🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6784@ucsbcsl.ucsb.edu>, 6500axel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Axel Boldt)
writes:
|> There is still another contradiction: recycling <-> environmentalism. I 
|> think we should promote the *reduction* of ressource consumption. 
|> Everything else is on the wrong track. Recycling uses tremendous amounts 
|> of energy, and it is no cycle at all: it is a spiral going down. The quality
|> of the recycled product is always less than the quality of the product
|> you started with. 
|> 
|> It's the old game: trying to find technological solutions for problems
|> caused by wrong behaviour. It won't work!
|> 
|> Reduction and Reusing is the only way!
|> 
|> Axel.

I certainly agree with the sentiment expressed here, but if it was
expressed differently it would probably convince a lot more people.
The point is not that recycling is wrong, but that we are just doing
too much of it, and expending efforts in that direction that could
more effectively be put to reduction/reuse.

I would suggest using the analogy to medicine.  Preventative medicine
is nearly always much better to do than treating disease/illness/injury
after the fact.  That doesn't mean you don't treat sick people, but
it does mean you try to have lots fewer sick people in the first place.

Bruce Nordman
B_Nordman@lbl.gov