From the time when you were a small child, you were probably taught the virtues of recycling: paper, plastic, aluminum; you did your part to save the Earth. But a growing number of voices are concerned that recycling may harm the environment by expending more resources than simple trash. Before you decide whether to toss that plastic bottle in the blue bin, what should you consider?
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Should We Recycle?
We need real recycling
I believe very strongly in the concept of recycling but some of it doesn't work as well as you might think and other parts don't work at all. Aluminum works great for example. Easy to recycle, not hard on the environment. Paper recycling causes more environmental impact than making new paper does. In fact, if you recycle them, plastic bags are much better on the environment than paper bags when you factor in shipping the bags to the store.
To really tackle this issue correctly, we need to put far more emphasis on the real problem, the packaging of the goods we buy. It is infuriating to me to buy something and find that 90% of the packaging was useless. For example, musicians who claim to be environmentalists should switch to all digital distribution instead of the wasteful packaging inlcuded in CDs. Someone call Bono and Sting to walk the walk. We're not quite ready for digital distribution for films yet but at least DVDs could be shipped in much more environmentally friendly packaging.
And when a company does put something out with reduced packaging, we as consumers must buy it to support further changes. Start drinking tap water instead of bottled water. There are so many things we as consumers can do to promote true responsible actions that will really better our environment, not just things that make us feel good like dumping a bunch of stuff in the recycling bin, most of which ends up in the landfill anyways. Sad, but it's true.
- Pliskin
October 3, 2008 12:02AM
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