Saturday, September 6, 2008

recycling

saw in the USA Today that Houston has the worst recycling in the usa. 2%....

some cities are in the 20%'s...

discuss

14 comments:

Staboski said...

This is actually a hot topic at my work. At home I try to recylce as much as possible. I do a lot of cardboard and paper. Normally my Recycling can is full everytime they come and pick it up. At work we've always recylced cardboard. We have a bailer and get paid like $90 a ton (which is about a bail). We've just recently started recylcing our plastic wrapping. We don't get paid as much but it has certainly helped out with our waste management bills. We've even started looking into a foam processing machine for our styrafoam. It melts it down. The problem is its a newer form of recylcing and not a lot of places are taking it. We are actually teaming up with Channel 13 news next month and sponsoring a recycling campain for all old electroncis. Anyone can come by one of our stores and drop off their old electronics and we are going to stock pile them in the warehouse and then ship them out to be recycled/properly disposed off. We've even started a big recycling program up in the corp. offices because we kill so many tress with as much paper as we waste. You know what boski says...Give a Hoot, don't pollute!

term said...

Houston people are lazy and fat and don't give a shit about the environment.

Poorman said...

Recycling is huge up here where I work...so big where I've been lectured on multiple occasions by residents that have seen me throw paper in the trash. I personally don't really even think to recycle, I probably would if more of a big deal was made about it

I remember always thinking when I worked at the golf course that I could make some good cash if I collected all of the beer cans people left in carts and turned them in....never knew how it worked tho

By the way, I'd love to know how that stat is even calculated

booncakes said...

i think it was %recycled of total trash intake.

so for every 100 bags of trash, houston had 2.2 bags of recycled products

Anonymous said...

in michigan you actually have to pay more for 12 packs of soda and the like because recycling is a given

term said...

Until recycling is directly rewarded, people won't do it. Not saying I support that, but it is the truth.

One thing I just thought about though. It is funny that Nathan pointed this out considering I have witnessed him litter more than any other human being I know (mostly high school).

Anonymous said...

or until they are punished for not recycling, which is basically the case in Michigan, which has a 98% recycling rate on cans and bottles. They charge more for the cans/bottles, a deposit, which you get back when you recycle the cans/bottles

booncakes said...

those days are behind me. i still don't recycle much though...but i'm going to start

term said...

Recycling in America isn't as great as it was once thought to be. The amount of resources/fuel it takes to transport the stuff to a far off destination for processing isn't cheap, nor perfectly "green."

This is why you don't see a lot of government funded advertisements to recycle anymore. They realized it just doesn't work with the current economics. But, with this said, increasing fuel cost are now bringing it back in the mix. Very good thing.

This is one of the areas that I think people should not follow economics. Recycling, although more expensive, will end up making a difference in our lifetime, for the better.

term said...

Oh yea. Also, people look at recycling as the government "telling them what to do." Or all of those "liberals" trying to "control America." This makes people way more resistant to recycle.

The same follows suit for smoking. Or drinking for that matter (though drinking is more fun than smoking) (OPINION).

Staboski said...

With our company it is actually cost efficient to recycle. Right now for our large closed dumpster at the warehouse (which is much larger than a normal "dumpster") we are charged on three dif. items. Now keep in mind we have a compactor so it helps but here is our cost break down.

Hauling Fee: $110.00
Disposal per ton: $36.00
Fuel/Enviromental fee: $236 (this fluctuates dependent on fuel prices and dump fees)

So if we had 1 ton of garbage and we called for a pick up it would cost us $382. We were getting picked up 3 times a week and averaging around 2.5 tons each trip. Using our new recycling method (which we are stil working kinks out) we've cut it down to 2 trips a week (normally), so using the $382 figure we save around $1500 a month. Even if we didn't get any money back from recycling it would still be very cost effective for us to do it. Now its a dif. story at someones personal home. Where they city offers storage bins and free pick up but like term said there is no monetary reward seen. However raw material prices are through the roof right now. If people elected to take their cans to a local recycler they would recieve money for them (which is what our company is actually going to try do because we drink alot of soda and the recycling place is literally a block away). But I also agree as a whole some recycling is not cost effective. We recently did some remodeling in the warehouse and demo'd a few walls and added some new ones, we wanted to know if we could re-use some of the doors and see if we could save money. It would actually cost more for us to try to remove the doors so as not to damage them and reuse them it was for the guys to come through with a sledge hammer and knock the shit a part and buy a new door.

Poorman said...

haha, what a leet cost analysis write-up

any idea how much you make if you bring cans in? Is it like a per can thing or per lb or what

Anonymous said...

in michigan and whereever else it says on the can, you get 5 or 10 cents per. Their system is setup to where you almost have to recycle.

Anyway, about the blue bins. If you give them out to people they will have a much higher chance of recycling than if you dont. In va beach we always have so much trash that we have to put all the recycable stuff in the bins cus the black trash can wont hold it all. Here in Lewisburg though, we arent given a recycling bin, so even though I like recycling I dont bother separating the stuff out. I honestly dont even know how to recycle here, and there is no way I'd drive myself to a recycling center.

Poorman said...

yea giving people the blue bins def probably triples the recycling. I know at home we had the same problem with the trash cans filling so we always used the blue bin as well. but yea i doubt more than 5% of people would be willing to drive somewhere to recycle, unless they were being compensated