by Simon 18 Replies latest jw friends
Just watching the news about the proposal in the UK to charge people for excess waste and they have the obligatory TV graphics and statistics.
Apparently, the UK only recycles 12% of it's household waste and wants to raise this to 25% in 10 years time. But (and this did surprise me) people in the USA already recycle 32% of their waste!
I don't think we have any cause to criticise Americans for causing pollution after all (normal people that is ... industry is still bad).
Yes, quite a lot of recycling goes on. Unfortunately quite a lot of it is a waste of time and money:
ExpatbritNew York's budget punctures a costly green fantasy
NINE years ago, with much fanfare, Rudy Giuliani set up a recycling programme whereby New Yorkers had to separate their rubbish into its different elements before it got collected. Millions of dollars were spent on the advertising campaign. Righteous citizens, at the mayor's bidding, and under threat of being fined, duly separated plastic from metal, glass from paper, using colour-coded bin bags. At a cost of $40m a year, garbage trucks made special runs to pick up the various loads.
It was all very worthy. There was, however, a small problem: the lack of demand for recycled glass and plastic meant that much of the rubbish destined for recycling ended up in a landfill, just like the rest of the city's waste.
This expensive operation might well have continued were it not for New York's fiscal crunch. Battling for every dollar, the new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, this week suspended the glass-and-plastic part of the programme. Howls of protest followed. The mayor got his way only after reluctant city councillors asked themselves what other cuts could save as much money without doing more harm.
Environmentalists say this is the first serious rollback of a recycling programme in the United States. More may follow, since state and city governments almost everywhere face a financial squeeze. Half of the country does some sort of recycling, and presumably most of it, like New York's, is done at considerable expense. In 1990, recycling diverted some 34m tonnes of rubbish away from landfills and incinerators. By the end of the 1990s, that had gone up to 64m tonnes. But at what cost to the taxpayer?
Mr Bloomberg says he is just being practical. Under Mr Giuliani, the cost of waste-disposal soaredthanks in part to Mr Giuliani himself, who closed the city's one landfill and, lacking an adequate replacement nearby, added $500m a year to the city's budget to cart the trash 500 miles away. Mr Bloomberg might have been stuck with the problem had he not found a loophole that allows the abandonment of a recycling plan if there is no market for the goods.
This sensible decision earned Mr Bloomberg a bashing from the New York media, which he readily admits to loathing. (He also got into trouble this week for joking that the police now have enough weapons to blow away the press.) He had better get used to it. With a likely budget deficit of at least $5 billion in each of the next two or three years, New York will have to cut services that do far more useful things than deluding the city's greens into thinking they are making a difference. Source: The Economist July 6th, 2002
Recycling is almost a religion here. But to be honest all of us can do a lot better. In the bigger cities people have been sorting through their trash every week, or paying huge fines for not sorting trash. Out here we have recycling stations all over the place. We have to drive about 8 miles to the closest one and we make the trip a couple of times a month.
Bottles and cans have had desposits paid on them for years too so there in an incentive to return those, even for those who won't recycle. But we still have the idiots who toss them out the windows as they drive down the road. Old man Teddy up the hill walks several miles every day picking up those cans and bottles and cashing them in.
American Corporations got into recycling in a 'big' way about 10 years ago, in fact in the corp I work for they have a v.p. who oversees environmental issues (including recycling) with regards to the corp. They use to have separte recycling bins for glass, cans and paper in the various kitchens here at work. Now the company sends its trash out to be 'processed' where it goes through pulling out the recyclicable (sp) articles ... the program not only pays for itself, but makes a little money.
Hi Simon,
Where I live we have 3 separate pick-ups one for garbage, another for recycled aluminum plastic and glass, and another for leaves and branches.
What the local government is doing with it all I don't know , but most people in my area try to co-operate.
IW
This has certainly surprised me. How come the Yanks get so much grief for not upholding green issues then?
Englishman.
Cause people throw rocks at the big dogs Englishman. But we know we're screwed up in a lot of ways. We just hate hearing about it from "outsiders".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood it that the US is the biggest air polluter which causes problems such as acid rain and respiratory diseases. The US refuses to sign international treaties on air pollution targets probably because it will cost US industry.
True ballistic...bad politics all around. Yes the Americas pollute a lot and we don't have nearly enough recycling opportunities. Its about the money don't you know. Alluminum recycling is big business (homeless people are kick ass recyclers) , but many others aren't like plastics and unfortunately paper aren't profitable enough for the indivudual to care. I do my part by recycling beer cans, the newspaper, and I accept no work on printed paper in my class...email or floppy disk only. BTW, when some of you folks say Americans, please remember that there are Americans as far the tip of Aregentina to the coldest part of Northern Canada...we all pollute, each in our own special way, us Americans....
Sincerely,
District Overbeer
I think the U.S. gets overly bashed on most of the environmental issues. Take the recent Kyoto Treaty that the US was bashed for not signing. If you look up who did sign, you'll find hardly anyone, yet the U.S. gets the heat. Also, the other day on the radio I heard someone say that cows 'emissions' rates as a whole (excuse the pun) are more than auto emissions.
