Comments on: Recycling Isn’t So Green, After All

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:17:01 +0000

“That might sound rather cold-blooded and cynical”

Nothing cold of cynical about it. Thanks for telling it like it is.

By: Colm

Colm — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:53:25 +0000

A very good piece,
their is and hass been a lot of GREENBS for years and while it was all rolling along nobody asked where or how REAL recycling happens, I visited many factories in China and say the whold story, it is not that we cant DIY but the bottom line is costs of labour, in EU and US etc V China and also dare I say waste water emmission standards, workplace machinery safety standards, etc it is about three things COST < COST< COST, to turn mixed waste into recycled materials and not to talk about transport cost is about the same to China as to MAinland EU from ireland so even if we did recycle we would still have to export to sell our products.

By: Colin Friedlos

Colin Friedlos — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:08:40 +0000

A very good piece, very well put without hysterics.
why not see:

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48099573467&ref=nf#/group.php?gid=25393973285

please let me have your comments. thanks

By: Scott Loar

Scott Loar — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:31:10 +0000

This is damn good stuff, including the simile to residents of Walden Pond.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:16:45 +0000

What Adam seems to be saying about the Greens and recycling seems to be generalizable as: “Everyone should learn a little microeconomics (also known as business sense).” You’d be amazed at how powerful a tool the market (with all its faults) can be for promoting social values. Who would’ve thought pollution would be tradeable? And that giving people the “right” to pollute would, within ten years, basically get rid of acid rain?

There’s also an interesting analogy to Japan (which is much richer than China, but also resource-poor). Japan had door-to-door scrap collectors well into the 1980s. It was the growth of municipal recycling programs in the US that ultimately destroyed this cottage industry in Japan.

Japanese paper mills that had been practicing “extreme recycling,” with newspaper fibers recycled half a dozen times, until the pulp literally broke down. American bundled newspapers were practically virgin wood in comparison. You can see what a wasteful people we are in comparison.