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This mostly qualifies as "not even wrong" material. Recycling may or may not be broken in New York or the US at large, but it's quite a no-brainer that you sho

by xorcist 11y ago

This mostly qualifies as "not even wrong" material. Recycling may or may not be broken in New York or the US at large, but it's quite a no-brainer that you should not try to incinerate aluminum cans just to waste resources making new material. (Or paper. Or glass.) With language like "indoctrination" there's no way to take this seriously. (Don't get me started on countries still using landfills. There's just no excuse for a modern society. The cost model won't make sense at all unless you do something with your trash.) The examples in the article is also cringeworthy. "To offset the greenhouse production of a plane trip you have to recycle x cans" (where x is large). On the surface that tells us plane trips are very dirty, greenhouse-wise. Yet somehow the spin is how inefficient recycling is. But the greenhouse effect is not the main reason to recycle (also aluminum production is heavy on using renewables)!

crazy1van 11y ago
> But the greenhouse effect is not the main reason to recycle What is the main reason to recycle? I always assumed it was either for greenhouse reasons and/or landfill space reasons, but I might not really understand the goals. If a goal is less greenhouse emissions, then I think the point of the water bottle / plane trip example is that at a macro level, there are much better ways to reduce greenhouse emissions. Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime of bottle recycling. It seems akin to stating your goal is to save money, which leads you to spend a few hours recovering a handful of coins from your couch and then buying a new car. Yes, the coins you recovered did get you more money, but relative to your other action -- the new car -- it is insignificant.
- encoderer 11y ago
  Conservation.
  - ars 11y ago
    Conserving what exactly? Take glass for example - the planet's crust is made of it. What are you conserving exactly when you reuse it?
- xorcist 11y ago
  > What is the main reason to recycle? It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main reason societies do it. Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way. Worst case, burn it and make use of the energy. The ashes are then much easier to take care of than what's seeping out of landfills. > Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime of bottle recycling. Even if that was the goal, nobody ever said "Shall I take a plane trip today? No, I think I will recycle plastic bottles instead!". It's completely orthogonal. I like the parable about how saving a handful of coins is insignificant to buying a new car. In practice you pick up the dropped the coins from your couch, independent if you plan to buy that car or not. It works both ways. To frame the problem the way as in the article, no one pours spare coins out the window because you just decided not to buy a new car next week.
  - crazy1van 11y ago
    > It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main reason societies do it. I don't really think I agree that economic reasons are the only reasons to recycle. Some things like green house gas emissions are economic externalities that we should take into account even though they don't directly affect the economic bottom line. From that logic if recycling was ever proven to not be economically efficient, then we should stop doing it. I think the article was basically saying that in many ways it isn't economically efficient. > Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way. Not sure if I agree with that. In the USA, we have a lot of extra space. After a certain number of years, the landfill can be covered and the land itself reused. Seems just like another form of recycling.
klenwell 11y ago
I suspect the plane trip example is an ideologically veiled allusion meant to bring the mind the kind of digs shows like South Park and Fox & Friends like to take at Al Gore. Just think how many more empty beer cans we could happily toss in the trash if these rich hypocritical liberal environmentalists weren't making all these useless plane trips to UN conferences!
- RodericDay 11y ago
  I think South Park is one of the most politically damaging things that happened to my generation. "It's a choice between a douche and a turd", "I really hate conservatives, but I really really hate liberals", "Nobody knows what's going on, stop talking about it", etc. [0] Heavy doses of "not even wrong" twisted into a monstrous sense of pride about political apathy, "fuck you got mine", and myopia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
  - specialist 11y ago
    I can't abide by rich white male entertainers telling their audience that their vote doesn't matter. As if disenfranchising oneself is an act of rebellion. The epitome of amusing ourselves to death.
logn 11y ago
The author agrees that recycling aluminum, paper, and cardboard is efficient. Glass is mildly efficient. It's that the complexity of sorting all the other waste is too costly with little benefit, so the industry relies on subsidies.

by xorcist 11y ago

crazy1van 11y ago

> But the greenhouse effect is not the main reason to recycle What is the main reason to recycle? I always assumed it was either for greenhouse reasons and/or landfill space reasons, but I might not really understand the goals. If a goal is less greenhouse emissions, then I think the point of the water bottle / plane trip example is that at a macro level, there are much better ways to reduce greenhouse emissions. Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime of bottle recycling. It seems akin to stating your goal is to save money, which leads you to spend a few hours recovering a handful of coins from your couch and then buying a new car. Yes, the coins you recovered did get you more money, but relative to your other action -- the new car -- it is insignificant.

encoderer 11y ago
Conservation.
- ars 11y ago
  Conserving what exactly? Take glass for example - the planet's crust is made of it. What are you conserving exactly when you reuse it?
xorcist 11y ago
> What is the main reason to recycle? It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main reason societies do it. Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way. Worst case, burn it and make use of the energy. The ashes are then much easier to take care of than what's seeping out of landfills. > Refraining from a single plane trip reduces more emissions than a lifetime of bottle recycling. Even if that was the goal, nobody ever said "Shall I take a plane trip today? No, I think I will recycle plastic bottles instead!". It's completely orthogonal. I like the parable about how saving a handful of coins is insignificant to buying a new car. In practice you pick up the dropped the coins from your couch, independent if you plan to buy that car or not. It works both ways. To frame the problem the way as in the article, no one pours spare coins out the window because you just decided not to buy a new car next week.
- crazy1van 11y ago
  > It saves resources. But it's also economically efficient, which is the main reason societies do it. I don't really think I agree that economic reasons are the only reasons to recycle. Some things like green house gas emissions are economic externalities that we should take into account even though they don't directly affect the economic bottom line. From that logic if recycling was ever proven to not be economically efficient, then we should stop doing it. I think the article was basically saying that in many ways it isn't economically efficient. > Landfills are completely dysfunctional in every way. Not sure if I agree with that. In the USA, we have a lot of extra space. After a certain number of years, the landfill can be covered and the land itself reused. Seems just like another form of recycling.

klenwell 11y ago

I suspect the plane trip example is an ideologically veiled allusion meant to bring the mind the kind of digs shows like South Park and Fox & Friends like to take at Al Gore. Just think how many more empty beer cans we could happily toss in the trash if these rich hypocritical liberal environmentalists weren't making all these useless plane trips to UN conferences!

RodericDay 11y ago
I think South Park is one of the most politically damaging things that happened to my generation. "It's a choice between a douche and a turd", "I really hate conservatives, but I really really hate liberals", "Nobody knows what's going on, stop talking about it", etc. [0] Heavy doses of "not even wrong" twisted into a monstrous sense of pride about political apathy, "fuck you got mine", and myopia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
- specialist 11y ago
  I can't abide by rich white male entertainers telling their audience that their vote doesn't matter. As if disenfranchising oneself is an act of rebellion. The epitome of amusing ourselves to death.

logn 11y ago

The author agrees that recycling aluminum, paper, and cardboard is efficient. Glass is mildly efficient. It's that the complexity of sorting all the other waste is too costly with little benefit, so the industry relies on subsidies.