Do you recycle?

And I care!

We also compost.

God, when did I become such a hippie?

I only do paper and glass, because I know where the boxes are for those. Scotland is rubbish for recycling.

Paper rots fast.

What do you do with your compost if you don't like gardening?

I'd rather paper was landfilled rather than be made into fresh paper, consuming energy without locking down carbon in tree growth.

I also used to have a roommate that would have a compost heap in the back.. so all diced and chopped veggies or fruits would end up there...with occasional exceptions.

And newsflash folks, nothing rots in a landfill.

I find a more compelling logic behind buying and consuming less to begin with - that's the ticket! [snaps fingers] The fashion-concious fraction of ILE would be appalled at my wardrobe.

a certain idea of rebellion/originality is marketed but I can't reduce the will to express oneself as "just another consumer commodity" because that would deny those who are living as true rebels/libertarians, a politic that is relevant now more than ever and goes well with what you wrote next : People should recycle from a sense of planetary stewardship and from a sense of solidarity with humans and other living being

In my cone-tree there was a reality tv show where 5 people had 13 weeks and 15 000$ to build a house using materials from a recycling site. The idea of this show should get exported.

I didnt realise that was so rare til reading this thread.

I dont compost because I live in a flat. It would smell being in the kitchen on the floor ;)

You've been getting on your "don't recycle paper" high horse for as long as I can remember. Are you up to date on the latest recycling technology?

If recycling paper encourages people to recycle other things, or even makes them aware of the recyclability of things, then that's a good start. Recycling paper is a good idea as much for the habits and attitudes it forms.

http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=r

That much said, I'll just repeat what I said a bit earlier, with some amplification >>> of the three strategies embodied in the motto "Reduce. Recycle. Reuse." recycling is unquestionably the poorest alternative, while reducing consumption is by far the best.

Recycling requires considerable energy and resources and is only marginally effective compared to manipulating new materials in similar ways. But, leaving stuff where it is and not mining, logging or otherwise extracting it uses zero energy and creates zero waste. The way to leave the most stuff in place is to use the least stuff in pursuing your own personal happiness. Works for me.

here's a really good article supporting the anti-recycling side. It's a pdf: http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf

I still recycle, but I'm not passionate about it anymore.

I saw that Penn & Teller episode and though I like them and the show in general, this one was a little dishonest in ridiculing people for the lengths they said they would go to recycle in those interviews and using that to conclude recycling was stupid.

That wasn't really the meat of their argument, just the silly filler they tossed in to jazz up a show that largely involved interviews with experts.

The more problematic part was the seeming idiocy of the recycling advocates. I imagine there have to be some pretty intelligent and knowledgeable advocates for recycling, but they weren't presented in the piece, whereas the anti-recycling people were very prepared and faced very little scrutiny from Penn.

Still, if a city has 400 trash trucks and 400 recycling trucks, but the 400 trash trucks pick up 20x (or more?) the total waste the recycling trucks pick up, is the negative effect of 400 recycling trucks and the negative effect of the recycling plant outweighed by not putting those recyclable materials in a landfill?

> It just becomes a quick automatic process to separate the plastic, the glass...

i find i can decide whether something is paper or glass in the time it takes me to move my arm into the right position to drop it into the recycling bins 8) always used to annoy the fuck out of me when people would crumple up sheets of a4 small enough to poke them into the plastic cup recycling bin at work when there was a waste paper basket right there and doing the right thing would be *less* effort.

ed's paper recycling thing is interesting. "I must think on this further."

We also compost.

...I only bicycle :(

The only energy expended is the elevator ride from the first floor to the basement, which takes approximately three seconds. If I'm feeling particularly earth-conscious I can take the stairs back up.

here juice cartons / milk cartons etc are specifically excluded from recycling schemes because the lamination they use to make them juiceproof makes it tricky. there is, apparently, one place in the country that can recycle them but you have to post(!) the cartons to them...

> "THe people can sort it out."

i often wonder if i need to remove the staples from everything or whether they have some kind of wonderful machine that can do it. still, i find it theraputic in some way, all that ripping.

The tories say they going to pay you to recycle.

Anyone know how the schemes mentioned in this article work in the US? How much cash can I expect from my recycling when Cammy gets in?

OK then, if no-one can answer that one...does Ed still hold the same opinion re: paper? Because I've often pondered it myself.

I still recycle but I'm not really anal about it anymore (though that means I have this guilt eating away at me because I'm not anal about it anymore roffle)

I would like to see some more up to date numbers re: paper and it's total lifecycle. I remain fairly unconvinced by recycling it.

my building doesn't have recycling bins so i leave out my bottles and cans for the homeless. my goal is to reduce waste though.

WAH? we have blue bags here: you put cans 'n' tins and shit like that in it. If you put something else in it, they put a "hand" sticker on it and leave it in front of your door.

5 cents deposit on most bottle or cans (10 in california, no) but it is for return for recycling rather than reuse which is dumb. Also where you return them to is a mystery to 90% of the population so the home go round with shopping trolleys collecting them up and cashing them in.

Yes, although for plastic, Hackney only does plastic BOTTLES not anything else made out of plastic?? So weird

No so weird, they have managed to standardise plastic for bottles and not much else.

The rest of the world uses a number code for plastic recycling, not sure why they can't just say "we accept 1, 2, and 4 and not anything else"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling#Plastic_Identification_Code

We have it in britain as well. the problem is you have to pay a chinese gangmaster for a bunch of slaves to sort them out as there is no way of doing it mechanically. People at home won't sort.

Britishes are lazy, 'tis true. And of course they resent being told what to do, because that is the jackboot of authority.

I was really trying to ascertain exactly what vague schemes the tories were on about. They'd have to pay a lot more than a few pennies a bottle for anyone to be convinced I think.

Although back in the olden days we did return our bottles for re-use. I remember getting maybe 6d for a large fizzy pop bottle.

It couldn't have been that much actually, it was probably 6d FOR a bottle a pop.

they resent being told what to do

What? They LOVE being told what to do!

I mean, look at Max Mosley.

Sorry i should have said, they resent being told what to do by a Labour JACKBOOT government.

I shouldn't have stopped reading the Guardian...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/09/conservatives.waste

Up to £360, sounds impressive.

Although they seem to have got this figure by taking the US figure of $50 a month x 12 + a bit.

OK, we're getting somewhere now.
http://www.recyclebank.com/
This is the scheme. Any American's have experience of this?

I finally moved into a building that does green bin recycling - food waste, coffee cups (not lids,) paper towels, etc. I love it!

I live in an area that uses Cleanscapes, so instead of the worm composting bins I was using before all our food waste (and that is everything - grease, meat, dairy, bones, waxed paper, greasy pizza boxes) goes into orange composting bags and put in the alley along with the recyclables (clear bags - but I separate the aluminum cans and set them aside for the homeless bin divers) and actual garbage. The trucks pick up 3 times a day, 7 days a week, which is fantastic - never having to remember when is trash day and is this the week the recycling bin goes out? Though Ed is undoubtedly correct about forest management for paper stock (though driving through an area that is totally planted with cloned poplars is really eerie), I have no issues w/ paper recycling. Having worked for 18 months in a huge landfill that used to be a pretty canyon, I'm all for reducing the amount of waste we bury. And, pulping a load of paper for recycling takes less energy, and water and uses less of the highly toxic chemicals needed to debark and pulp a log.

Not that much less energy, but you are right on most scores.

Often the best thing you can do with paper is compost it yourself.

If you shred it, especially if you crosscut shred it, composting is what happens to it when you send it to the recycler.

I think if you add in the energy costs of managing the waste (bark, lignin, reclaim of white, black, and green liquors) from a virgin pulp mill, the energy comparison on pulping recycled stock is quite favorable. There's some co-gen going on, with burning some of the waste stream for fuel, but the additional maintenance costs on that barely balance out.

The trouble with discussing the various problems with particular types of recycling/reuse is that it gives various folks an excuse not to do anything. They can't be arsed to try and understand the argument and juts hear RECYCLING IS WRONG.

This US Scheme sounds pretty sound but I'm slightly suspicious of the various companies who give out vouchers. What's in it for them?

Lignin? Don't bother, we print everything on groundwood. It's embarrassing.

so i just got myself a wormery, to recycle my kitchen waste and all the dead weeds and leaves that gather in my garden.

Anyone got one of these? what can i and cannot put in them?