I drink bottled water merely out of convenience, not this belief that bottled water is actually safer or better for me as opposed to tap water. Anyway, I have several bottles of water in my car because it allows me quick access to water when I'm not near a water fountain or if I get some drive-thru at some fast food establishment since I don't particularly like drinking soda. Because of its convenience, you sometimes see me walking around drinking a bottle of water. .
One day, I was hanging out with a friend and, after finishing my bottle of water, I threw my bottle into a trash bin, not the recycle trash bin right next to the regular trash bin. He tried to make a comment about how I should recycle and how I should do my part in helping the environment and we ended up having a debate about recycling. It didn't end well. Why?
I don't like recycling one bit. I think recycling sucks. I think it's a crock of shit. Okay, it's not a complete load of crap. I recycle aluminum cans and such but that's about it. Because I never really drink soda, preferring water over anything else, you'll rarely ever see me recycling soda cans anyway.
The New York Times is a reputable source of information, right? Let's pretend we do. John Tierney wrote an article for the New York Times titled 'Recycling is Garbage' where he declared that "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources." Considering this is coming from the New York Times, one might want to think twice about just how 'useful' recycling might be. Of course, if you dismiss New York Times as a bad magazine full of biased misinformation, I guess you can dismiss this point. So, why do we recycle? Well, we've been told to do so. Isn't that good enough? Well, to me, it isn't. I'll always question everything I'm told to do. I'm the type of person who would analyze a situation and act accordingly.
People may look at me with disdain when they see me not actively recycling like everyone else, but it doesn't bother me. If recycling makes them feel good, then I won't try and convince them otherwise. Recycling makes me feel bad, which is why I don't like it one bit. If people want to recycle, they are free to do so. However, I just find it ironic that I'm probably gonna be the one ostracized when I'm actually doing more good to the environment and our economy than these recyclers believe they are.
People feel good when they recycle. They feel that we are slowly running outta natural resources and that recycling is the only way to go. We've all been told at a young age that recycling is good for the Earth, that it saves the environment and natural resources and such which is why we feel good when we believe we recycle. The funny thing here is that people would most likely NOT feel good if they realize the harm they're actually doing in recycling, that they're WASTING resources when they recycle. Unfortunately, the misconception that recycling is good is what leads people to feel good when they do recycle. The problem with recycling is that it takes more resource to recycle than not.
There are many points people will bring up in favor of recycling. For instance, people feel that we are running outta space for landfills to place all this garbage we produce. What a load of crap. We can put 1000 years of trash in a landfill that's 100yards high and 35 miles square. Gee, I wonder if we can find 35 square miles of land for such a landfill in country that's over 3,500,000 square miles large? Also, it's not like we would actually have a single 35 square mile landfill. It's just that it helps put the size of the landfill in perspective given the size of our country.
Another point is that people believe recycling paper helps save trees. Wrong. Paper comes from trees that have been specifically grown to make paper. Recycling paper has NOTHING to do with saving TREES! Even environmental groups like Worldwatch acknowledge this. We grow trees to make paper. We don't cut down other trees than those we grow for paper. To argue such a point is asinine. Recycling doesn't save trees. There goes the tree-saving argument of recycling paper. As a matter of fact, recycling paper does harm to the environment since we need to transport the paper to a manufacturing plant where it would then be recycled it, both of which product pollution. I'm not gonna go into details all the other pollutants that are generated from the process of recycling paper. The only REAL way to recycle paper is to read whatever is on said paper over and over again.
Funnily enough, if you think about it, NOT using paper is harmful for the environment. That's because, if all of us suddenly stop using paper, no more trees will be grown to make said paper. Therefore, less trees overall. Now THAT is what I consider ironic, using paper saves trees.
Of course, me proclaiming something like this is gonna get me some heat from environmentalist. They'll probably say some crap like 'Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours'. It's too bad I doubt they would bother to factor in that it takes far more energy to actually recycle it in the first place. Afterall, it takes resources and energy to transport, clean, sort, store and process these items meant for recycling. Energy-wise, it's like spending 6 hours of TV energy to get back 3 hours of TV energy.
People might argue that recycling creates jobs for those that work at positions throughout the many processes of recycling. It creates jobs for transport, sorting, storage and processing jobs. Wow, what a horrible point. These are jobs that accomplish nothing. It's like you paying someone to move a boulder up and down a hill repeatedly. It serves no beneficial purpose to anyone, save for the person getting paid to do so. The job that these people are working were created because our government wants to recycle. The problem is that recycling is basically a crock of shit. We spend tons of money recycling. Instead of spending the money recycling and doing something basically harmful to the environment and useless to us, why not spend the money actually creating jobs that are useful to the environment and useful to us?
Okay, recycling isn't ALL that wasteful though. For instance, recycling aluminum cans is useful to the environment. Recycling soda cans is actually more beneficial than making soda cans from scratch. I do recycle soda cans. Of course, since I don't drink soda all that much, you see me actively recycling said cans infrequently. Granted, the recycling of aluminum cans produces jobs for people. It is beneficial to the environment and economy. It's just unfortunate that everything else add to money being wasted and add to more workload for the workers over that of recycling just aluminum cans.
Anyway, why should we recycle?