Recycling?

Discussion in 'Discussion' started by Shuhbooty, Sep 13, 2016.

  1. Shuhbooty moon child

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    So my sister is doing this 3 page essay (and going) about how recycling can save the planet. But she's also adding how recycling can help the homeless also. Why tear down potentially healthy buildings (that haven't been affected by mold and other chemicals) and not give back to those organizations that can use them for their shelters and food kitchens? (without money and politics involved she's in HS).

    When I was her age, I was attached to the rain forest and I was against how they just chopped down a beautiful area without even thinking. And now it's like there is nothing left. We have ruined just about everything on this planet. We sink, ship to islands, bury, burn and more to get ride of the trash, but how much of it really gets recycled? I don't see enough items stating my bags or water bottles are from recycled materials. I was curious to know what do y'all think in terms of recycling? Do you recycle? What things would you like to see be improved when it comes to recycling?
     
  2. Styx That's me inside your head.

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    Because they're potentially healthy. No one wants to put their head on the block when there is a risk that the building will collapse on the inhabitants' heads. Of course, after a thorough inspection a building can get repurposed and this is probably commonplace as it is, but I'm afraid sheltering the homeless may rank pretty low on the priority list. I know you didn't want us to involve politics, but they're a vital part of the explanation.

    They don't do it without thinking, at least not anymore. The importance of ecosystem services (such as the effects of plant respiration) is common knowledge now, but countries like Brazil have put economic growth ahead of these benefits for a long time. Even now they aren't unequivocally taking steps in the direction of conservation.

    I've seen different numbers, but the US recycles 31-34% of their waste. Not bad and probably better than most leading powers, but some countries in Europe fare much better. Again, the numbers may vary but Germany, Austria and Slovenia generally come out on top (though Slovenia still ditches a lot of its non-recycled waste in landfills). I was always led to believe that Belgium was at the top of its class in terms of recycling but this seems to be an exaggeration, though we do seem to top the charts when it comes to recycling packaging.

    All for it, of course, and I don't see how people can be against it. In my experience, recycled goods don't seem to suffer a quality setback.

    Yeah. I reuse plastic bags and take my used batteries to a recycling point. I also help my dad chop up firewood that he gets from a furniture company run by a friend of his. Leftovers and stuff like potato peels are fed to the chickens and horses or thrown on a compost heap. The first step to recycling, however, is properly sorting your waste. I try to get that right too.

    Food. I find it particularly aggravating how supermarkets and drug stores dispose of food that's only slightly past due date (but still quite good) or that doesn't "conform" to what the product should look like: twisted cucumbers, a potato that started sprouting, a carton that's slightly dented... Most of those are perfectly suitable for consumption and if you don't want to sell them, at least give them to the poor.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2017
  3. Ienzo ((̲̅ ̲̅(̲̅C̲̅r̲̅a̲̅y̲̅o̲̅l̲̲̅̅a̲̅( ̲̅̅((>

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    I second this, I work in a very large pub kitchen and we are constantly being told how much we have to throw away that is either out of date, damaged, sent back from customers or whatever else. It disgusts me when I have to throw 50 perfectly good fish away (they would honestly be fit to eat for the next few days) or steak (which oddly gets thrown out a lot). I think a lot about how great it would be to donate these foods to shelters or foodbanks just so they don't go to waste completely. I have asked people a lot about this and they come up with some political reasons or health standard reasons but I just don't agree and if there was anything I could do about it then I would but I don't single handedly have the power to change government. So sometimes I take the food we cooked (onion rings or spare chips) and put it in a take away box to give to some homeless people around the city.

    In other respects, I love recycling plastics and cans and I have done most of my life so I cringe so much when someone throws something recyclable in the general waste. Cardiff council are trying to reduce landfill so say you can only have 3 bin bags every fortnight which is great in theory but terrible in reality. I try to recycle what I can and throw food waste into the food bin but we still produce a lot of waste. It means that a lot of rubbish is dumped around the streets of central Cardiff which is never pretty and it doesn't help that seagulls shred the bags if any scrap of food is left in them.

    I am very happy though to live in a city where recycling is so important, it's just a bit difficult sometimes but I would rather that then throwing it into landfill. I used to be soooooooo funny about wasting paper as well, not sure why but I was crazy about not wasting any of it. In my school workbook for maths, I literally used every possible square available and it made actually marking my work so difficult to the point my teacher had to tell me to stop.

    The UK is generally good I would say (not sure how good in comparison to the rest of the world) but where I used to live they had this problem with recycling food waste so stopped collecting it meaning it would go to landfill when it could easily be put into compost. The reason? Teabags. People were putting teabags in the food recycling which most were covered in milk and so the council were concerned about some of that containing mad cow disease and didn't want it circulating. So instead of just educating people not to put teabags in the food waste, they stopped collecting it. It irks me so much to go back there and have to throw my apple peelings in the bin.