Fri 27 Jan 2006
Loading ...–Jeff Radecki
.: There could be an amazing breakthrough in environmental protection and if people took an extra 10 minutes a day to properly dispose of their Garbage. Almost 80% of household garbage is recycleable or compost. Don’t throw the cardboard box your cereal came in the garbage. That is not Garbage and there is a huge difference. I did not always see this way a couple years ago I was a lazy teenager with no real thought in my mind to separate recyclable and non recyclable material. As I grew older and started caring more and more about the forest’s I enjoyed hiking and biking in and the dangers that they faced I revamped my views on garbage. I started recycling more often and then got into composting biodegradable goods. Soon after I became obsessed with limiting my garbage production. Because of proper recycling and composting I have limited a college house of four guys to 2 bags of recycling for every garbage bag.
.: Not the largest full scale environmental impact I eluded to earlier. Yet, what if a thousand people did the same thing, then 10 thousand, then 1 million now were talking large scale. I’m not saying no one does this now, if you do then good for you and keep it up. The town I grew up in was facing garbage crisis with plans to expand another garbage dump just outside the city of Wyebridge named dump site 41. The proposed site will take up a mere 69.72 ha. The sad part is that if we simply recycled properly and took advantage of composting then we wouldn’t have a garbage crisis at all. In the Q&A section of www.stopdumpsite41.com this issue is brought up,
“Q: Why haven’t local residents proposed alternatives?
A: Local residents from the Why Wye Citizens Group did propose alternatives. They recommended a 10 point recycling program. Unfortunately the County of Simcoe ignored the Why Wye Citizens group.”
.: This garbage dump will pollute our drinking water, many local rivers and the beautiful Georgian Bay our economy and my childhood were built on. Living in a country with as many benefits as we have the ignorance of people not taking the time to properly organize their trash is quite repulsive much more so then getting your hands dirty for 5 minutes. I also believe that one day some corporations may even help, what would it be like if Tim Horton’s cups were recyclable McDonald’s cups and hamburger containers were made of recyclable cardboard and advancements in technology led to plastics that take 5 years to decompose rather then 30. But alone I am just kid sitting in his room falling under the tree hugger stereotype but together we would be a force to reckon with.
March 15th, 2006 at 2:25 am
hey buddeh! I completely agree with you - which isn’t a shock because anything that has to do with conserving or preserving im all for and i believe it deserves immediate attention. I never knew that the club in wyevale even proposed a recycling solution - so that was news to me. ps do you know of any positive changes globally or statistics that give examples to communities that have changed or made a better effort ?? because people can always learn from others- and it would be nice to hear of any positive efforts. And oh yeah congrats on your recycling efforts in your house. Ryan would be proud! *smile- Talk to you soon , and keep up the good work hun , the site looks great!
see ya-JOsée
April 25th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
I have enjoyed reading through the many blogs that you have on this site. The interface is very streamlined and modern, I am quite impressed. Seems as though what is most lacking is input from the site’s visitors, so here’s my bit…
Be careful not to put all of your eggs into one blue-box
Recycling is branded as a wholesome and fulfilling activity; those who toil through sorting their plastic, glass, and aluminium refuse each week gain a sense of civic responsibility and ongoing active participation in the improvement of the environment. The alleged benefits of the program are convincing enough to motivate citizens to sift through their waste, and often, to sort, bundle and bag their otherwise discarded materials. Despite the best of intentions from those who regularly participate in the program, 40% of what they put in their blue-boxes ultimately ends up in a landfill. This can be demoralizing for many who are blue to the core. The reality is that the recyclables that end up at the dump consume far less energy than those that are sent to be transformed into new products.
Recycled materials from your home are transported to a municipal recycling facility where they are sorted by workers with subsidized jobs utilizing a highly mechanical process. The materials are then transported to a refinery where they are broken down into fine mulch, re-loaded and sent for a third journey to a manufacturing plant. This plant takes in the pellets (if plastic, or aluminium) or sticky epoxy sludge (if paper or cardboard) and mixes them with stronger virgin resources to transform them into ‘naked’ new products which still need labelling. This labelling is often performed at yet another facility. Ultimately, the recycled products are sent to a factory where they are finalized and distributed to a store, then to the consumer.
Your garbage is picked up by a truck from your house, and brought to the municipal dump. Once there it will be sorted by large construction machinery (back hoes, etc.) then buried by the same machines. The refuse which is then stored underground begins to actively decompose and discharge methane gas. This gas is often used to generate electricity. Grass and trees are planted above the waste, and most garbage dumps are eventually transformed into community parks or golf courses. Landfills are not simply piles of garbage, they are meticulously planned and engineered quarries specifically designed to have a minimal impact on the surrounding area.
At the end of the day, the recycled materials have wasted far more energy in manufacturing and transport. It costs your local municipality at least three times as much to money to dispose of one tonne of recyclable materials than it would cost them to simply bury it. This is a serious problem for Canadian municipalities and many are severely crippled financially because of this process (anyone from Toronto?). The emissions produced during the recycling process create a negative net benefit to the environment – you will cause less pollution by simply burning your paper and cardboard waste in your own backyard than to send it off to be processed. Aluminium is the exception. It is a highly sought-after material that is far cheaper to recycle than to draw from virgin resources. Your pop cans are worth good money, and you don’t have to sit it on the curb. Save your cans for a season, and then bring them into a metal wrecker – she/he will be glad to cut you a substantial cheque for your garbage. It works just like beer empties.
I am not advocating a nation where the citizenry leave their garbage in their own backyard, but I am suggesting that recycling may not be all that it’s cracked-up to be. Remember that recycling comes third in the triangle 1. Reduce 2. Re-Use 3. Recycle. You will have a far greater impact on the environment by following the first two mantras rather than the third. Try to purchase items that are biodegradable and consist of mostly traditional materials rather than modern manufactured goods – ask yourself if someone could have bought the item 100 years ago – if not, chances are it will rot in a landfill for decades or be trucked all over the region to be recycled. Ground waste or CO2 emissions – landfill or recycle – both should be a last resort, but neither is definitively better than the other.
April 27th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Thanks for the info, It’s always good to have an educated second opinion. Glad you like all the articles.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Depressing news about recycling, but no surprise. The main problem is the unsorted nature of recycleables. Sending them all to the same place is crazy.
I have a friend from the slums of Budapest. In the 50s in that part of town, the city did not collect garbage. Instead, people would sort and package it properly, and a whole bunch of scavengers would bring it directly to a depot, just as aluminium scrap is today. Kitchen waste was fed to a special breed of pig (now endangered). A little, fatty, super long haired thing, it was raised for its bristle for brushes, and its fat for soap and so on. Never eaten. And the garbage was transformed into safe clean manure which was sold to farmers. Compare this to the toxic sludge of the same slop mixed with cadmium batteries that we are now polluting our fields with. Similarly, paper, bones, rags, wood, glass and metal were all collected separately and sent directly to a plant that could use it.This is only possible if there is a small pulp recycling mill and a small glass plant etc. near every city.
As for the landfills, remember that reduce thing first. In Toronto now we can sort out all compostable waste.Pretty much all the remaining garbage, about half of the two shopping bags a week I produce, is plastic packaging. I lived for many years in a rooming house. About ‘95, the garbagemen started asking if the number of units had increased, because the garbage had. It was about then that it became impossible to buy a pen or as few screws without that @#%$%^ vacuum pack that can’t be recycled.
I think plastic is the greatest garbage problem. I heard a legend about the Mercedes Benz. Smelters were complaining about the plastic bonded to the scrap, which was carbonising in their crucibles and adulterating the alloys. They investigated and found that there were c. 50 kinds of plastic glued on with crazy glues. They went to less than ten kinds of plastic, attatched it with lugs and switched to remeltable plastic. Now it can be removed by the wreckers, who can sell it back to the company for reuse just like the metal scrap.If we could make a safely biodegradable plastic, it too could be composted, reducing my garbage to the odd battery and broken cup. Why is the National Research Council not chasing a patent for that ? We are talking worldwide royalties. Garbage is not garbage! It is a resource richer than many.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:33 am
STOP DUMP SITE 41!
I cannot see thye sense in destroying productive farmland and a pristine water table that yields for us drinking water of greater purity than Arctic water.
Incineration is a viable option, using the burned trash to generate steam and sell power back to Hydro One.
In Heaven’s name, NO DUMP SITE 41!!!!!