess thats why im posting this, to gain a little more knowledge.

and fyi, you could defenetly make a killing if you found a way to start a recycling plant over the next few years. cause eventually people will be forced to change thier ways.

discuss.
 
i have never recycled something. i have never seen a recycling bin, and my parents never did it. no one around where i live recycles...
 
i've recycled my whole life so it's just something i do.

my family has a big bin outside where we put all our bottles and inside we have some bins where we put cardboard, cans and paper.

i dont understand why some people dont recycle even when they have depot's near them. it's not much of a hassle to do.
 
SW PA, and i take that back, we have paper recycling bins at school for environmental studies. but only the school uses them. in fact, i don't know anyone who recycles on a regular basis, its pretty horrible.
 
Yeah, its just something I do here. I got a garbage can a recycling bin that our garbage comapny gives us and we just do it. I kinda assumed everyone did it..
 
I just came from pei, where recycling is huge, To NL, where it is almost nonexistent. I just save all my cans and paper and stuff until my boxes are full, then dump them in the one bunch of bins they ahve here.
 
I'm from Oregon, and I've always recycled everything I can, there is a reyclying man that comes by to pick it up just like a garbage man.
 
The northern half of the country recylces SO much more than the southern. I live in NY and have always recycled. In our school we have trash, plastic and paper bins. At home we have trash, paper, plastic and returnables. When we rented our house to some people from texas they managed to create 12 fucking bags of garbage. No recycling. When I went on a trip to SC this summer we stopped in VA and stayed with relatives that use to live here and they said that in VA they recycle but not much and when we got to SC there were no options for recylcing at all.
 
Yeah thats the sad part.  Because people don't know how to properly recycle, it often gets too contaminated for the company to take it.  That happens a ton with composting, too.
 
thats the dumbest statement i have ever herd. Where did you get that information from i would love to see it. Why would the government spend millions on a recycling program and refineries to not be used? You do realise that the recycling gets washed, melted, and re formatted into new product? Hell, they are making new shopping bags (stronger, and much more environmentally friendly then the old plasic bags) straight 100% from recycled material.

Where the hell do you live?
 
No... I think what he may mean or at least what I know is true is that not the recylcing plant, but the actual place like schools set up recycling bins and throw it into regular garbage.  It happens all over the place... and it happened at my highschool.  It happened with composting at the college I go to now, too.
 
it wouldn't let me quote this so i had to cut it out. stupid NS

: It happens all over the place... and it happened at my highschool. It happened with composting at the college I go to now, too.:

oh ok that makes sense. I was thinking like you have your recycling bins that go onto the road once a week, and hte garbage that goes on the street once a week, was all going into the same part of the same truck. I guess i just mis interperated. But i agree with you, its sad at school seeing only garbage cans, forcing kids to throw water bottles, pop cans, etc in with garbage. I ended up taking my water bottles home each day to recycle them
 
So does recycling actually save enough energy to make it worth me going out of my way and using extra energy to do it? I kinda doubt it does, and that just makes it seem worthless to me.

With that being said, If I don't have to extend extra effort, or I have some incentive to recycle I do. I'll always throw my old papers and stuff in the Paper Recycling bins that are next to the trash cans at school cause I don't have to try harder. I recycle all my cans and bottles too cause they're worth 10 cents.
 
when is there never incentive to do so? Do you really not care about this place you call home? About the future?
 
Recycling doesn't require extra energy from you other than walking to a recycling can which if youre in a spot that does it, is probably 10 ft away
 
i recycle everything, its just a habit, especially during school. i cant imagine not doing it, like everytime i get a paper back that i dont want and i see the recycling bin...i ball up the paper and snipe out a three pointer.
 
see I disagree. my family recycles, and its a pain in the ass. but I do it anyways because I care

but I can see why not many people in the U.S. do it, because no one does.
 
plus you have to think about which day is recycling and what plastics and whatever are accepted. Don't forget that your brain uses the most energy out of everything in your body. Then there are the separate trucks for recycling.

I'm just wondering if there is any net gain of energy from recycling. Like if I use 10 joules of energy in an effort to save 5 joules by recycling then I'm actually causing a problem, at least when you look at it from an energy saving point of view.
 
i live in colorado, i recycle everything i can. Seems like most people here are really environmentally conscious, cfl's are really popular too.
 
same here, I'm in NJ. my school has recycling and I do at my house as well. I also though most people did it.
 
When you throw garbage away, you are taking up more and more precious space that we are slowly losing on the earth. There is no gain whatsoever from just throwing out your trash. Whereas, with recycling, even if it takes a little extra effort on multiple parties, it is reducing the pollution, the waste, and returning some of the trash that is thrown out everyday and is reusing it to keep us green.

Recycling is pretty huge at my university. There are recycling bins outside all over campus for bottles and paper. Every classroom has at least 2 garbage cans, one for trash one for recycling. Our trash compactors in the dorms all have spots for recycling, so on and so forth. At home recycling is pretty big too. We have a few separate bins that we put out with our garbage everyweek and as long as we sort them correctly a separate recycling vehicle comes and picks them up.
 
this is whats wrong with america, people are extremely wasteful, and greedy. we never think about the long term effects, just look at the war in iraq. even i fall victem to this, im greedy in a sense. its like last night i was watching a game show, one of the fattest people i have ever seen went on, he made it to like 500,000 i think and the host was like "if you go for the million and get it wrong, you loose everything down to 1000$ and clearly stated that the million question was going to be extremely difficult and completely random, the guy then talked about oh, well i would like 1 second car, and so on, in the end he failed and lost it all

i guess this kinda got off topic, but americans are extremely greedy and wasteful, we know were causing global warming but driving our huge ass cars all over, but its how we were brought up, i guess.

 
If you're worried about using your brain more, then there's something wrong with you.  The energy used is not substancial.... what is substancial is the waste humans create.  There are numerous consequences of increased waste that I could go on and on talking about, but I think we all now excess waste is bad.
 
I've recycled all my life and i live in B.C. Canada. theres seperate trucks that come around to pick up only recycling. Personally im disgusted by people that do not recycle when it is available to them. Its very easy to do and it helps out alot. i generally thought everyone did it until now.
 
Oh WOW...WOW!

I am speechless.

And I recycle. Takes a whole 5 minutes out of my week. Plus tons of brain power, which is why I always eat a powerbar before I do the recycling.
 
most states do recycle...although sometimes recycling casues more polution than just throwing it away...who knows
 
Although I recycle, I'm pretty sure itsbackfliptime has a pretty good point. I really have no statistics to back it up, but I don't think it's all that significant in the overall scheme of our environmental problems/maybe not even very productive at all.

America has this idea that if we just do little things to make up for our lifestyle everything will be fine. IT's ok to do what the fuck you want as long as you recycle right? Wrong. Try not buying products that aren't local, and don't require grotesque packaging. I wonder how many of you crying about people not recycling actually refill water bottles instead of paying a dollar a bottle for water to be shipped about the country. Do you have any idea how much water weighs? You'd all be shocked at how much gas it takes to transport your oh-so convenient Poland springs.

The average piece of food in America travels over 2000 miles I believe. Think about that.

Saving the environment is not something that can be done with any level of efficacy if it's only done when convenient.
 
thank you for getting my point. Its not that I don't recycle, its just that I don't think that going out of my way to recycle is going to make any difference at all.
 
You should see the amount of bottles I have in both of my parents houses. My mom goes to the farmers market every saturday. We buy local dairy. A bunch of our neighbors sell corn, honey, eggs and maple syrup. We turn our heat OFF when we're not home. Not just down, off. We're trying to get solar panels but they are incredibly expensive and will require a grant from the gov't which is going to take forever.
 
Exactly, you're making serious lifestyle changes that have far more of an effect than recycling does. Believe me, I certainly think it's worth trying to make a difference, but I hate when people act as if not recycling is inconceivable, but consume resources wantonly with the rest of their lives.

I need to get alot better about eating local products, but for what it's worth I'm vegetarian, live in a wood heated house, am buying a road bike for daily transport, have my money invested in alternative energy funds blah blah blah.

Also, depending on the insulation and heating setup of your house, turning your heat off can actually be less efficient because it takes alot of energy to re-heat a house, sometimes more than it does to keep it at a stable temperature. But yeah, word to actually doing shit.
 
i live in wisconsin, and most of the families around here have a trash bin, a recycling bin for paper, and recycling for plastic and glass. its a completely normal thing everyone just kinda does without a second thought.

in 7th or 8th grade i went to my grandmas in iowa and found out that they have NO recycling program whatsoever. maybe its just me, but it doesnt seem that hard to just throw stuff in a different bin, and it does a hell of a lot of good.
 
ya dude, me too... but one time i was at my friends house (best friends) and i asked him where the recycling was and he was like "wtf do you think we're not gay we don't recycle" and i was like "ugh.."
 
Well both of my parents live alone and they both travel for days at a time so it really does help. We also have 2 wood stoves in each house which we use as much as possible. Another thing people can do to cut down on energy is close the doors and vents in rooms that are not being used. There's no reason to heat a room that no one goes in.
 
It saves soo much energy, especially for glass. Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power your TV for 3 hours.
 
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