NationStates Jolt Archive

So at the gym today, Oprah was on and Leonardo DiCaprio was the guest explaining how global warming is real and how everyone should lead a greener lifestyle. Somehow, mixed up in this was the normal claim that conservatives are worse about being green and the such, and it got me thinking. I mean, my family's conservative (not neo-con, kthxbye), but we've been doing green things for as long as I can remember, and one of those things is recycling, but I've come to realise that not many people around here at least recycle.

So my question is, who here recycles? I mean like cleaning, sorting, taking it to the recycling centre, the whole she-bang-bang.

Everyone in my city has a green bin which they put their recycling into and the council picks it up. We get rid of our old bottles, cans and newspapers with it.

Everyone in my city has a green bin which they put their recycling into and the council picks it up. We get rid of our old bottles, cans and newspapers with it.
Well, not everyone.. But pretty much yea.

So my question is, who here recycles? I mean like cleaning, sorting, taking it to the recycling centre, the whole she-bang-bang.

I do. Where I live ( a nice gated community) we have a special recycling building where everyone can sort pretty much anything into the right containers. I've lived here for over 6 months and I've never had anything I couldn't find a container/bin for there. I like it.

I do not recycle. I accidentally voted the wrong option, thas why the pool says otherwise.

Everyone in our street has a green bin and the council-men take away our glass, cans and paper. But less than 10% use them.

Wood, cardboard and plastic I have to take to the recycling centre myself. But, it's less than a mile, so I don't mind.

Unless it's glass or metal, recycling is a waste of time, especially paper. You think they are cutting down old growth forests just to make paper grocery bags? Of course not! This is why they have tree farms. It's like french fries: if you eat alot of french fries, they just grow more potatoes. Likewise, with paper, if people use a lot of paper, they just grow more trees, so I would say by not recycling paper, you are actually encouraging the planting and growth of more trees.

I recycle a little bit. It's so much easier when they come to you to do it - give everyone two collections, one for recycling, one for normal waste, and actually recycle the stuff you collect (some Councils have been caught just dumping it in landfills) and most people are happy to help.

Unless it's glass or metal, recycling is a waste of time, especially paper. You think they are cutting down old growth forests just to make paper grocery bags? Of course not! This is why they have tree farms. It's like french fries: if you eat alot of french fries, they just grow more potatoes. Likewise, with paper, if people use a lot of paper, they just grow more trees, so I would say by not recycling paper, you are actually encouraging the planting and growth of more trees.Trees early on in their life produce more carbon dioxide than they absorb. Thus such techniques contribute towards global warming. Recycling paper is cheap, so cheap in fact that I know of one London council that ships its paper to China to be recycled there. You can ship waste paper half way round the world and it's still profitable? Globalisation is strange.

Thus, recycling paper reduces the amount of land that needs to be set aside for sustainable forestry. Thus meaning the economy will have a more effcient use of its resources.

Of course ... I sniff my own farts.

I recycle a little bit. It's so much easier when they come to you to do it - give everyone two collections, one for recycling, one for normal waste, and actually recycle the stuff you collect (some Councils have been caught just dumping it in landfills) and most people are happy to help.My council got caught doing that. Their excuse was that the present use of just recycling banks made the process unprofitable. Since they have started collecting people's recycling from their house, and have a recycling centre for things that can't be put in bins easily, such as cars, furniture, car oil, car batteries, electronics and lots of other stuff that I can't remember at present.

Unless it's glass or metal, recycling is a waste of time, especially paper. You think they are cutting down old growth forests just to make paper grocery bags? Of course not! This is why they have tree farms. It's like french fries: if you eat alot of french fries, they just grow more potatoes. Likewise, with paper, if people use a lot of paper, they just grow more trees, so I would say by not recycling paper, you are actually encouraging the planting and growth of more trees.

Not true. Old growth forest in Australia is logged, chipped & shipped off to Japan to be made into paper. We then import it back into Australia. Very stupid.

I recycle cans, glass, plastics & paper. The local councils here empty our recycling bins every week/fortnight.

Yes.

My hometown made it mandatory when I was in my early teens, so it really got ingrained. My sister and I were constantly criticizing my parents for not throwing things into the correct bins.

I've long since moved to a big city, and while we recycle here, too (I live in an apartment building), we totally had the cases of chickenbones and plastic bottles on top of the old newspapers in the paper bin. Because it's apparently just that hard to tell the two apart. :rolleyes:

But really, it helps a lot when you grow up doing it. Today, I can't help doing it. I can't even crumple up a small piece of paper and throw it in the regular trash without feeling guilty.

Same goes for letting the faucet run when it's not needed. When I see a movie where soembody brushes their teeth while the water is running, I drives me nuts.

Same with letting the motor run when you're parking, but to be fair, nobody here does that anymore. I would imagine they'd probably get yelled at by random passers-by. :p

And another pet peeve is leaving lights & appliances on when you're not using them. Drove me crazy in the US. What an absolute waste.
Recently there was a thread about how people sleep, and at least 90% of replies mentioned the hum of their computers (either as "it doesn't let me sleep" or as "can't sleep without it") - why on earth would anyone let their computer run overnight unless they are downloading movies 24/7??? Argh.

I have two blue bins, one for paper, another for glass and plastics.
We have returnable bottles and cans.
I have a compost bin.
Between those two, I generally have more recyclables than I have garbage every week.
I have changed out many of my light bulbs with flourescent. (Though it irritates me that they have mercury in them, so they have to be disposed of with hazardous waste. The other bulbs I've actually crushed and reused the glass in fused glass projects.)
We have hazardous waste days at our county recycling center, where you can bring anything that shouldn't go into the regular garbage stream. (Old fire extinguishers, air conditioners, broken electronics no longer worth repair, household chemicals, that type of thing.)
We have a battery bag to collect spent batteries -- both regular and rechargable.
I've been swapping out the appliances that came with the house for energy star appliances, as they need replacement.
It's all very easy. I'm sure there is more that I could do, so I'm always looking for ways to conserve more.

Where I live, everyone is expected to recycle every week. The only thing is, we only recycle bottles, plastics, and tin cans.

Of course ... I sniff my own farts.
says the man who talks with his eyes closed

i recycle, but to the guy who said tree farms, when will the rebuild that tree farm down in brazil?

you know, the rainforest?

I mostly re-use and freecycle. Not so much that I have left over to recycle after that. ;) (especially since I have a friend who teaches junk art to inner city kids and always has use for my trash)

We have hazardous waste days at our county recycling center, where you can bring anything that shouldn't go into the regular garbage stream. (Old fire extinguishers, air conditioners, broken electronics no longer worth repair, household chemicals, that type of thing.)
.
Yeah, we have that same thing biannually here--once in May and once in October. They take stuff like paint and old computers, old car batteries, et cetera. We have a little area in our basement where we collect that kind of stuff until the next "hazmat" collection day :X.

I recycle. My whole family recycles. The local council provides everyone with garbage bags for recylable material. We all us them. Every rubbish collection the recycle bags are taken to a recycling facility.

In Glasgow, (the real and original one, not some cheap colonial imitation) there are three bins. General Waste (green), recycle for paper tins plastics but not glass (blue) and garden organic (Brown).

In Bavaria there are 5 bins! Food, glass, metal, plastics and whats left. If you don't sort your rubbish properly you get huge fines!

Sure. Plastic, paper, cans, glass, cardboard. Plus I compost so food and garden waste is used. Plastic, paper, cans and glass are picked up by the council, but cardboard I have to take down to the nearest recycling bins. There's no garden waste pick-up by the council, but I think there's mutterings about them being introduced.

I recycle and have green bins for compostables.

I've got a recycle bin. I pay a small additional fee and dump all of my glass, plastics, and paper in to it and the garbage service picks it up and sorts it themselves...almost no work involved besides remembering to keep the recyclables separate.

Recycling is good economic sense; by reusing resources, we reduce consumption of new ones and are less affected by disruptions in supply. Even better, the money saved means lower prices and more profit for companies...the more we recycle, the more we benefit economically.

The council recently provided us with a green bin for compost, and two black ones for plastics/cans and glass.

I'm sure it all ends up in exactly the same place, but I'm a tidy person, and it's nice to organise my rubbish. I should probably take up tennis or something.

Recycling is part of the norm here where I live in suburbia. We actually sort things into 3 categories: blue bin for recyclables (that includes tin cans, glasses, plastics, papers, aluminum, etc.), green bin for bio-degradables (food scraps and what not), and then theres residual waste (trash). The garbage/recycling trucks come around to pick up the green and blue bins once a week, and they pick up the trash once every two weeks which is an incentive for citizens to start using the green bins.

I am an active green citizen! Yes, yes I am! :D

My city used to have a recycling program, but they got rid of it due to budget cuts.

I heard it takes more fossil fuels to recycle something than to just create it new.

Yes, everyone here recycles.

Unless it's glass or metal, recycling is a waste of time, especially paper. You think they are cutting down old growth forests just to make paper grocery bags? Of course not! This is why they have tree farms. It's like french fries: if you eat alot of french fries, they just grow more potatoes. Likewise, with paper, if people use a lot of paper, they just grow more trees, so I would say by not recycling paper, you are actually encouraging the planting and growth of more trees.
But it's cheaper and quicker to recycle, and I fail to see what's so great about planting loads of trees.

Yes, I dump most of my recyclables into a blue recycle bin and put it out next to my garbage bag. They don't take glass or old batteries, but there's a place that does within driving distance. Of course, the various pollutants I spew into the air on my way there probably negates the value of recycling them. ;)

Recycling generally does not make economic sense – the only argument for it is environmental, which is dubious on most items.

Large items such as automobiles make sense to get the scrap value out of, but when it comes to that can of beans it is not worth it. While the raw material or recycled products is waste, you still have to process it. The cost in mining vs the cost of collection and sorting of waste plus processing it into a base substance is skewed towards mining being the more economical.

This is slowly changing as commodities are becoming more expensive (especially copper) but the cost of processing waste is too high at the moment.

Paper is the only item that can be recycled with minimal cost, but it is still not that environmentally friendly. The recycling itself is highly polluting (not much worse than the original creation of paper though) which is why it is cheaper to ship it to China for processing as someone mentioned earlier.

At this point I would like to point out that I do support recycling initiatives – I just do not want people to have some idealized notion of recycling. It is not the blessing for the environment some people want you to think it is, though it has potential.

As time goes on and the process becomes more efficient we will soon turn a corner where recycling becomes a profitable venture, at which point you will see a massive boom in it as companies start pushing for it to make a profit.

Some states in the US give an incentive to recycle – for example Delaware has a 5 cent tax on glass bottles sold in the state, which is redeemable at a recycling center. Most people don’t even notice that tax, and it brings a lot of bottles to be recycled. Some friends and I used to rent a place on the beach for a week every summer and collect all the bottles we could find – as well as encourage people to show up at the parties bringing a case of something that came in glass. Most people just tossed out their bottles so a quick run up the beach after parties could nab quite a few bottles – enough to pay for that night’s beer.

I recycle - the city makes it so easy - they give bins, collect once a week, have once a month pick ups for bigger stuff, and once a quarter ones for hazardous household stuff.

I also try to buy stuff with minimal packaging, run the oven in the morning to reduce heat in the house and thus the AC running, and do laundry once a week - full loads. It doesn't call for a lot of thought and it matters. I could give up the AC, but you know, living in the very Deep South - I'd only make up for it in water usage from trying to stay clean.

I'm also big on recycling stuff we don't use - give it away, find someone who needs it, pass it on.

Um, getting off soapbox now.

So at the gym today, Oprah was on and Leonardo DiCaprio was the guest explaining how global warming is real and how everyone should lead a greener lifestyle.
Because everyone knows that reading from a script makes a genius and a scientist.

Back on topic: I do recycle and always have. "G"-"A"-"S"-"P" A conservative who believes in conserving! Gee, wonder why that is. Might have something to do with it being right in the name.

Another conservative republican recycler here... fact is, I remember as a kid, before recycling became popular and everywhere took up collecting it for you, we used to collect the entire neighborhood's recycling and make a day trip of it in the neighbor's van to go to the recycling place once a month. It was an hour drive, but we got to sort everything into the huge chomper machines and conveyer belts, and go out to lunch in the lil mom-and-pop diner nearby.

Actually, I have two huge diaper boxes full of recyclables I need to drop off before they overflow!

I must admit to being a sometimes recycler. I take in my aluminum cans and newspapers. But there's a lot more I could do.

Pretty much. We have a green bin where we put newspapers, boxes and general paper recyclables. We take bottles to the recycler to get money for them. If I had a proper garden, I would make a compost heap.

Oh, and I'm a moderate Republican.

I always recycle, and its great, especially in the city. All I do is put recycleables in a blue bag and throw them into the dumpster, they sort them out at the trash centers.

No i dont at my home but in my defense the wind always blows it away if i leave it out cause im on a hill