Why are we separating our recyclables?

[Admiral Beez]

That would be one of those maddening factoids that makes me wonder whether recycling has much of a net environmental benefit...imagine the carbon footprint of sending bulk recyclables to China and back again. There was an interesting article in the FT about this awhile back, which concluded that the case for recycling is at best arguable if I remember correctly. Nonetheless I sort dutifully. Feels good, I guess.

I don't see the issue. We hardly make anything in Canada anymore, while China makes everything. Plus the plastic came from them in the first place. So, we send it back. We don't recycle plastics in order to reduce the carbon footprint; we recycle in order to divert materials from landfills.

 

[allabootmatt]

Of course. But if we wanted to create a hierarchy of pressing environmental issues, reducing carbon emissions would come way before diverting recyclables, or so I would argue anyway.

Though of course many recyclable products are made from petroleum, so recycling/reuse does have some carbon benefit.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Of course. But if we wanted to create a hierarchy of pressing environmental issues, reducing carbon emissions would come way

Yes, but I don't consider recycling an enviromental issue. If we had the space in the landfills to put all of our old junk we'd be doing that, and likely wouldn't be recycling much. Recycling glass for example is hardly an environmental issue, since it's made from sand, and it probably takes as much resources and energy to recycle glass as it would to make it new. Same for cardboard, which comes from a renewable resource (i.e. trees), by the time we chemically bleach and break apart the old fibres to a state where we can reuse them, we've used so much energy and resources and dumped so much waste chemical residue that again recycling cardboard is not environmentally beneficial (provided we have good forest management).

 

[casaguy]

I don't consider recycling an enviromental issue. If we had the space in the landfills to put all of our old junk we'd be doing that, and likely wouldn't be recycling much.

Maybe the landfills are filling up, but in Canada we've got nothing but land. So why don't we just dig more and more bigger holes and keep dumping if it's got less of an impact on the environment?

I have to agree that I am sometimes skeptical about the whole recycling thing as well. How much better is it making the world, really?

I was recently in Phoenix for the first time (I had no idea how huge and populated that city is) and people there rolled their eyes at the concept. Apparently very few residents there are recycling as religiously as we are. (An anectdoatal comment, not a researched one).

 

[Admiral Beez]

Maybe the landfills are filling up, but in Canada we've got nothing but land. So why don't we just dig more and more bigger holes and keep dumping if it's got less of an impact on the environment?.

Because each city is responsible for its own garbage, and thus you need a city owned landfill within the municipality. If you don't have one, then you need to pay to have it trucked elsewhere, which costs money per ton. If you can reduce the tons by diverting the reusable material elsewhere and even selling it to those that need plastics, metals, etc., then you can reduce the cost of shipping to landfill.

In Fredericton, where I was living from 2004 to mid-2007 we had a massive landfill (which just recently caught on fire BTW) for only 50,000 people, so we didn't recycle much at all.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Adm. Beez:

Why arbitarily stop at the level where the plastic object is made? The plastic is probably made at some petrochemcial plant elsewhere...and the oil could very well come from Alberta...

AoD

 

[Mot]

Pet Question.

We have a dog and a cat. When we move to Toronto what are we required to do with their waste?

Here in New Jersey it goes in with the trash.

 

[Edward Skira]

I live in a condo and the diapers go down the garbage chute.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Toronto's green bins are ravenously hungry for excrement produced by all mammalian life forms.

 

[ShonTron]

Adm. Beez:

Why arbitarily stop at the level where the plastic object is made? The plastic is probably made at some petrochemcial plant elsewhere...and the oil could very well come from Alberta...

If we end up being the nuclear waste site to the world because we have the world's largest reserves of uranium, this makes sense. Why stop at nuclear waste?

 

[Mot]

Garbage Chute

I am so glad to hear you throw diapers in the chute, friends of our said we were supposed to recycle our pet waste. I can't imagine keeping my Katie's leftovers in a green bin in our condo until recycling day.

 

[Edward Skira]

We don't have green bins in our building so I'm not sure what would happen if they did bring them in.

 

[Urban Shocker]

I've never thought to ask the neighbours on my street who have infants and/or pets what they do. It's stinky enough storing food scraps for a week at the back of the house, especially in the summer ...

 

[adma]

Toronto's green bins are ravenously hungry for excrement produced by all mammalian life forms.

Wow, so I don't have to use a flush toilet anymore?

 

[Admiral Beez]

I am so glad to hear you throw diapers in the chute, friends of our said we were supposed to recycle our pet waste. I can't imagine keeping my Katie's leftovers in a green bin in our condo until recycling day.

When our twin daughters were born in 2003 we hired a disposable diaper recycling service. They'd leave the bin on our front porch in Cabbagetown and come by each week to collect it. We liked the service, since it helped to keep the diapers out of the landfill, and apparently they were used for some purpose, perhaps fertilizer? One day the diaper pick-up guy arrived and saw my new born twins, and said he now understood why the bin was always so full, as we were going through at least 20 diapers a day for those first six months. Now that the city accepts disposable diapers in the green bin, I imagine the firm that offered the diaper collection service is either out of that business, or hired by the city to do the processing.