Recycling can save the world?
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El Héroe Oscuro
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George Carlin, can you please preach to my good amiga Rika and other friends of PC my thoughts on recycling and other environmental ways of saving the planet? Thx bae.
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Recycling, yes.
However the idea of using more efficient cars and 'saving' resources is a false economy. Chemical energy is convenient, dense and already vastly more efficient as-is compared to 'clean' sources. We're gonna drill up and burn all the hydrocarbon fuels anyway and whether we do it what in human experience would be quickly or slowly, it'll still be extremely fast on geological and evolutionary timescales.
So back to recycling. Nevermind "we've got to stop burning X", just reuse the combustion products, one of which is water (its vapour being the main greenhouse gas by a huge margin, fun fact). CO2 is recycled by trees, and... those two things are pretty much all that come out of burning fuel. Cutting through an acre of rainforest every minute is fine as long as you're planting. But we're not planting. We need that space for our horribly inefficient food production. Thankfully microbial ecosystems for food production are increasingly being taken seriously and researched; the only problem is in the majority of people not accepting 'fake' food because of their illiteracy in science and technology.
This might sound funny but these problems are ultimately resolved by better relationships between people, particularly parents and their children. Raise a generation that understand science and how an agency of opinion is really quite unnecessary and government really quite harmful, and you get a society with a mind for producing actual solutions to actual problems instead of us plebs on a forum discussing whether we believe in the benefits of recycling as though that means anything.
However the idea of using more efficient cars and 'saving' resources is a false economy. Chemical energy is convenient, dense and already vastly more efficient as-is compared to 'clean' sources. We're gonna drill up and burn all the hydrocarbon fuels anyway and whether we do it what in human experience would be quickly or slowly, it'll still be extremely fast on geological and evolutionary timescales.
So back to recycling. Nevermind "we've got to stop burning X", just reuse the combustion products, one of which is water (its vapour being the main greenhouse gas by a huge margin, fun fact). CO2 is recycled by trees, and... those two things are pretty much all that come out of burning fuel. Cutting through an acre of rainforest every minute is fine as long as you're planting. But we're not planting. We need that space for our horribly inefficient food production. Thankfully microbial ecosystems for food production are increasingly being taken seriously and researched; the only problem is in the majority of people not accepting 'fake' food because of their illiteracy in science and technology.
This might sound funny but these problems are ultimately resolved by better relationships between people, particularly parents and their children. Raise a generation that understand science and how an agency of opinion is really quite unnecessary and government really quite harmful, and you get a society with a mind for producing actual solutions to actual problems instead of us plebs on a forum discussing whether we believe in the benefits of recycling as though that means anything.
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I recycle hmmm....yup! like paper bags, plastic bags etc...
The concept of recycling was invented by manufacturing, and is as old as manufacturing itself. Factories try to recover as much of their waste as possible as early as possible and recycle it back into their process.
Recycling at a domestic level is essentially the same idea. Some products have so much energy or money embodied in them that it makes sense to recover them after use. Glass, aluminium, paper all stand a good chance of being economical to recover. For example, processing them from raw requires so much energy.
Food waste is more of an environmental issue than an efficiency one. If chucked in landfill it degrades anaerobically, which generates methane. That's a powerful GHG, so people should either be encouraged to compost at home or it should be collected kerbside.
There is more to recycling than it seem.
Hmmm...xD I agree with you 100% c:
The concept of recycling was invented by manufacturing, and is as old as manufacturing itself. Factories try to recover as much of their waste as possible as early as possible and recycle it back into their process.
Recycling at a domestic level is essentially the same idea. Some products have so much energy or money embodied in them that it makes sense to recover them after use. Glass, aluminium, paper all stand a good chance of being economical to recover. For example, processing them from raw requires so much energy.
Food waste is more of an environmental issue than an efficiency one. If chucked in landfill it degrades anaerobically, which generates methane. That's a powerful GHG, so people should either be encouraged to compost at home or it should be collected kerbside.
There is more to recycling than it seem.
Hmmm...xD I agree with you 100% c:
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Individuals like you and me recycling isn't going to make much difference if the large producers and manufacturers don't do it themselves as part of their production process.
A better option to recycling is reducing the amount of things you use that would need to be recycled in the first place.
Rainforests and other old growth forests have established ecosystems with a heavy amount of biodiversity which won't be easily replaced just be planting more trees to replace the ones that were cut. I think it's better not to cut them and stick to cutting trees that were grown specifically for that purpose.
I agree that we're terribly inefficient with our food production though.
A better option to recycling is reducing the amount of things you use that would need to be recycled in the first place.
I disagree with some of this. People don't live on a geological timescale so even if we eventually exhaust fossil fuels we could cut back enough that it won't happen for countless generations. Renewable fuels are not as efficient yet, but their development is speeding along quite quickly and I wouldn't be surprised to see them outstrip fossil fuels in efficiency in our lifetimes.
Rainforests and other old growth forests have established ecosystems with a heavy amount of biodiversity which won't be easily replaced just be planting more trees to replace the ones that were cut. I think it's better not to cut them and stick to cutting trees that were grown specifically for that purpose.
I agree that we're terribly inefficient with our food production though.
Pinkie-Dawn
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Didn't Penn and Teller debunk recycling in their old show by showing it wastes more energy than it actually saves and that landfills actually provide benefits to the earth's soil? Also, Adam Conover revealed in his show that it's part of a corporate conspiracy.
What benefits do landfills provide to the earth?
Pinkie-Dawn
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Provide nutrients for the plants and tree to feed from as leftover food are decomposed into the soil.
I'm curious to know where you heard this information.
Pinkie-Dawn
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So you think a comedy duo is the best resource to cite when making a claim like that?
Pinkie-Dawn
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Yes, as their show also provides evidence to back up their claims. If you're suggesting that we shouldn't take comedians seriously, then by that logic, we shouldn't listen to Adam Ruins Everything either despite having a similar premise as Penn and Teller's show (being an educational program disguised as a comedy).
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ya then gotta take it one step further than that: you then have to look at the reasoning and evidence provided to see if it actually makes sense/is not incorrect/does not have holes in it