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What’s the Deal With Recycling?
Recycling is often touted as the way to save the planet, administering a guilt on those who don’t recycle. But does it really make a difference?
Recycling plastic bags, for example, means that they have to be separated from other plastics, which is a time-consuming and labor intensive process. There are 7 different kinds of plastics that vary according to strength and toughness. Sorting them is expensiv. Moreover, critics argue that the energy and jobs involved in recycling take away production jobs of virgin items, like logging and other industries.
There are many ideological perspectives on recycling. Some argue that if you have to pay someone to take something away, it’s garbage, but if someone will pay you for something, it’s a resource. If plastics costs X amount of money, and to recycle it costs 10X then the recycling resources are much more scarce – which means that there is more energy used to recycle, undermining the very concept that recycling stands for.
Plus, when I separate all my recyclables, they still have to be sorted, don’t they?
All I feel confident about is reusing my plastic bags and bread bags. It seems that the Reduce and Reuse tiers of the sustainability hierarchy are more practical than the third and more often paid attention to – Recycle.
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Posted on: Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: bread bags, die cut handle bags, header bags, newspaper bags, plastic bags, poly bags, poly mailers, self seal bags, staple packs, tape bags, wicketed bags