🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov26.183950.20788@leland.Stanford.EDU>,
dualist@leland.Stanford.EDU (Thomas Edward Schutz) writes:
|> In article <6784@ucsbcsl.ucsb.edu> 6500axel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu writes:
|> >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>writes:
|> >of the recycled product is always less than the quality of the product
|> >you started with.
|> >Axel.
|> 
|> I like the analogy to a downward spiral.  Not only in terms of a creeping
|> reduction in product quality, as stated - but also in the sense that
|> recycling
|> does not in the end save anything at all - it merely *delays* the inevitable
|> exhaustion of a resource (since recycling is not 100% efficient).
|> 
|> But if recycled products can be produced with lower overall energy
|> consumption
|> (can they?), then I am all for them, although only as a poor person's
|> substitute
|> for reduced consumption.
|> Tom S.
|> dualist@leland.stanford.edu

These arguments don't seem to be expressed in a way that can usefully
be incorporated into anyone's decision-making, or at least it isn't
clear.  Recycling of Municipal Solid Waste (apparently what is being
discussed) is a disposal management strategy, in which the only other
available options are landfilling, incineration, or composting.
If the question is how to manage waste production, then issue is
alternative ways of providing the same end service; most discussion
about this can take place independent of whether the resulting waste
is recycled or not.

A statement like "Recycling is wrong" is about as useful as
saying "Iron is wrong", or "adiabatic cooling is wrong".
If the goal is to consume _no_ resources, failure is guaranteed,
and arguments about it are silly at best.  If the goal is
to reduce resource consumption, then clearly recycling has an
important role to play.

Bruce Nordman
B_Nordman@lbl.gov