View Full Version : Recycling
Wanderingson
06-23-2007, 03:54
I know that most folks in the hiker community tend to be a little more eco-friendy than the rest of civilization.
I'm just a little curious how many folks make a concerted effort to recycle and to what degree. Do local waste management folks make it difficult or simple to recycle in your area? To what degree do you seperate type of recyclables?
Where I am presently, the locals (Kuwaits) do not recycle at all. They are perhaps the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. They also loved to throw trash anywhere and the landscape is littered with debris.
I have been other places where recycling is not an option. For example, in rural Nothern Japan, you purchase your garbage bags from the local community. You can only dispose of this household garbage in these special bags. You must seprate all recyclable materials and dispose of them accordingly. Recycling in Japan is not a novelty, but a way of life. I have even seen the Japanese go into a building and salavge everything they possibly can prior to any demolition. This is pretty cool because they will pull every inch of wire, every foot of plumbing, every door, door jam and door knob. It is amazing what they can salvage and reuse.
I can go on with many other examples, but will keep this post a little short.
Feel free to let everyone know about your recycling experiences.
spittinpigeon
06-23-2007, 04:24
In Worcester, (which is like a dirty wannabe Boston) we have to 'buy' yellow plastic bags. You put your 'trash' in them, and the 'city' takes it away.
Wanderingson obviously has more experience with Kuwait than I, and their ability to recycle. But the obvious question is,....is recycling REALLY the foremost question on Kuwaiti official's minds?
In our little hamlet, we are encouraged to recycle. Every trash pick-up day it is either paper, or the following week it is plastic/glass/metals. I do recycle what I can, and over the maybe five/ten years the program has been in place, have recycled quite a bit of reusable materials. I have thought, more people would participate if there were more of an incentive. In our town one pays x$$ a month on their city water bill for the recycle service, whether you recycle, or not, you are charged that amount. If, say the city would reduce that charge, by say $.50 per recycle bin you placed at the curb, you would get that reduced off your bill; one would have bar codes on their recycle bin to record same as it is swiped past the reader on the truck; I think more people would get on board with the idea. I like the idea of it being mandatory, as in Japan; ours is a mandatory charge as I mentioned earlier.
I have also thought that it should be mandatory for manufacturers, to accept responsibility in recycling; if you produce a product, you must set-up a means to recycle it. Such as Michigan has done with its bottles and cans. I can hear the manufacturers going WHA, WHA, WHA, now. The beverage industry did initially, but they got over it. Again, use incentives.
This is the only habitable planet that we have, at the moment.
We had better learn, FAST, to take better care of it.
Carl Sagan frequently stated, that we should treat this "Pale Blue Dot" as precious.:sun
No recycling here, they don't even recycle the pop and beer cans. No deposit.
My solution is to just not use anything disposable, except paper wrappers, etc.
Wanderingson
06-23-2007, 06:21
In Worcester, (which is like a dirty wannabe Boston) we have to 'buy' yellow plastic bags. You put your 'trash' in them, and the 'city' takes it away.
Wanderingson obviously has more experience with Kuwait than I, and their ability to recycle. But the obvious question is,....is recycling REALLY the foremost question on Kuwaiti official's minds?
SpittinPigeon,
Of course recycling is not the foremost question on their minds. Since the coalition rolled in to restore their livelyhood, their foremost question is all about money, money, money--AKA oil dividends.
Lone Wolf
06-23-2007, 07:54
recycling ain't in the damascus dictionary
recycling ain't in the damascus dictionary
That's unfortunate. Is that because the powers that be don't want it? What is the general consensus around town? Do the people consider it, or do they know about it, or don't they care? Perhaps you might use your considerable influence to initiate such a program, or at least introduce it to the dictionaries in town. We all count a little, might as well contribute, towards the positive, a little.:-?
Japan knew about re-cycling way before any other country. They re-cycled the Third Ave El into war ships and planes.
No recycling here, they don't even recycle the pop and beer cans. No deposit.
My solution is to just not use anything disposable, except paper wrappers, etc.
The conscientious thought is there. That's a start.:sun
atraildreamer
06-23-2007, 10:32
No recycling here, they don't even recycle the pop and beer cans.
You can recycle them...think of all the stoves you can make! :banana:banana:banana
fiddlehead
06-23-2007, 21:03
Yeah, people who don't recycle piss me off. Sometimes it takes the state to either make it mandatory or put a price on an empty bottle so it's worth money to do it. Stupid people making lawmakers make more rules.
Here in thailand, people go thru the trash all the time looking for anything that they can recycle as there is money in: thicker plastic, cardboard, metal, glass etc. The edible garbage gets put out for: birds, cats, dogs or chickens. This leaves a small amount of thin plastic and wet paper products that go in garbage cans. Where i live, there are 4 garbage cans for about 30 houses. They get emptied twice a week and are rarely full.
It's such a shame that i read that so many places in the states don't do anything about this problem. Biggest polluters on the planet and they could care less.
snotrocket
06-23-2007, 22:14
i love to recycle, i live in PA but right by DE. and i started a recycling program at my church (the church is in DE). so recyling is almost like second nature to me.
Yeah, people who don't recycle piss me off. Sometimes it takes the state to either make it mandatory or put a price on an empty bottle so it's worth money to do it. Stupid people making lawmakers make more rules.
It's not that simple anymore.
It used to be the goal of recycling was simply to reduce garbage. Now we have other concerns, like Co2 emmissions and energy. Many commonly recycled items have a higher carbon footprint than simply tossing it out.
Think about paper. Paper is already renewable, and when we grow crops for pulp, it helps reduce our Co2 footprint. Recycling paper takes energy and resources, and ADDS to our carbon footprint. Recycling paper also releases methane, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide into the atmosphere as we attempt to remove the ink from the pulp, moreso than if we just burned the paper, which we could then get energy BACK from.
Recycling has been a bit of a dissapointment when our current concerns are also taken into consideration. Recycling has become just another energy consuming, carbon emmitting manufacturing process, that Big Business gets to use to their advantage by putting those "made from recycled XXX" stickers on all their products so you won't feel guilty buying them, regardless whether it makes sense to recycle it or not.
best bet is to just use less crap. :D
In Michigan, they turn old landfills into ski resorts. Mt Brighton in Brighton Michigan used to be a dump.
fiddlehead
06-24-2007, 22:01
best bet is to just use less crap. :D
Or at least, less packaging for the crap!
I come from the coal regions of PA, where they strip mine, fill the hole in with landfills, put sewage sludge that they get paid by the city of Phila. to take away (yes mwienstone's crap), on top of the landfill, develop it into a hundred homes or so, sell them and move on to the next patch of forest to do it all again. All so we can burn coal without scrubbers in the smokestacks because they pay back pocket deals to the lobbyists and politicians so they can make more money. It's very sad what they do there. If the AT continued to follow I 81 just even a few more miles north of where it last crosses it near Pine Grove, PA (the town not the state park) you would see these places and most likely whiteblaze would be having some good discussion on whether they should be banned or not.
Oh gotta run, the recycling guy is here and my wife has picked up a dozen or so beer cans along the road this week. (damn tourists)
Appalachian Tater
06-24-2007, 22:06
We are required by law to recycle glass, certain plastics, paper, cardboard, metal.
Businesses do not seem to be required to recycle. When I have worked somewhere where they don't bother to recycle, all of my paper goes into the shredding bin. Even though the shredding companies are expensive, at least they recycle it.
I also make an effort to cut down on packaging by buying larger packages and concentrates and avoid bottled water.
...avoid bottled water.
One of the worst innovations of our time; buy your water in the 5-gallon jugs and refill your smaller bottles, then have the 5-gallon jugs refilled.:sun
smokymtnsteve
06-25-2007, 03:14
here in FBKS all the water we have is in 5 gallon jugs that we refill at the local water wagon for 1.5 cents per gallon, unless we ride up to the spring at Fox to fill our jugs then the water is FREE courtesy of the AK Highway dept.