(no subject)

[ghini]

I watched an interesting episode of Penn & Tellers show "Bullshit" on recycling. They spent a lot of time talking about a paper (summed up here) called "The Eight Myths of Recycling " which explains how the recycling movement has a ton of bad ideas behind it. Some points I found very interesting:

The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests is more than 20 times the number of trees consumed by the world each year for wood and paper.

In virtually all cases, recycling materials requires more energy and produces more pollution than acquiring new materials and manufacturing with them.

There is exactly one material that is more profitable and environmentally friendly to recycle: aluminum. That's why a homeless guy will pick up aluminum cans and won't take plastic, newspapers, etc.

The recycling industry is supported by an estimated $8 billion in government subsidies.

Comments

[eneref.livejournal.com]

The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests is more than 20 times the number of trees consumed by the world each year for wood and paper.

This is a sort of apples and oranges thing. New growth forests are mostly pine -- utterly useless material for ANYthing... bad for stopping soil erosion... bad for housing animals... bad for use in construction... bad for the soil... etc.

Old growth forests are cut down and replaced with new growth forests in the forestry industry... doing incredible damage. Pines spring up first when a forest is cut and leveled. After a few hundred to a thousand years, other trees sprout... like oak... However, you've essentially rendered the forest useless for anything but causing allergies and pine-brush fires for several hundred years.

Recycling requires more energy, but mostly because recycling technologies are not often given the R&D they need. It also avoids the trash/manufacture cycle which is really quite horrible for the land. Trash has to go SOMEwhere. We can't keep shipping it off to other countries... and recycled plastic requires no additional infusion of petroleum -- a decidedly limited product.

Penn Jillette is a noted anti-conservationist. I'm not sure this wasn't slightly slanted to mislead.

[solsistr3.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!

I felt like it didn't make much sense that recycling wasted more resources than trashing the old and producing the new.

And I didn't think about old growth vs new growth forests, which I really should have picked up on on my own. V. embarrased.

[uglor.livejournal.com]

From the article:

"Where loss of forest land is taking place, as in tropical rain forests, it can be traced directly to a lack of private property rights. Governments have used forests, especially the valuable tropical ones, as an easy way to raise quick cash. Wherever private property rights to forests are well-defined and enforced, forests are either stable or growing. More recycling of paper or cardboard would not eliminate tropical forest losses."

Penn is a grumpy bastard, but the main data was taken from other sources. There is a difference between conservation and recycling. Conservation I can understand. Recycling, at least in it's current state, is bullshit like the show said. :)

I'd argue that with the recycling industry getting $8 billion of our tax dollars a year for a good long while now, they should either have figured it out, or give up. No amount of R&D will figure out a way around entropy.

[eneref.livejournal.com]

I wasn't referring to tropical rain forests. Obviously, pine is neither a new nor old growth there in tropical climes.

[quandry.livejournal.com]

Some data. Yes, yes, it's from those _evil_ foresters! But you know, the environmentalists make money off their propaganda too, so don't trust it either. Anyway, apparently a large percentage of paper is already recycled, and within the US anyway, trees are replanted at a rate that replaces the ones cut down. This organization puts American paper recycling at about 48 percent.

from: http://www.afandpa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Forestry/Forestry_Facts_and_Figures/Forestry_Facts_and_Figures.htm

Growth/Harvesting:
http://www.afandpa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Forestry/Forestry_Facts_and_Figures/growth_harvesting.pdf

Recycling:
http://www.afandpa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Forestry/Forestry_Facts_and_Figures/recycling.pdf


The site is extensive, and worth poking around.

[eneref.livejournal.com]

Again... they compare trees as all the same... which they're not. The American Forestry and Paper industry is hardly an unskewed source. :)

A forest of white oak to them is just a forest of trees... easily replaced by pines.

But it's not quite that cut and dry number for number.

[notgruntled.livejournal.com]

But to put that $8 billion in perspective, how much do governments -- local, state, and federal -- spend on maintaining landfills and incinerators and toting waste to them?

New York City alone spends about $1 billion a year on sanitation. My best WAG is that if that $8 billion nationwide cuts the waste stream by even a few percent, it pays for itself.

If anybody has real numbers, I'd be glad to see them.

And I'm certainly open to third-way alternatives other than recycling or landfilling -- if someone comes up with an efficient and affordable home generator, I'd be glad to stoke it with the massive junk mail that piles up at Chez Notgruntled.

[quandry.livejournal.com]

Actually, pine does fine for paper, which accounts for a heck of a lot of the wood we use.

[tzeca.livejournal.com]

If the number of board feet of pine sold to new housing construction is anything to go by, it's good for construction, too.

[eneref.livejournal.com]

No.. it's CHEAP for construction. It's not GOOD for construction. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that construction companies aren't out to maximise profits. :)

Pine warps quickly. It's too soft for support beams. It's too vibratory for decent wall beams, although it's used a LOT for that. Overall, it's a shitty wood for building things with... but it's dirt cheap, so it's used often (because it's not as scarce as old-growth goods).

[quandry.livejournal.com]

Er, it's also fair to say that consumers are out for the cheapest price they can get. I'm sure that if I wanted to pay for it, a contractor would happily make me a house out of oak.

[eneref.livejournal.com]

Heh... they already charge what they SHOULD charge for a house made of oak for one made of pine.... but yes... I'm sure they would be all too happy to charge more. ;)

I'm not saying the Environmental Lobby's propaganda isn't just that... propaganda... but a trash and manufacture ecology has been studied NUMEROUS times and it's just a dead end.

[quandry.livejournal.com]

Hehehehe. Well, I always had the impression that outside of a major city center, housing is relatively cheap in the US.

Environmentalists piss me off: they so often put the end above the means, you can find them lying and distorting and name-calling every day. And try to get them to worry about problems that aren't 'sexy' or that they can't blame big business for, ha! It's not fun if you can't demonize someone while you're at it, right? Nevermind actually getting anything helpful done.

Mainly I'm frustrated with them because I agree that so many of their goals are important, yet I see that their tactics of hostility, confrontation, and sensationalizing are so counter-productive. So you get an army of college kids wearing hemp and bitching about globalization on Earth Day, but no _results_.

I agree with you that the landfills are a problem, and absolutely that the US lumber industry and regulatory agencies need a lot of work.

The real question though, is whether the energy cost of recycling is worth it when you consider what will happen if you don't recycle. The answer, of course, is sometimes yes, and sometimes no. We get most of our energy from burning things in various ways: do we want to do more of that just so we can recycle? I think a more effective solution is to be able to burn a wider array of fuels in a cleaner manner. It would be nice if we could burn some of our waste, if we're going to be burning stuff anyway. This is where I'd like to see the R&D money go, and the good news is that there has been some progress. Now to get it implemented!

Anyway, I want to make it clear that I don't think you are one of those people, just taking the opportunity to bitch. :-)
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/combustion/fluidizedbed_overview.shtml

[eneref.livejournal.com]

And for paper forestry, I'm all for the use and reuse of pine forests. Unfortunately, pulp timberers aren't terribly picky about what they cut, and the government is only too happy to allocate them old forest land in exchange for them regrowing pine over the hardwoods they cut down.