How do we get the world to recycle?

[DNickell]

Sorry if I offended anyone. All those who are taking action because it is "the right thing to do" and not just because it is economically viable, keep it up and encourage others.

Yes, more people need to be educated about what is needed, and why. I'm sorry I fell into stereotypes about where the opposition to providing such education comes from. I guess a lot of that comes from my constant exposure to folks that don't believe evolution ever happens, climate change is a hoax, and environmental organizations are U.N. fronts (I'm old enough to remember when environmentalists where communist fronts!).

So, I apologize, again, for bringing my frustrations with the locals into the realm of generalization about everyone else. I am certainly glad no one else has to deal with these folks.

 

[buck50bmg]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12966422#post12966422 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BigJay
How do states with cash deposits on cans and bottles do against the states that don't?

Because they charge more for the same item than in other states. Thats why is illegal to bring in your cans from a state that does not do it.

Its called a deposit for a reason.

 

[Lord Viper]

Did you know that Composting is the best recycling there is you can throw everything except meat and bones in a compose heap. It turns to rich Black soil that you can use in a garden (which can help the earth) or in your flower beds instead of buying it from the store make your own. Look up composting if you want to help "SAVE" the planet. they have said that 80% of your trash is compostable can you amagine if we all composted how empty the landfills would be not to mention not have to drive it there in a big truck. You now will save fuel and that will bring the cost of fuel down who doesn't want that. Check out a book by Mel Bartholomew called "Square foot gardning" if you think you can't do it. Want to save the planet start in you own house.

 

[DNickell]

Composting is something that is so easy to do, and so productive, that I don't understand why individuals--and even more municipalities--don't do it.

Of course, I have my own front end loader to turn the piles, and LOTS of animal manure to mix with the wood chips from the power company. I used to load a manure spreader with a pitch fork--the front end loader is much better, even if it is powered by a diesel engine!

 

[urbanrat84]

IME the person you have the most influence over when it comes to change is yourself. If you set the eg. and create a positive feeling of peer pressure you will get a result - whether it be small or large. People also need regular, gentle reminders about things like this (ie. recycling) for them to continue to work well and YOU need to be the one who is consistent and motivated if you are managing the recycling - you can't expect everyone to be told once and then for it to always work well in the long term because that kind of cooperation is not in human nature.

I organised a recycling service at my workplace and I've labelled the bins with a large sign of what should go in each - "Cardboard and Paper", "Cans, bottles, cartons". If anyone puts the wrong things in I fix it myself - by keeping it neat ppl are more inclined to use it properly. I put up a short poster saying "Why is this important?" It has info like "half a jar of food in the recycling is enough to contaminate the entire truckload and it must be dumped into landfill".

Its not hard to change gradually as you learn about the impact your actions have on the environment. The reality of being more environmentally friendly is that it takes a bit of extra time and you have to think about what you are doing - these are both things we seem to consider a luxury nowadays.

There are lots of things that you can do at home and at work, here are some that I am currently doing and don't find inconveniences me at all -

HOME
- small vegie patch, worm farm and compost bin - the home grown vegies supplement store bought vegetables (no chemicals or travel costs) and food waste never leaves your property and is reused over and over. All low maintenance and the taste is so worth it.
- take a shower every two days and use a washbowl in between - you can wash your body down generously with water, soap and a cloth using just a bucket full amount. Saves water and you can continue to strip your skin of its natural oils daily and disrupt its balance like we tend to do in western culture!
- pick up rubbish you see on the street as you walk past it and put it in the bin and don't litter yourself - years back I found a mouse drowned in a discarded McDonalds thickshake - it is a very cruel way to die and enough incentive for me not to litter (even if it was an introduced pest), I'm sure the person that dropped it had no idea that would happen because they didn't think, just took the most convenient option for them
- cut bag handles before they go in the bin in case they end up in the sea
- put a few inches of water in the sink for rinsing washed dishes instead of letting the tap run continuously
- buy less 'stuff' and locally produced if possible - I recently went through the bathroom cupboard and collected together all of the beauty products my mother and I have accumulated between us - and we're not high maintenance type women - we had a lot! So I have been lathering it all on so I can whittle it down to the essentials only. There is a lot to go through! Some of it is 10+ years old because we bought the 'next best thing' we wanted to try rather than finishing what we had
- buy biodegradable liquid handsoap, detergents and cleaning products and use microfibre cleaning cloths which don't need anything other than a little water to use (there are cheap imitation brands that work really well) - these products are the cheapest on the shelf where I live but give you the same result as using a chemical cleaner and smell better!
- when it comes to food - buy things that have less or no packaging
- take cloth bags to the supermarket to put your shopping in instead of using plastic bags

WORK
- buy Reflex 100% recycled paper (great stuff! Tried a few other brands which weren't very good), I try to do most things electronically (the business offsets its carbon emissions). Print double sided and only print things that are to be kept for filing, sent to a client etc. If not dble sided it gets put into a Paper for Reuse box and made into notepads for everyone to use AND then recycled again by a waste collection company (KS Environmental in our case).
- purchase stationery that is recycled (eg. 70% recycled plastic pens, 100% recycled manilla folders etc.) Quite a few new products have come out this year. You can get some interesting things like recycled paper diaries with recycled number plates used as the cover.
- we assign a person each day to wash everyone's dishes during work time to save time and water
- staff vegie patch on recycled water - fresh greens for your sandwich - you just go out and pick a few leaves
- use recycled water in agricultural applications - over 90% of the Class C recycled water in the state of Victoria, Australia (where I live) is pumped out to sea and it is extremely cheap to buy

And that's just a few things!! Changing the way we consume may seem like a lot to take on but bit by bit it is more than achievable. This is a subject close to my heart because I know that despite the changes I have made so far, I am still contributing to ruining the Earth just as much as any other person.

 

[DNickell]

Urbanrat, how do you like your worm farm/composter? Do you have one of the commercially available kits or DIY?

 

[urbanrat84]

Its a small commercially bought one - 3 levels and a tap on the front for liquid to be collected. Its fantastic - we fertilise our whole garden with it and have plenty to spare so they are extremely productive. The good thing about it is you can use it on all the plants - no need to get a fertiliser for this and a fertiliser for that and you can use it quite generously without burning the plants (there is a limit though). There would be thousands of worms in there.

We also have a DIY worm farm at work for kitchen scraps - a wooden box with a flip lid which works well - you have to wait to harvest the whole thing in one go though so it takes longer. Its loaded with worms but I would call it more of a composter than worm farm.

 

[Lord Viper]

This thread needs to be in the open so everyone can see it. Everyone talks about "saving the planet" just the suggestions on this thread alone would be a great start. I own a printing company and we recycle everything it drives me nuts how much paper we recycle on a monthly basis my guy even takes our wooden pallets witch I find great I agree with urbanrat totally start a compost bin everyone. And Dnickell you cheat with the front end loader My family has a Kabota tractor but it seems its never my turn to have it at my house.

 

[kaptken]

actually, recylcing things like steel, alluminum, glass, and plastic and fibers and paper pulp do take much less energy to refine them back to pure product than mining, milling, logging and drilling for virgin material. a very large chunk of the steel and aluminum and glass we use is recycled. its nearly pure and takes less heat to purify back to a good material to reuse. The MRF systems will recycle more of the waste stream in the future. the challenge is in the organic, bio material waste . a vast supply of organic carbon compounds just waiting to be reclaimed.

Our waste dumps of the past, will become the resource mines of the future. They contain everything we have ever used, and thus everything we will ever need in the future. We just need to close the loop and reclaim it.

Something like this company. They take the low route to bio fuel. but higher value hydrocarbons can also be made from waste.

http://fulcrum-bioenergy.com/

It's just a matter of chemistry. We Have the technology. We can reclaim anything, bigger, better, faster.... Its just a matter of how we use it to clean our waster stream before it chokes our environment.

NASA has great plans for planetary travel. They require 100% recycling in the closed system of a space craft. no leaks, no waste, no dumping. because there are no WAWA's on the way to stop off for a cool slushie.

Nasa also has great plans to TERA-FORM an atmosphere on planets like Mars. They figure by building powerplants to warm and evaporate frozen CO2 and ice at the poles of Mars, they can warm the planet with the CO2 blanket, and start to grow green plants with the co2 and water to produce oxygen, and thus make a warmer, breathable atmosphere on mars within 100-200 years depending on how much we do.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast09feb_1.htm

Their plan is much like the current state on earth of rising CO2 causing global warming, execpt we already have a life supporting envelope, and any escalations will make it more hostile to human life.

It's no longer science fiction. we are living the experiment right here and now on Earth. In Real Time. only it is pushing our envelope away from a comfortable environment to a hostile one. but we can fix it at any time. if we choose. unless we wait too long to act.

 

[urbanrat84]

I think thats NASA's goals are extremely interesting but trying to find another place to live because we've ruined the place we've already got just doesn't seem like a solution to me - the consideration of the idea just shows how close we are to crisis point. We can't possibly know what effects we will have on Mars if we change it - we don't even know the full effects of half the things we have now eg. farming chemicals, vaccines etc.

I also feel that a lot of the 'environmentally friendly' options we are encouraged to consider are just a trade off of one evil for a lesser evil. For eg. solar panels. They go straight into landfill and are only considered 'safe' in most cases because they won't break down - ever...

Panel Disposal and Recycling

We have to do better than that...

 

[RicksReefs]

Re: How do we get the world to recycle?

the same way we got the world to sing in perfect harmony...

 

[Paul_PSU]

Re: Re: How do we get the world to recycle?

Re: Re: How do we get the world to recycle?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13119665#post13119665 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by RicksReefs
the same way we got the world to sing in perfect harmony...

Thanks a lot, now I can't get that song out of my head.....

 

[DNickell]

Re: Re: Re: How do we get the world to recycle?

Re: Re: Re: How do we get the world to recycle?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13119797#post13119797 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul_PSU
Thanks a lot, now I can't get that song out of my head.....

(+1 on the song going in my head. Thanks a lot!!)

I was talking with a friend who teaches high school biology not long ago and I told her I thought everyone should be required to set up a saltwater tank in their senior year of high school. Learning what is involved in establishing a biological system and watching the chemistry as the whole thing cycles ought to instill some appreciation for the complexities of our environmental system and our place in it--as well as how easily a system can crash.

She told me they are not allowed to keep live animals in the biology class rooms. There is a real paradox in how that rule came about! As I always tell my students: "People are funny animals."

 

[Poorcollegereef]

Not allowing live specimins in a bio classroom??? ... Why don't they outlaw numbers in statistics, politics in a civics class (because it might offend someone) or logic for analytical philosophy course (STOP! you KANT come in here... philosophy joke) What do the students do in class, rationalize a ecosystem? Afterall, emperical knowledge must have some value in the natural sciences. Many bio/ecological models (aka river continuum theory) is a generalization and is never truely exists... but if the texts books and state testing requires students to know it, it creates false knowledge.

How can one understand how and why there is a need to reuse if one can not experience a balance ecology in a biology classroom?

 

[DNickell]

Poorcollegereef, I agree completely. Even if they were allowed to have animals in the classroom, I would say you can't understand an ecosystem by studying one species at a time any more than you can understand a species by studying one of its organs at a time. Setting up and maintaining the balance in the biological system of my reef tank has been a real learning experience for me.

By the way, I appreciate the philosophy joke. Just remember, if it starts getting too deep, get out your Heidegger.

 

[MCary]

My problem with recycling is that I don't know what the recycled material is being used for. Plastic bottles for instance are used to make picnic tables not to make more plastic bottles. I also would like to know the energy savings if any. Aluminum for instance can be recyled much more efficiently than making new aluminum. Trivia question: what is the most abundent element in the earths crust? No its not iron, its aluminum. Most of the reason for recycling is to reduce pressure on land fills. If this is the case, I'd like that to be the argument. I get confused when all green issues enter every issue.

 

[seanh287]

make it mandatory, like in nj. people in south carolina dont care. up in maine there were people that would pick the bottles for profit, but only they cared about recycling. you get a big fine in nj if u dont recycle.

laugh all you want about jersey already being trashy but i think a mandatory recycling program will work.

 

[jasonm]

Make it mandatory and fine anyone caught not doing it, probably the only way to make most people do it unfortunately...

 

[kaptken]

Scarcity of resources will make recycling very popular and profitable. just like our grand parents did back in the great depression., everything was shut down. few mines and factories running, to produce goods. so scrap became the new resources. everyone picked copper and steel and metals and glass for recycling for the cash. it really cleaned up the landcape for a while. even coal. as kids, my uncles walked the rail lines to pick chunks of coal that fell off the coal trains leaving the mine for the steel mills and power plants. just to heat the house and fire the cook stove. when there is no money, you look for every little thing you can use. we are just too spoiled with our current abundance. but that too can end. and badly as there are now too many of us on earth to simply hunt or fish or gather. there is just not enough wilderness to support us all in that way.

The more advanced we get the farther out on the limb we go. just hoping a big wind don't come along and break the bough. it's a long way down with no rungs left on the ladder. we burned them on the way up. Like oil. 150 years ago the first oil wells in Titusville Pensylvania started the oil era. they were very shallow, a few hundred feet. the low hanging fruit was just oozing out of the ground to be scooped up with buckets. today we employ billion dollar floating deep sea rigs to drill miles beneath the ocean floor for oil. if our technology or society breaks down for any reason, we can't just restart with a simple shovel and bucket. the limb will have broken and we will have fallen to the ground, broken and helpless. Much like those SCFI futuristic doom movies. not too far off in some respects.

So don't drop the ball.

be wise, recyle and sustain.

 

[captstinky]

Teach the children....to recylce. Not necessarily all chidlren should use the aforementioned plasma jet furnace.