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Now, before you say, "How could you say that?! Recycling is good for the environment, the economy, etc..." Please read everything, and try and keep an open mind.

My friend recently introduced me to a show called, Penn and Teller's Bullshit! Yep. Penn and Teller. Basically what they do is they take something that a lot of people believe in and prove it wrong. They have episodes about: death, religion, ghosts..etc. So I watched the show on recycling, because I was always told it was a good thing, and wondered how they could turn this around...

I recommend watching it yourself because they do a better job of explaining everything. But if you're easily offended be careful they are kind of crude and blunt.

But in this show they talk about how recycling is worse for the environment and the economy, and is really just a waste of time...

Think about what you do to recycle. For my community we have 2 bins. Blue and black. Blue is for plastic and aluminum and black is for paper. We just leave our garbage in a bag on the side of the road. So it's the night before garbage day, you sort out your paper, plastic, and garbage. It doesn't take much time and you think you're doing a good job and saving the environment.

There are 2 trucks that come by, garbage and recycling. That's twice the pollutants needed so far, because instead of one truck going by there are 2. The garbage goes to a landfill and that's the end. The recycling goes to a plant where everything is sorted, cleaned and stored, this takes tax dollars to pay people to sort and opperate machinery. It then must go to a recycling plant, where plastic is melted or whatever they do with it. Paper is de-inked and bleached (which leaves chemical pollutants), and is then turned into pulp and back into paper.

You may be wondering, "Aren't we running out of place to put all the garbage?" No. That's a myth. 1,000 years of garbage can be put into a space 35 by 35 square miles that is 200 feet tall. If you look on a map of North America that's pretty much a dot. We just make smaller landfills that are spread out. A landfill creates methane gas that is captured and can power homes. Besides, when they're done with a landfill they cover it with dirt, plant some stuff on it and make a park or golfcourse there or something.

Recycling paper, that's helpful right? Not really. Because the more demand for paper there is the more trees that are planted. Use more paper? More trees will be planted. There are tree farms that are planted just to make paper.

The one exception: Aluminum cans.

It was really hard for me to wrap my head around this, because I was always told that recycling was good.



What do you think?


EDIT: I don't want to stop anyone from recycling. I just want people to realize that there are other things that we can do to save the environment. I think we should think more about the things we consume. Like chemicals, and what kind of containers we buy.

I really created this thread because I want to participate in a good discussion, please, present your point. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong and prove it. I really want to hear what everyone has to say.

Well, one thing to consider is that even though it's certainly less costly and perhaps even more environmentally friendly to simply dump something in a landfill than go through the time consuming process of recycling, the savings that come from a recycled product compared to a product made from virgin material are enormous in I would say just about every case.

So what if recycling is paid for by taxpayer dollars, so is the meat on your table, your soy products, or any other crop that really doesn't belong here in the United States.
If we didn't subsidize oil you had better believe the SUV would've gone the way of the dinosaurs a long time ago. Can you say $7 gasoline?

Sure, they're Penn and Teller, but...they're still just Penn and Teller.
As much as they tried to debunk the idea of ghosts, some superstitious humans still believe that the souls of the departed are still there, observing how they make love at night.

I just want to point out that your first paragraph is very contradictory. It actually saves energy to make a new bottle then it does to recycle an old one.

If we are saving energy and materials shouldn't we be saving money? The US alone pays about 8 million dollars in taxes for recycling.

It's not just Penn and Teller alone they have others on the show, they interview people from both sides.

I think the biggest thing we need to worry about it what we put in the landfills, that could pollute water and such. (Like I said in the post above.)

Actually, as with most numbers, the exact savings or losses are always arguable. While some sources will say that energy is lost through recycling plastic, some will actually argue otherwise. In an article by the economist ( http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9249262 ) their sources told them that the potential energy savings from recycling plastic were as high as 70%, and that in the various scenarios tested about 83% actually benefit the environment.
It depends really on who you ask and what exactly you're looking at, statistics can be made to say just about anything.

And sure, we are paying subsidies for our recycling program, which would mean that it is in fact costing us, but you have to remember that the raw materials used to make our various products, especially in the case of oil, have subsidies of their own. The subsidies on raw materials dwarfs the money used to pay for recycling, in the case of oil alone the U.S. pays $15.6 billion to oil companies in the form of aid( http://www.endoilaid.org/category/oil-subsidies/ ), that money is coming from our pockets, and also makes activities such as extracting and refining seem far more economical than simply recycling.

If you remove all these subsidies, make it a fair playing field, recycling would win hands down as the better option. You might also be surprised to find that generating electricity through solar would be cheaper than generating it using coal.

But you're right, what really matters is what we put in these landfills. As finite as our resources may be some of these resources I wish would vanish off the face of the earth for the rest of...forever, especially in the case of plastics.

Well there are really big differences in our numbers. So there's really no point in us going back and forth like this. I think we should agree to disagree.

I just want to add that since the landfills are producing methane we should take advantage of it. We shouldn't keep creating landfills just to collect methane, just incase you thought I was going the other way with that.

I'm just saying we should stop it at the source, just stop consuming plastic and we won't need to recycle it or put it in a landfill.

I personally don't get it at my house. My friend bought the season, but it plays on Showtime.

Try not to take things personally because they are kind of crude.

That makes total sense! I never thought of it that way. I won't stop recycling, because I think it does some good, but maybe I will send a letter to the Community Council expressing these views. Thank-you, you made me look at recycling in a totally different way!

it's interesting, it's easy to poke holes into their logic though.
did they find out the amount of energy needed to make new and compare it to the energy to recycle? or the money needed to pay the people who make or mine the materials?
i don't know, it just seems like they ignored alot of important facts. i would like to see the same thing done but less biased, from a scientific view that doesn't have a point to prove