Earth Day

[jakksilves]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environmen...013-a-planetary-report-card-on-global-warming

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Dec...-What-s-in-danger-is-Earth-Day-not-just-Earth

My current job recycles nearly anything that is recyclable, we have blue bins everywhere with trash bins, it's a company initiative. A friend of mine worked the same, he ended up resigning, and now the company he's in...it's recycling is sub-par, they're wasting paper and glass.

Hmm...I've tried to spend some money getting items that help the environment a bit, but the price usually offsets the worth, meaning you can't afford to pay the higher price...budgets are tight as it is.

Now, on a larger scale, I do think that we're not doing any better than the past, or anywhere near where we should be. The restaurants near me waste so much in cardboard, I remember how a close friend told me he collected all the boxes and paper from the place he used to be a shift supervisor at, and go dump it all at a nearby hostel, as that's where the city had informed him he could place bulk items for recycling. He'd fill up his car every shift and take it. It actually ended up cutting the store's waste removal costs, with having the truck come out every 16 days, instead of 7. Add these 'green' bins he bought at a local hardware store, and you just cut more waste by throwing out organic foods.

Still, that's just one attempt. If we keep destroying things on this world, we may not have a world to feels any longer.

(I know I might be weird and stupid saying these things, but honestly, there's been talks of flying cars, living on Mars, etc, etc...how can we have these things if we, as humans, can't even save ourselves from damnation in filth?)

And no, I'm no 'environmental' lover or fanatic, I just believe that if we have the chance to continue the cycle of life without eventually living in a world full of our own refuse and garbage, why not do it? (I'm talking to you Steve. )

 

[Steve]

Global Warming, meanwhile in Minnesota we are looking at breaking the record for most snow in a year.


imma go out side and burn garbage if thats what it takes for spring.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

haha Stve.

Jakk, that's mighty admirable. I work in buildings (Government) that are hardcore with their waste management/recycling as well, however I cannot find myself being hardcore about it while corporations piss all over the Earth.

With all of this mining, zoning, chemical factories, energy plants - none of them have to maintain shit. They seem to just pay the ridiculously minimal fines (some as low as a few thousand dollars) and it doesn't even offset the profit to be made. It's akin to a popular nightclub allowing smoking inside - $5000 fine for the extra $20,000 in profit through people/popularity/drinks etc.

That being said, in my own home and as Oakville bylaws allow, we do recycle everything we can. Garbage is only taken once every two weeks here, so recycling is a must to keep our house clean (recycling and food recycling is taken every week).

 

[MetalLobster]

Many "green" products or services are usually bought with morality as the primary reason, so if money is a concern, you are best doing what you can with what you got.

Like OG buckshot jr, I live in an area where garbage is only taken every other week and there is a limit as to how many they will take, so I recycle and compost everything I can. Sadly, the fee to go over the limit is ridiculously low, so some people in my area just leave garbage with no blue or green bins. That being said, I don't see why this kind of action is not being done by all municipalities.

 

[$alvador]

Nothing will change for the better as long as individuals keep consuming as much as they can afford to (in terms of dollar cost). Only when there's no clean food or water left to buy for money will people return to the Earth and know what a huge personal effort it takes to produce what you need to survive. Invest in some good land faaaaaaar the hell away from the cities while you can, might be the only good place to retire in a decade or two.

 

[Dissident]

If you look into recycling it's actually more deadly for the environment than just throwing things in a landfill. If you break down the cost of recycling paper it creates a lot more carbon emissions than just say tree farming for new paper. Not to mention because of tree farms for the paper industry we have more forests now than in the 20's and younger forests absorb more CO2 than old ancient forests anyways. Also when you recycle you have to send two trucks instead of just the normal one so that's carbon, and the biggest pollutant of all is the carbon released directly from the process of recycling a product. The only thing worth recycling is aluminum since there is actually a profit to be made. Other than that recycling is a government make work program with shitty jobs and low pay based on a concept of who's numbers have no basis in reality.

I worked for a company once and we wanted to recycle cause at the time I was still convinced that was the right thing to do but the prices for a company to get recycling pickup is something like 10 times the price as compared to regular pickup so a lot of small companies will say fuck it.

 

[swan]

when it comes to recycling glass... i don't see why we do it. there's so much fuckin sand in the world, let's just make new glass.
as for paper... i'm not sure. sure, it might create more pollution than it saves, but i think the real issue is the amount of paper we go through vs. the time it takes to grow a tree large enough to harvest for paper products. it's just not fast enough to keep up with society.
we should just strive to be paperless instead of recycling.

 

[$alvador]

If you look into recycling it's actually more deadly for the environment than just throwing things in a landfill. If you break down the cost of recycling paper it creates a lot more carbon emissions than just say tree farming for new paper. Not to mention because of tree farms for the paper industry we have more forests now than in the 20's and younger forests absorb more CO2 than old ancient forests anyways. Also when you recycle you have to send two trucks instead of just the normal one so that's carbon, and the biggest pollutant of all is the carbon released directly from the process of recycling a product. The only thing worth recycling is aluminum since there is actually a profit to be made. Other than that recycling is a government make work program with shitty jobs and low pay based on a concept of who's numbers have no basis in reality.

I worked for a company once and we wanted to recycle cause at the time I was still convinced that was the right thing to do but the prices for a company to get recycling pickup is something like 10 times the price as compared to regular pickup so a lot of small companies will say fuck it.

Penn & Teller did a Bullshit episode about recycling that was pretty good, they went to a landfill that reclaims methane from waste and pipes the gas to a local powerplant-- or something like that, I dunno saw it a while ago

 

[Dissident]

I saw that one! How like one landfill can power 50,000 homes for like 20 or 50 years or something seriously significant like that which I think is just awesome and I never knew that it was even possible

 

[Shotgun Jesus]

Oslo, Norway gets most of their power from incineration and they're even begging other countries to send them garbage.

 

[Dissident]

And those Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway, have some of the best environmental records and initiatives in the world. It really shows how big business such as recycling can manipulate people. If we adopted similar practices just using waste to make power instead of trying to make things whole again we would pollute a lot less. The only part of it all that bothers me is plastic since it is made from petroleum products and we gotta start getting off the oil. Then again i'm not sure if it takes more oil overall to recycle a plastic bottle than to just make a new one so i'm not sure. I at least know it pollutes more. It's a very multi-faceted issue with a lot of numbers to crunch but even looking at it topically shows that our current method is making little sense in its current form unfortunately. (I still recycle as much as I can with everything I can just cause that's how I've always been, we use a 3 bin system on York campus but i'm never going to feel bad when I don't have the option of recycling available to me.)

 

[47]

in my own home and as Oakville bylaws allow, we do recycle everything we can. Garbage is only taken once every two weeks here, so recycling is a must to keep our house clean (recycling and food recycling is taken every week).

clever bastards. i never used to recycle until this. limit is like 2 or 3 bags of garbage per 2 weeks, so gotta recycle shit.

 

[Steve]

This is the prefect thread to discuss this question:

Have you ever toweled off, after a shower with paper towels/toilet paper?


AMERICA!

 

[Brades]

In Florida garbage pickup is twice a week. Merica!

 

[OG buckshot jr]

Oslo, Norway gets most of their power from incineration and they're even begging other countries to send them garbage.

I thought incineration was ruled out decades ago because that caused a fuckload of pollution? Fuck, I need to get educated on this issue, there's so many interesting things to learn, here...

 

[Shotgun Jesus]

I thought incineration was ruled out decades ago because that caused a fuckload of pollution? Fuck, I need to get educated on this issue, there's so many interesting things to learn, here...

There's plenty of places that use incineration, whether it's good or not. They incinerate almost everything but plastic in Japan.

 

[47]

not all countries are resource rich. most countries cant afford to be retarded with their free wealth like russia and canada and have to hustle hustle hard, just to turn on the lights in the morning.