Do You Recycle?

It costs more to recycle things than to either compost them or landfill them. And, landfill doesn't really take up that much room or do that much damage to the earth. Comparatively, I mean. I've read that 85% of pollution is caused by energy consumption. And that makes sense to me. Recycling uses LOTS Of energy.

I like the premise behind recycling, however. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't. But the fact is that recycling is more damaging to the environment than landfilling.

I would love to have one of those recycling stores near us. What a great idea. I do use the curbside recycle containers too.

While I agree with Marcie on the whole "recycling" farce, that store sounds like a great idea. In the whole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" Reuse seems to be the most effective (since there is only so much a person can realistically "reduce" and the jury is out on recycling after a few decades of deliberation).

Great to hear that someone has brought the marketplace into making a difference. I hope they do well with it. I'm also glad your kids have plenty of opportunity to let their imaginations go wild!

But the fact is that recycling is more damaging to the environment than landfilling.

That depends on how far you have to transport stuff to a landfill and how closely the waste management departments are watching what is put in the ground.  One great thing that my community does for recycling is a Hazardous waste round up.  It is only once a year but people here really do take advantage of it.  We save up paint, oil, batteries, aerosol containers, etc. and a group of hazardous waster pros volunteer their time in properly disposing of and recycling the materials.

Like ParaTed pointed out, reusing is an important aspect of recycling.  Do art teachers use egg cartons to hold paints anymore?  They did back when I was in school (long ago ).  My older son's class made adorable Easter bunnies out of bleach containers last year and this Christmas the boys and I made cute snowmen out of creamer bottles and scraps of lace, felt and buttons.  Other kids made gingerbread houses with paper milk or juice cartons as the base.

My grandma takes reusing to a whole new level.  She once weaved these awesome baskets out of strips of paper bags.  She never throws cards away and cuts the pictures or phrases out of them and uses them as gift tags or tree ornaments.  She was so used to having absolutely nothing growing up in the depression that she sees a million uses for everything.  Oh, and she can make a mean casserole out of anything too

We take our newspaper and boxes to the recycling bins. On base, I always recycled and got to where I would feel guilty if I threw something away. When we moved here they don't have curbside recycling but they have two drop offs in town.

I used to be horrible about saving everything for crafts projects, egg cartons, paper towel tubes, meat trays, everything and it just got to be too much clutter so now I only save things if I have a specific project in mind.

BTW, we made the cutest planters out of old juicy juice bottles. You lay the bottle on its site. We cut a hole in top, poked holes in the bottom for drainage. We made is a Petunia pig planter. The cap is just like a pig nose. Add wiggly eyes, egg carton ears and a pipe cleaner for a tail. Too cute. I think we'll make them again this year.

My grandma is also a queen saver. She saves every mayonaise jar, margarine tub etc. Everything is saved and nothing is thrown away. It's a whole different mind set than we have. I guess we just always know that we can get more and they didn't always have that security.

She saves every mayonaise jar, margarine tub etc

Margarine tubs are the original disposable tupperware. I still reuse mine. Mayo jars are great for bug collecting!

I guess we just always know that we can get more and they didn't always have that security.

Maybe we should be a little less secure about that.

It costs more to recycle things than to either compost them or landfill them. And, landfill doesn't really take up that much room or do that much damage to the earth.

Have you ever lived by a landfill?  Ever think about how much land needs to be taken up to just store garbage?  If recycling is worse than landfills, why do most of the states find it so important to have recycling fees on plastic, glass and cans that you buy carbonated beverages in (and some states, all types of those containers?)  Do you know how many trees are needed to make paper, or how much petroleum is needed to make a plastic bottle?  How about how much energy is needed to make a glass bottle versus recycling one?  You don't worry at all about depleting the earths resources of petroleum or wasting resources on planting new trees just to cut down later?

Here is a statistic for you: It takes about as much energy to bury a ton of plastic in a landfill as is stored in 4.67 gallons of gasoline. Recycling a ton of plastic saves about as much energy as is stored in 197 gallons of gasoline.  Do you still think throwing it away is better?  What about the fact that recycling always uses less energy than making a new version, so there is less pollution caused by using a recycled bottle versus a new one?

Obviously, I recycle.  We throw out about 1/2 bag of garbage every two weeks.  We reuse what we can, recycle what we can't use, and compost food wastes to use in our garden.

I recycle. At home it's easy, we just have separate trash cans. But at work, we didn't have a recycling program, so I looked in to it and started separating out the stuff in our office. The bad part is I have to take it down to the loading dock on my own (the cleaning crew deals with the "regular" trash)--but at least it gets done, right?

Growing up we always had a compost pile, but it's sort of hard to have one on the 8th floor of my city apartment building. I also remember that in elementary school we had a separate bin for the "food" leftovers from lunch. The bin was taken down the road to a local farm and fed to the pigs. What horrible diets those pigs were on!!

Obviously, I recycle. We throw out about 1/2 bag of garbage every two weeks.

I don't think I can aspire to that no matter how much recycling I do!

Shades, I think you starting a recycling program at work is outstanding!

Shades, I think you starting a recycling program at work is outstanding!

Re-reading that, I may have made it sound bigger than it is. Recycling "program" might be a stretch--there are only 3 of us in the company! I simply put out boxes to collect things. We print out loads of stuff (drafts, legislation, the what not) and I was hoarding old drafts of a report because I didn't want to throw away all that white paper. I had already cut up enough into scrap paper, so my only alternative was to find a way to recycle it. (Made me feel better about what a paper waster I am!).

(Made me feel better about what a paper waster I am!).

It all adds up. Heck, just using paper again as scrap paper is still recycling it. Waste not want not, right?

We throw out about 1/2 bag of garbage every two weeks.

Yikes. We have a full trash bag nearly every day!

Jill: That store sounds SOOO cool! I wish we had something like that around here.

We have a full trash bag nearly every day!

I'd have to say "YIKES" to that!  What do you throw away?  Is there any way to reuse or recycle what you are dumping? 

I read somewhere that the average family of four should be able to recycle or reuse enough "throw away" materials to reduce their waste to one 55 gal bag per week.  Of course, with that, you can't buy a bunch of pre-packaged food, and you have to eat your left overs instead of letting them go bad in the fridge and tossing them.

We don't have curbside recycling, so we have one bin inside that we put all our recycles in, then separate them out into bins in our garage.  Once the ones in the garage are full, we take them to be recycled.  We only have to go about once a month to take them, so it's really not that much effort.

I read somewhere that the average family of four should be able to recycle or reuse enough "throw away" materials to reduce their waste to one 55 gal bag per week.

That's about right for us for the majority of the time. I usually don't even bother with a trash can at the curb (they just end up in the street anyway). Most our neighbors end up with several big trash cans full at the curb every week and few recycle even though we have curbside recycling and are provided with the recycling bin.

We always do. Out of necessity.

Several thoughts on recyce, reduce, and reuse.
One of the great places for this is the thrift store. In this I mean donating items to them and buying stuff from them. Same thing with used Music stores, and pawnshops. The irony is that people go to these places to save money, and that is what it usually comes down to - money! Thrift stores are also good places to find raw materials for craft projects.

I imagine in the future if resouces become priced high enough, companies will go and "mine" the old landfills and then process the "raw materials" and make money in the process. Just like aluminum cans, a lot of people save them because there is some money in recycling them, not much but some. A lot of cities are getting better at composting garden and lawn waste and giving compost to city residents and some even package it up and sell it.

Some cities and towns tried doing some plastic recycling and it did cost them more to collect the plastic and try to find someone that wanted it. National Geographic had a real good article about 10 years ago on the subject of garbage and landfills.

Phil, you couldn't be more right about second hand shops!

lot of cities are getting better at composting garden and lawn waste

Our city will only compost lawn waste and their are very specific guidelines. No food substances like peels, fruit, etc. is allowed although I think they made an exception for pumkins around Halloween. You are probably right about mining landfills in the future also.

I imagine in the future if resouces become priced high enough, companies will go and "mine" the old landfills and then process the "raw materials" and make money in the process

That frightens me.  Most landfills get closed because the ground water starts showing signs of contamination.  The landfill is then capped with heavy clay and is monitored to make sure it isn't leaching contamination into the water tables.  Opening up those capped landfills would most definitely cause major contamination.

Like ParaTed pointed out, reusing is an important aspect of recycling. Do art teachers use egg cartons to hold paints anymore? They did back when I was in school (long ago ). My older son's class made adorable Easter bunnies out of bleach containers last year and this Christmas the boys and I made cute snowmen out of creamer bottles and scraps of lace, felt and buttons. Other kids made gingerbread houses with paper milk or juice cartons as the base.

I have always called plastic margarine, sour cream and cottage cheese containers "poor people's Tupperware" as that, frankly, is how I was always raised to use it. We always buy the yogurt with the resealable lids (rather than the Yoplait foil top) for the same reason, and my kids reuse egg cartons to sort their beads. We try to purchase most of our food either in containers we will be able to later reuse, or in large quantities so there's less of a net impact on the landfills. As for recycling, it's pretty much a joke to even propose it out here (although we do collect cans for supplementary income, so I suppose we have made some positive effect that way).

my kids reuse egg cartons to sort their beads

Hey, that's a good idea!

I saw an "egg carton" jewelry holder in a catalog. I thought it was totally silly because it was a $15 ceramic mold of an actual egg carton. Why not just use the free egg carton?!

I just got a copy of gardener's supply catalog in the mail and they had this cool worm house composting system.  It is five layers and you put the worms and bedding in the bottom layer and stack your scraps up from there.  The worms eat from the bottom up and leave awesome fertilizer behing.  I think that would be the perfect way to get my boys (and probably husband) interested in composting!  It takes almost no room on your patio at all so it is perfect for a small backyard. 

Did anyone check out the google ads that came up with this post?  I wish we had a PC recycling center near us.

I don't think that you would want to put a composter on your patio.  With compost comes liquid and smell.  Out in the farthest corner of your yard is better.

The worms are cool.  Gives the worms a place to live and gives you good compost.

With compost comes liquid and smell.

This one takes care of that. It actually has a spout to control the liquid they refer to as "worm juice" and suggest using it as plant food. This one is specifically designed for patios and even for people who garden on their terrace or fire escape.

We also have curbside recycling. I do as much of this as possible but get discouraged sometimes because I have caught the garbage guys just dumping the recyclables into the compactor rather than leaving it for the recycling truck. I keep trying though and have made a couple of calls to the waste management center.

We've caught the recycling collectors dumping soup cans into the garbage and only taking the soda cans (apparently the only thing they pick up at curbside in our town), so we just load up the van with *everything* recyclable and drive it onto the military installation. (Newspapers, boxes, other cardboard, cans and plastics.)