Recylcing: An Idiot's Quest (beliefs, hell, America, service, organizations)

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by Mestemia

Oil..

Ethanol

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by Runt

Great, let's "process" all the land, destroy all of the natural beauty of the planet in our attempt to seek finite resources, pave and drill and deforest the entire thing, milk the poles for all they're worth... all because there's "room" to do so and we're overconfident about our ability to find substitutes for ANYTHING. I'm sure by the time we figure out how wrong we are, we can just stripmine Mars or something instead.

Screw that. I don't want to have to explain to my grandchildren what a "tree" was... and before you go off arguing that "we need paper, so we'll preserve the trees", might I remind you of your "the market produces substitutes for everything, therefore it's okay to use up finite resources" arguement?

I'm not buying it. Sorry.

? The market preserves resources as they get scarce, or when prices of a resource go up due to scarcity, a substitute is found. We NEVER will consume the entirety of a resource because that resource gets exponentially more expensive as scarcity increases. Think logically not emotionally about things.
Stop propagating the myth that mining an area of land or creating a landfill results in a wasteland. Hell most landfills when they are full become golf courses or parks. Furthermore, even a strip mine can be designed so the land is restored after it closes.
I will repeat this again- THERE IS NOTHING WE CANNOT SUBSTITUTE FOR.
Oil can be replaced by virtually any alcohol. Steel and iron can be replaced by ceramics.

[FatMan]

Originally Posted by yossarian22

Ethanol

Ethanol can only be used as fuel, not for the variety of other uses oil has.

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by GeneCosta

Mhm, like oil, right? The market will respond when it sees that the inflation on their goods has reached a maximum and people are unable to pay for it anymore at the profit margins they want. The poor and middle class will be left out until our pockets are dry. The only organizations that will be able to make other resources cheap are the 1.) government and 2.) big business, and capitalists will whine if the government intervenes on the customers' and workers' behalf.

I'm skeptical about recycling not working. It's not the most efficient system, but it certainly has benefits over just throwing away your stuff.

Oil is already being replaced by ethanol quite actively.
The moment the a resource becomes scarce, its price goes up. This causes people to look harder for the resource and for a substitute which is cheaper to be developed. It happened with oil. Hell, we are in the middle of the process.
I will say this again, just so you get the point.
RECYCLING IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND IT IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY. THERE IS IS NO BENEFIT TO RECYCLING IN ITS CURRENT FORM.
Get the government subsidies out and let private industry do it,

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by FatMan

Ethanol can only be used as fuel, not for the variety of other uses oil has.

A complete swap of ethanol for oil would preserve oil reserves, not even accounting for growth, fir 3-4 more centuries. Fuel is the number 1 use of oil, and we WILL have found a replacement for oil by then, assuming we don't blow ourselves back into the stone age by then.

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by FatMan

The argument posed here isn't the one that should be reviewed. Recycling isn't wasteful, it CAN be inefficient. It is still a better alternative than making a big hole in the ground and dropping things into it. It is better than simply raiding natural resources and then raiding other resources when the first supply becomes low.

Are the benefits of recycling over-exaggerated?? Possibly, but when development takes away forests (you know, where the trees reside), and puts up strip malls, there is no denying that the area for a natural resource has been removed. The goal of recycling is what should have the eye on it, and should have our attempts to meet it.

Our supplies are NOWHERE NEAR LOW. Prices of raw materials have dropped 80% adjusting for inflation. If things were becoming scarce, prices would have gone up. Furthermore, recycling is inefficient and wasteful, and will remain so until the cost of recycling a material takes less energy then extracting more of said material.

[rojse]

The point of recycling is that processing older resources to gain the materials out of them would consume less energy than to extract new resources, and process them to a point where they could be used in that same material.

It takes less energy to melt a can and gain the metal out of it than to mine for that metal, and smelt it, so that they are in the same state for use.

I do agree that some recycling processes take up more energy than harvesting that resource from nature, such as trees, but there are other reasons besides this to recycle.

As for the point that resources are infinite, where would we get the metal from? Or gold? Even if we mined the entire earth, such as you suggest, where would we go from there?

[Bishka]

There is something that cannot be replaced. Original forests, the rainforest's, the beauty of nature that is being destroyed.