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We Recycle Only When We Can Make Money

I’m not sure how accurate this is, but this morning after I cooked breakfast (chicken marsala [not the average breakfast]) my dad got onto me about the fact that I’d bought some styrofoam cups a while back.

When I’d bought them, I checked them to make sure I could recycle them. In fact, I have one of those little white bastards right next to me now and it has a triangle made from three arrows and a little 6 right in the middle. Last I checked, that was a mark put on things that you could recycle. Now I am one of those people who likes styrofoam cups. It has a nice texture, it won’t slip out of my hand as easy when it gets wet from condensation, it keeps my drink cool or warm for a long, long time compared to glass or plastic, and from the markings, you can recycle them.

Apparently, that’s not the case as told to me by my dad, who has dealt with the recycling company that the city contracts to. From what he told me; the company won’t take plastic sacks, styrofoam cups, or cardboard. This seemed stupid to me, after all, isn’t the point of recycling to recycle those things with that little triangle on them?

The recycling company is more than happy to take aluminum and plastic. I had to wonder why, but then I thought; aren’t those the most profitable things to recycle? I can’t help but think that is the only reason why this company would take some materials and not others. Am I alone in this theory?

If this is the case, I can only shake my head and think: well, this is Oklahoma I live in. I still have yet to hear a policy enacted by the local government that makes sense to me. Maybe I’m just too liberal?

~ Damen

P.S. This is my first diary post.

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Date: April 2, 2006

Author: Damen

Categories: environment, ethics, general, local, mysteries

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(629 votes, average: 3.02 out of 5)

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• 

  jclifford

  in April 2nd, 2006 @ 12:30

  No, Damen, you’re not too liberal. Unfortunately, this is a problem that goes way beyond Oklahoma. It’s the right wing mindset that the only things that our society should organize are activities that help people make a profit.

  If our families followed that lead, five-year old kids wouldn’t get birthday parties unless they could sell advertising for them, or bring six friends who would pay a cover charge.

  Don’t give up on your idealism.

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• 

  Scott

  in April 2nd, 2006 @ 13:40

  I think that you have encapsulated perhaps the biggest flaw in free market economics very neatly:
  Things are only worth doing if you can make a profit; if nobody is making a profit, it’s not being done right.

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• 

  Damen

  in April 5th, 2006 @ 19:00

  That was more of a rhetorical question, JClifford. I should have phrased it “Maybe I’m just too liberal for Oklahoma?”

  I ain’t gonna give up the term liberal or progressive unless the general meaning of those words change. Whatever the word, I am all ways going to want America to change for the better and I am always going to want liberty and a healthy environment for any children I may have.

  My dad speculated that there may be kickbacks going on and the recycling company is likely doing some cherry picking. What I don’t understand is that we had always set out our plastic sacks, styrofoam cups and cardboard boxes before and I never heard any complaints one way or the other. We’d done this for years and now they’re saying “No, no.”

  It doesn’t make any sense to me.

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• 

  Terry

  in May 3rd, 2006 @ 08:18

  As a LLL (Life-Long-Liberal), I take delight when the rightwingers call me `liberal’ I feel complimented by my adversaries, because I have never met a liberal who was opposed to good social and moral values. We just don’t have the SAME social and moral values that the other guys have.

  As far as recycling plastics, some of us still do not understand that plastics are in most cases by-products of the oil/petroleum industry, and infinitely recyclable. Why would they want us to recycle when it is cheaper and more profitable for them to just produce more? After all, how would the oil barons get richer, if we recycle we are not consuming oil products from which they make money.

  Recycling has always been a way for the consumer to SAVE money and conserve resources. The oil barons only get richer if we SPEND money, if we recycle, they do not profit. By recycling, we just fill up holes in the land whith a product that well be there for thousands of years. In the 70′s, a cheap technique for making plastics bio-degradeable was developed. It is not widely used because it would reduce the profit to the Oil Companies.

  We have to understand, that the oil barons control more of our lives than we know. Ask me about the myth of LEAD.

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• 

  Alan

  in May 3rd, 2006 @ 11:27

  I live in a mjor city where we have to pay to recycle–you have to buy a box of blue bags, but I think it’s only for yard waste. You can see how well publicized and consumer-friendly the system is if someone with a couple of degrees can’t figure it out. The yard waste I put in the neighbor’s trash so my landlord won’t get cited. Glass, plactic and paper/cardboard can be recycled at a supermarket over the state border, so once a month I bag everything from buckets under my sink and take it across the state line.

  Some years back I heard about biodegradable hospital laundry bags. There was a small problem though, because the same thing that made them biodegradable made them disintegrate whenever something wet was put in them–and hospitals have a lot of wet icky laundry.

  So I’ll bite, what about lead. It’s a cheap way to boost octane, but back in the 60′s people were doing highly visible publicity about it, like testing the lead levels in playgrounds next to high traffic areas. I’ve seen lead poisoning in children–affects mentation and the chelation therapy to treat it is expensive, no way to remove it from the soil once it’s there. I remember when they started removing lead and the unleaded was always a couple cents more at the pump. Oddly enough, my father remembers when they added lead (on the farm they had lead-free with no rationing during wartime)and charged extra for leaded gas.

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  Terry

  in May 3rd, 2006 @ 15:39

  You are absolutely right. Lead was added by the oil companies to improve Octane ratings and yes we were charged for that unrequested service. Then it was removed (at cost to the consumer) after some pretty fearful results of air quality testing in California, for what may or may not be valid reasons.

  At the same time, in the early 70′s, a way was developed to turn certain oil by-products into a water miscible solution which led to the development of so-called Vinyl paints. It should not escape notice however that up to this time, emulsifying oil for this pupose was difficult and costly. Once the problems were overcome, Emulsified oil based Vinyl paints became viable, and since they were produced from oil, a marketing plan had to be developed to promote their use over the traditional lead paint. This produced the `Lead is bad for you it will kill your children campaign’. Then we find a mother whose child got sick by chewing lead paint on a railing because the child was hungry! Now we have a viable promotion story. Lead is bad for you it kills babies use safe Vynil paint instead.

  Here are some simple facts about lead.

  1 For three thousand years, lead has been the most commonly used metal in the world.
  2 The first water pipes made by the Romans were lead. (Some still exist and are still in use).
  3 Lead still covers many of the ancient roofs in London, (St Pauls Cathederal, Westminister Abbey Buckingham Palace, The Law Courts etc.) Paris, (The Louvre, Notre Dame, Versailes). Rome, (St Peters, The Vatican).
  and of course many many more.
  4 Lead has been used in paint since Roman times and has covered more than 80% of the worlds houses-inside and out- for hundreds of years.
  5 If your father or grandfather served time in the military, up to about 1980, they were surrounded by lead paint. If they were in the Navy and at sea, much of their time was spent chewing on lead paint chips while occupied in that woderful seamens pastime `chipping’
  5 When I was a child, all the kids that I knew had lead soldiers which occasional got dropped and bent. the standard method of fixing them was to put the bent part between your teeth and straighten them out. When I go fishing, we still use split shot on our fishing lines.
  6 Soldiers who were shot and wounded with lead bullets in wars from Cromwell up to the American Civil War, survived years after with the lead still in their bodies. My own Great, Great Grandfather who faught with wellington at Waterloo, lived to be 90 with a Napoleonic bullet in his leg.

  And by the way, when your dad and granddad painted the house, the paint job lasted for 30 years. The best Vynil paint may last fo 20. If you have Vynil siding, that may last a bit longer.

  I could go on lots more. But is is pointless. There is no longer a lead industry but there are still many uses for lead. Including Medical and industrial.

  We have been conned by the oil industry into becoming dependant totaly on oil with gasoline being only one of the minor uses.

  I am not a conspiracy theorist but sometimes we just need to stop. Step back, and take time to think what is happening to our world.

  Yes, I quite agree that people have died as a result of lead poisoning, but not as many as who died in handling Vinyl Chloride and other oil derivatives.

  Please don’t challenge my assertions, it is all there for everyone to see.

  Some times you just have to look up and see if anyone is driving the bus.

  ---

• 

  Jose

  in May 29th, 2006 @ 13:43

  When I used to live in South Central Los Angeles, I used to recycle cans, cardboard, plastics, but never once have I heard of styrofoam. If anything, the companies would get a little peeved at me if I mixed in a little styrofoam. If you took the time to burn one of those little cups, you would notice just how black the smoke is and how toxic it is as well. Hence why I would just have no choice but to keep them around and wait until we had a party, or some kinda get-together, and just use them that way.

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• 

  John Stracke

  in June 29th, 2006 @ 14:44

  First: The chasing-arrows symbol does not mean something is recyclable. What really matters is the number inside the arrows, which indicates which category of material something is. There’s a good Straight Dope column explaining this. Ideally, the recyclers’ policies would match up with these categories, so that you could just remember the numbers that were accepted; but I’ve never lived anywhere where the policies were that simple.

  Second: It’s not just Oklahoma. Here in Massachusetts, everything that can be recycled must be; it’s illegal to put something recyclable into the trash—and, even here, the town won’t take styrofoam.

  Third: “Styrofoam” is a trademark of Dow Chemical, and Dow does not make cups. (Straight Dope again.) When a recycler tells you they won’t take styrofoam, they obviously don’t mean “we’ll take it if Dow made it”. They’re using a colloquial term, with no clear meaning; you need to push back and get them to define what they actually mean. To me, “styrofoam” just means “polystyrene”, including both the coarse-grained plastic foam used for cups and the finer-grained foam used for trays in the meat department at the grocery. To my wife, it just means the coarse-grained stuff. When we moved to our current home, we disagreed on whether the fine-grained stuff could be recycled; she called the town’s recycling department, and they said it could.

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• 

  Paul

  in August 30th, 2006 @ 03:00

  Actually i am not liberal, but i do agree that recycling is a good idea. However, the “little triangle” on the foam container usually means it was made from recycled materials….but does not always mean that it can be recycled.

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• 

  Joe Avins

  in October 6th, 2006 @ 16:30

  Dow Chemical makes very few consumer products, and lots of products (like Styrofoam) used as raw material by other companies. It’s entirely possible that that cup is, indeed, made from Dow-made Styrofoam. But it’s true that it could just as well not, and that “styrofoam” has entered the vernacular. But it means (colloquially) any FOAMED polystyrene, not just any polystyrene. Polystyrene is also a common “solid” plastic that many things are made from, such as the plastic model cars and planes that we all put together with Testers brand glue as kids.

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• 

  Ellen B.

  in February 22nd, 2007 @ 19:01

  The thing is, compelling people to recycle doesn’t do much good if the recycling itself isn’t cost effective both economically AND environmentally.

  Penn & Teller had an episode of their show “Bullshit” devoted to the recycling thing. Though they are always engaging, I often find they simply things overmuchly. They’ve got that libertarian thing that I just can’t relate to, but that’s me.

  Anyway, they pointed out, as I’d rather suspected, that a lot of recycling is just kind of pointless. It’s more about feel good.

  Really, I’d be harsher than P&T were on the consumers. Isn’t it up to us to just not buy so much shit? And can’t we make judgment calls about what we really need as opposed to grabbing at any individually-packaged piece of crap in a colorful wrapper like impulsive toddlers with credit cards.

  So great, you buy your individual mini no-fat, low sodium, electrolyte-balanced flavored waters in the tiny plastic bottles, suck down the two ozs of liquied and then you stuff the empty bottle into the recycling bin and think you are doing good. Wrong.

  Just drink tapwater and reuse your glass.

  This busines of this gasohol from corn makes me nervous for the same reasons. How much gas is required to grow the corn, to drive the machines that make like Henny Penny and sew the seed and harvest and fuel the irrigation pumps? And spray the pesticide, because you know they’re using it. And the fertilizer, corn is a brutal crop and strips the nutrients out of the soil like a frat boy at an all-you-can buffet. I read somewhere that the fertilizer is made of, get this, petrochemicals.

  So is this corn-fermented gasohol really enviromentally worth it? Is there any product that won’t have corn in it by the time they are through? Isn’t high fructose corn syrup enough people? Pull the other one, corn dog!

  There are protests going on in Mexico now. Seems the price of tortillas have doubled because the corn is going for the more profitable fuel market. People are going hungry.

  Oh yeah, that’s green alright.

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