lol Shei. i think you are right on about maintaining the spirit of debate and leaving your ego at the door. too often folks in this world are so quick to speak and play with their own closed mind instead of just listening. listening is powerful stuff and you can learn a lot that way. but with that said, i think your really wrong when you say it is costly to implement earth friendly things. rather, a lot of it is very cheap and money efficient.. but the government and big oil companies dont benefit from people who generate their own wind or solar power for free with one investment with some scraps of metal. and the agrabusiness that make big bucks off dangerous petrochemical laden GM crops that now flood our so called food stores dont make any money off folks who buy their own fruit trees for 20 bucks from kmart. and the people don't care much to even begin to look into either of these things, or even consider them.what what will become of this is definatley an interesting topic... but hey, its their life, and its not our earth to make rules on, i just know that way of blind living is not for me. i still dream unlike a lot of folks in this world.
I have been reading the posts here and for those of you who actually kinda promote landfills I speak to you... I never recycled... never did it even cross my mind to worry about where the garbage was going and how much space it took up untill... I was 14... my family has owned land in rural kentucky for over a 100 years when i was just a baby the farm behind ours was sold and opened as a private dump due to the fact the city dump was closed for not following enviormental acts. Everyhting was fine untill my grandfather noticed his fence along the back of the farm was missing... now keep in mind we own 600 plus acres... he went and had the land surveyed and plotted to find where the fence need to be rebulit... after months of work he found out that not only was the dump not abiding by the law that all waste has to be at minnum 500 feet from our property the waste itself was 20 feet over our property line the dump was owned by the county attorney making it basically inpossiable to force the city to do anything(small town drama). well eventually lots of lawyers and all of our money gone the court ordered the landfill to remove the waste and pay compansation 5 years later neither of which has happened... now the people are trying to have our farm condemed in order to build a easier acces road and add more space to the landfill bascially just taking my future away my childrens land will be turned in to someone else garabage. kentucky has a law that pretty much says a corparation can state a private owners land is condemed in order to provide a basic public service.... PLEASE recycle the land that garbage is going on once belonged to someone.... even if it is a pain in the ass it may save some poor families farm... its all we have... stop and think about where your landfill is located
The US Supreme Court has ruled that your land can be taken if it is an economic benefit for the community. I commiserate with you.
I recycle when I make trash. But, I try recycle for myself before anything...meaning I re-use things....even disposable things. If some sort of food I buy comes in any sort of plastic type container, I wash it and re-use it for left overs and what not. If I buy a bottle of water, I save it and refill it with water and keep re-using it. I DON'T wear disposable feminine products. I don't use bags at stores, unless I have to ---If I know I'll be needing a bag I try to bring my own, but sometimes I go without planning so that doesn't always work. I don't ever use disposable plates or silverware. I try to use cloth handkerchiefs instead of boxes amongst boxes of Kleenex---and this makes a big difference in my world, because I am allergic to everything so I'm ALWAYS blowing my nose...if I used tissue all the time, I would be able to create my OWN landfill lol... ETC ETC. Recycling for YOURSELF is the best way to go...instead of always buying new things. But, when I have a soup can or something I either find a use for it, or I recycle it. I never just throw it out.
I try, but University of Delaware doesn't have enough damn bins (only like 1 next to my dorm that are usually full on the weekends).
The recycling industry actually causes pollution. We attempt to reduce pollution by just causing more pollution. It's more efficient to just throw our garbage out. In addition to polluting, the recycling industry also costs more money as in most cases recylcing products such as plastics, cost more money to "refine" them, and turn them into something else. The one exception in which recycling an item actually costs less than just making a new "one" is the recycling of aluminum cans. People will argue that when we don't recycle, we waste trees. But most paper comes from trees that were grown to make paper. When a tree is chopped down, they plant other trees in their place. And the cycle continues. And what about landfills? New technology has made it so that we are able to turn landfills into parks. And the gas landfills give off is actually used as a source of energy to power homes. And before finding this all out, I completely supported recycling. So, eh... recycling =
Again, your "analysis" completely ignores the energy savings from NOT having to extract virgin raw materials all over again. For example, recycling plastic only needs the energy needed to melt and remold the plastic, eliminating the energy (and pollution) needed to drill for oil, deliver it to refineries, and process it into virgin polymer. When plastics are recycled, nearly all the energy embodied in the used plastic is reclaimed, rather than being buried in a landfill. So recycling reduces the need to extract new resources, AND keeps the "invested energy" already present in materials in circulation rather than wasted into landfills.
We don't have pick-up at our home for recycling, so we just take ours to the recyling place and sort it there.
We started recycling this year religiously! My gosh... I never knew how much recycling we had... we have to big blue boxes and they are always over flowing. I feel horrible for nto doing it in the past!
Recycling glass is worthwhile... "When the glass is taken to a manufacturing or recycling plant, it is broken up into smaller pieces called cullet. The broken pieces are crushed, sorted, cleaned, and prepared to be mixed with other raw materials in the glass-making process. The cost savings of recycling is in the use of energy. When glass is made from scratch, high temperatures are needed to melt and combine all the ingredients. Since cullet melts at a lower temperature, the more of it you add to a batch of raw materials, the less energy you will need to melt it. Recycling glass is not only cost-efficient; it benefits the environment in several ways. Glass produced from recycled glass instead of raw materials reduces related air pollution by 20% and related water pollution by 50%." -Newton's Apple KTCA
paper is the only thing that really isnt worthwhile because trees are renewable resources...it actually cost more to do that and pollutes more....you people also arnt taking into account the addition of my transporation for recycling which causes most of it to not be worthwhile...the only one that im 100% sure is good is cans because aluminum is worth money
[font="]I cannot understand HOW ANYONE could SUPPORT the idea of more landfills. That thought makes me ill. I grew up in a tiny little village in Pennsylvania called Rife and everything was pleasant and wonderful until it was decided to open a dump within a mile of our house. It started out small in an area that was originally a cornfield at about the same level as our house, if not lower. Over time, the mound rose to a height of at least 200 feet (Not sure of the actual height) and it's VERY unsightly. We used to have a nice view of the horizon, and now the ugly-looking dump has taken its place. It looks a lot like a pyramid of dirt in the distance. After years of tyrannous operation, the dump was finally shut down by the DEP through a community effort, and we have all been trying desperately to keep it closed permanently since then. Since that dump was introduced to this area, the following has happened. 1. The property values in the vicinity of the dump have plummeted. Many people sold their homes and farms to the dump when they were offered money to move elsewhere. Some of these people had lived in the area for generations and became so fed up with the dump that they took the offer and left. Several of these homes and farms have been torn down or locked away behind a metal chain-link fence that the dump has put up in a vast perimeter around its claimed lands. 2. Rats started appearing and plaguing the area after they were introduced by the garbage trucks. The rats would fall off the garbage trucks when they were on their route and would cause great distress throughout the entire area. We even had some rats under our smoke house that we suspect came from one of the trucks. 3. Sea gulls started roosting at the dump creating a terrible racket and annoyance to nearby homes. Seagulls are naturally found in the nearby town of Millersburg five miles or so from the dump along the Susquehanna River. They were rarely ever seen in Rife. However, when the dump opened, they became a regular occurrence and were very annoying. 4. A horrendous stench from the dump filled the air for a radius of at least a mile around the dump. This was most prevalent at night and made going outside an unpleasant experience. I can still remember that terrible odor and am thankful that it is now gone. 5. Parents started having to be extra cautious of where their kids were because the garbage trucks had a habit of barreling down town streets at all times of the day. The trucks also made a racket in themselves. Moreover, when leaving the dump, they would trail dirt off their tires for a mile or so that they gathered in the dump. 6. Despite the modern design of the dump, people started becoming frightened of drinking their well water. My cousin Terry owns an old mansion that is directly in front of the dump and the previous owner sold the water rights to the dump before they moved out. If you ask me, Recycling is a good thing. It is much better to reuse things than throw them out and let them rot in dumps. Plastic after all takes a LONG TIME to biodegrade. I think I once heard a figure of either 100 years or 1,000 years. I recycle everything I can. My parents never recycled anything except for aluminum cans, and it used to make me sick to see all the things they would throw away. We used to burn our plastic and paper in a burn pit, but I know now that that wasn't a good thing. Recycling plants were created for a reason. The money it might cost to recycle something is not important. The point of recycling is helping the environment and keeping more dumps from being opened. Dumps are not all they are cracked up to be. To me, it is more of a waste to throw away than it is to reuse and recycle. And as for recycling paper, I like to see a forest of trees, not a forest of stumps. And if there are so many of these so-called tree farms around, then why are the Rainforests of the world continuing to shrink? If there were as many trees available as was stated, then people wouldn’t be cutting down the rainforests to get more trees for paper.[/font]
The problem with the plan is that in many of these urban recylcing projects, the recycling bin is mandatory and the funds go to the town instead of the individual. If they can work out a more liberty oriented plan than what I just described, I would'nt have an objection. Any American project like this has to be done with the freedom of the individual in mind if we are to call oursevles a free nation.
