- Happy Earth Day Scrappers!
The "economist" who wrote that article pulled numbers out of his backside (with nothing to back them up) in a manner worthy of a politician. For example, he says that only 100 square miles of landfill are needed for the next century's worth of landfilling. That works out to 640 acres per year, if you divy up those square miles evenly per year without accounting for population increase. My city of a million people fills up about 12 acres a year currently. What happens when the population doubles?Originally Posted by auminer
And his comment about LA needing 800 garbage trucks instead of 400, due to recycling. That doesn't make sense. If the first 400 trucks, devoted solely to waste and not recyclables, now only have to pick up 1/2 as much material, well then they'll be able to drive twice as far along their route before they have to head to the landfill and unload. Definitely, more trucks will be required, but it's -NOT- going to require twice as many trucks.
And studies too numerous to count have shown that recycling most materials ends up using far less resources than using virgin materials. Even studies done by industry groups providing the virgin materials. Paper and cardboard recycling is big business in the province, as is wood grinding/recycling, even though we have a well established timber industry.
About the only thing in his article that I really agreed with was that some mandatory, regulated recycling is far more wasteful than simply landfilling. His specific example of glass was a great example; our city has wasted millions of dollars recycling glass only to end up using it as a gravel replacement in landfill roads at a cost 4-5 times higher than gravel.
So overall I give the article 2.5 outta 10, maybe a 3.
Back to the original post; happy Earth Day! It's still mainly a hippie holiday IMO, but /shrug, whatever.
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