Question by Paul C: How does it waste energy if I throw away everything and not recycle?
Best answer:
Answer by Whoa_Phat
yes, especially glass bottles and aluminum cans
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Q&A: How does it waste energy if I throw away everything and not recycle?
27 Oct
Posted by Waste Recycling in
Recycle | 8 comments
Advertising
Copyright © 2014 - Waste Recycling Blog - All rights reserved. Conforms to W3C Standard XHTML & CSS
There area a lot of bogus answers here! 1-“it takes more energy to drive the trash to the dump” – so, if I recycle that aluminum can, that means the trash trucks stop running? 2- “because when you throw stuff away they burn it & if you recycled it they can re-use & turn it into energy” – what do you think they burn it for? TO CREATE ELECTRICITY! 3-“not recycling is one of the causes of global warming” – global warming is only a THEORY…NOT a FACT!…and used by the crazed elite (ie, Al Gore) to MAKE MONEY by scaring you into buying ‘carbon credits’ – what a snow job. By the way, Al Gore owns a company that sells carbon credits! I’ll die before I buy 1 carbon credit.
It’s OK to recycle. It makes sense to preserve our natural resources, and save energy used to create new items. In realistic terms, that doesn’t mean that 1 pound less of ore will be mined or that the electric producers will produce 1 kilowatt less of electricity. Think about it.
Consider the advantages of two further aspects of energy / resources saving that tend to go unnoticed … along with ‘recycle’ (which requires a process or breaking down the product into a form that can then be remanufactured into something else) there exists the concepts of REFILL, REUSE/ REFURISH. A trip to Romania some years ago showed this working briliantly: Ladies would go shopping with robust and durable bags into which produce would be tipped loose, Beer bottles went back to the factory for cleaning and refilling, electrical appliances were routinely repaired. OK it was like stepping back to post-war UK where everything was a bit scarce … but it certainly makes the best of what there is.
Going further, a trip to Malawi revealed levels of human ingenuity in making something out of nothing that beggard belief. Footwear from tyres, oil lamps from lightbulbs and little kids playing with steerable push-along trucks made out of casing wire.
It all takes time and effort … and perhaps that is the nub of the problem.
Recycling bottles and cans uses far less energy than creating new ones from raw materials, therefore it reduces your impact on the many of the world’s resources at one time.
Besides the energy consumption benefits to recycling the other major reasons have to do with space and economy.
The space issue has to do with the finite amount of space available for landfilling. Most cities and towns in the US are only allowed so many tons of trash per year to be disposed of in the municipal and private landfills. When they exceed that limit, they are charged more money per ton and in-turn may pass that increase on to the users (i.e. taxpayers). Not to mention that most people don’t want a land fill “in their backyard”, so diverting waste to more useful purposes slows the rate we use open space for landfilling.
The economy reason is two-fold. Like I stated above, too much trash dumped means more cost to everyone. The other reason is that by recycling and purchasing recycled products we “close the loop” on the (recycling) cycle. We create markets for recycled products and help build an economy based on tapping otherwise wastes resources.
“True recycling”
Ever tried to take some find away from the municipal amenity dump, ie. a true recycling process, giving new life to someone else’s cast offs?
You go to the dump with a trailer full of garbage, and while you are offloading you see a really smart sofa, better than the one at home.
There are recycling posters and slogans all over the site telling you what heroes recyclers are, but just you try to recycle the sofa back to your living room, and the council gestapo will have you in the crusher with the rest of the garbage before you blink an eye.
How dare you recycle when they have land to fill!
ahoff had a good answer. But also realize that if you toss a recyclable item, it ends up in a land fill. It takes a lot of energy to move trash to a landfill, operate a landfill and monitor the landfill for approximately 100 years to make sure none of the toxic leachate gets into the water table. Additionally landfills take up a lot of realestate. It is also good to reuse items, ie, take old or unwanted items and donate to a shelter or even use them to make something else, etc, all that is recycling and reduces the energy needed to make the items from raw materials
It doesn’t waste energy if you throw everything away because it costs more money to recycle the garbage than if you were to just throw it away
It depends on what you are throwing away. Recycling metals uses about 95% less energy than mining and processing ore into new metal. In most other products it takes about the same energy to recycle as to create new products, so you’re not wasting much if any energy. The bigger issues with recycling is if something is still useful why waste it by tossing it in a landfill?
because when you throw stuff away they burn it & if you recycled it they can re-use & turn it into energy
[[not recycling is one of the causes of global warming]]