For years, we’ve been told that recycling is the best way to keep the planet healthy and reduce pollution. Even as a child, I can remember that being impressed upon me in school, with more than one guest presentation, including songs, being taught to us to get it firmly in our heads that we need to recycle. To this day, I still feel guilt when I don’t put a little blue bag of plastics out during trash day.
But lo and behold, what Captain Planet was trying to teach me back in the 90s is just like many other things that were forced on me as a kid. It’s propaganda for things that actually don’t matter.
Stossel’s latest video on the “religion of recycling” actually makes it clear that we’re not saving the planet at all, and even environmentalist groups confess this when asked frankly.
Does recycling work? Sure! On aluminum, cardboard, and glass… but that’s about it. Everything else we’re “recycling,” especially plastics, isn’t actually being recycled in ways that are saving the planet. In fact, every time plastic is recycled, it becomes less and less usable.
“Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less,” says John Tierney, author of the New York Times Magazine story “Recycling Is Garbage.”
This makes the idea that we’re running out of space to dump our garbage more sensationalist nonsense than fact.
“If you think of the United States as a football field,” says Tierney, “all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1,000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one-inch line.”
Moreover, if we stopped recycling plastic, the savings we’d have would blow your mind. Stossel says that in his own town, $340 million would be saved a year if the recycling stopped.
So why does it continue despite experts admitting the recycling they’re demanding is doing more harm than good? It’s because the propaganda worked. People have it fixed in their minds that recycling is everything we’ve been taught, and that every time we do recycle, we’re saving the planet. The people keep it going in their ignorance, and environmental groups and politicians continue to take advantage of that in order to make it seem like they’re the good guys.
Okay, with all the above lifted from the article, here is what my observations are.
The company I used to work for had a ” mixed use ” recycling dumpster and a regular dumpster. [ not any more
Not many companies have two dumpsters anymore. One for recycling and one for trash. It all goes into one.
The companies that had two dumpsters had to pay for two dumpsters. The company that emptied those dumpsters had to put another truck and driver on the road to empty said recycling dumpster . Additional costs to both the trasher and trashy.
Then the recycling truck has to be dumped and sorted. More additional cost to the refuse company.
It has become easier and more cost efficient to just empty one dumpster into one place.
If you look in the back or sides of most restaurants / bars around here, you will only notice one dumpster. Everything into one dumpster, no recycling. One restaurants / bar that a visit often does have two dumpsters. one for trash and one for cardboard only. I have watched the refuse company empty both dumpsters into one truck. No recycling.
I’m going to stop here. [ the post is getting to long ] On my next post, I want to show everyone on what recycled materials are worth to the refuse companies / recycling companies.