The Monthly Debate: Recycling

[Mausey]

Sorry that the March debate is running a bit late, but here it is. Our community has been recycling paper, tin cans, glass and some plastics for over 10 years now. Some people recycle almost everything they can (like me :D ) others say recycling doesn't do any good what so ever. So what does everybody think, is it a good thing to do, even if the community doesn't make a lot of money, if any or is it a complete waste of everybody's time and money.

[pammie]

Hi Mausey...your timing couldn't have been better. I too have heard all the griping about how recycling is a waste of time. Speaking from the point of view of a recycling employee ---- if they only knew.

I won't bother repeating my rant here but if anyone would like to read it, it's posted in the Lounge.

http://annemccaffreyfans.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2041

I haven't been at work in two weeks so I can't remember everything on the information signs but believe you me...everything that is recycled gets turned into something else.

The one that comes to mind first is tires. These get turned into mats, speed bumps, little thingies to help you get into your driveway without scraping the curb...etc.

Paper...Well that's a bit of an obvious one I guess...goes to make more paper.

Gabletops (also called paperboard) which is milk and juice boxes...is made into cardboard and other heavy paper products as are what we call tetra...the smaller drink boxes with the fold down corners.


Plastics are turned into buckets and pails, etc. Glass is turned into fibreglass. Tin cans become fencing and rebar.

With the new e-recycling they will be recovering many of the chemicals and harmful substances from computers and tv's and they've already been recovering the mercury vapour out of florescent tubes for a while.

In addition to all of the products made from recycled products here's a bit of info for you. In 2003... $6.5 MILLION of refundable containers (that's the ones you can take to the bottle depot) were thrown into landfills in Canada. Now you know why so many people pick bottles.

A final point. Recycling facilities provide jobs. In our community most of those jobs are filled by people with cognitive disabilities. Some of them had no jobs before because of the level of their disability.

There are many more benefits to recycling both refundable and non-refundable products. So (pull out my soapbox)

:box: REUSE RENEW RECYCLE :box:

Oh, BTW...before I worked in recycling I sold newspaper advertising. I am well educated but would not trade my current job for any other in the world. The rewards of working with my co-workers and in this occupation are tremendous.

:2cent: :2cent:

[Jeffrey555]

I often wonder why we do not mine land fills. There are lots of valuable metals there that have to be easier to process than base ores.

Too much of a throw away mind set in our culture, I guess.

[AnnMarie]

If people are complaining because recycling isn't earning them money, they are looking at the program the wrong way.

Recycling is to reduce the demands for raw resources, to spare our planet a bit. And to slow the insiduous craw of landfills, which poison our planet.

I like the idea of 'mining' landfills. You could probably make a small fortune in that!

[Mausey]

What I noticed that was when people started recycling old cans, the design of the cans changed making it almost impossible to flatten the blasted things. Now instead of being able to take both the top and bottom out so the can can be flattened, they've got the rounded bottom for easy stacking. The empties take up a lot of space and it's hardly worth making a trip just to get rid of a dozen or so cans.

[Mayhem]

At 4 and 5 my two kids are learning to recycle. There are some recycling bins in our local town and they love them!

[queenrider melody]

Although we get money from taking down our recycling to the recycling center where I live, that is not what it's about. Recycling is about conserving the environment for future generations. It's about preserviving what's left of our environment so we may have a future. We have so few metals like aluminum, and so few natural resources such as wood to make paper. It is also about conserving energy. It takes less energy to recycle aluminum cans then it is to make new cans from scratch.