Be Excellent To Each Other

Is recycling paper actually good for the environment?
The pro's are obvious - if we recycle paper, we don't need to cut down trees to make paper. Great.
But the con's - the impact of the lorries needed to collect the paper, the amount of energy actually recycling the paper takes and the fact that no new trees are grown to make paper from could actually outweigh the benefits of recycling the paper in the first place.

I'm off to find some science, unless anyone here knows?

I think even if we recycled all our paper, we'd still have to grow and chop down trees - I think top quality paper cannot be made of recycled fibres, and that paper can only be recycled so many times.

I've a feeling paper manufacture uses vast amounts of water, and recycling uses a bit less.

My understanding is that collecting the paper for recycling takes less energy and resources than chopping down and delivering the trees in the first place, and that processing paper into recycled paper takes less energy and resources than processing wood into paper. I have no science to back that up though.

Trees eat apostrophes.

Bloody workshy woodproviders, standing around all day doing nothing.

Seaborne algae is certainly the largest consumer of atmospheric CO₂, as I understand it.

Science varies wildly so far from site to site, but you're close, except making recycled paper takes more energy than making 'virgin' paper as long as you don't factor in transport costs.

Down my local tip they have a massive skip that collects cardboard to be recycled but people throw cardboard boxes in without collapsing them. That bit's fair enough, but when you look at the size of the skip and the volume of cardboard in it.. I imagine that once it is all crushed down and flattened into pulp, you'd have enough card to only make a small box to carry things like screws in.

It hardly seems to make ecological sense.

Eh? Am I being a thickie here, or does that not make a lot of sense?

Yesh. Shin put an apostrophe in trees in her original post.

You often put apostrophes in your pluralisms, Shin. I used to notice this all the time, along with the peculiar way you write 'e.t.c', but I have started to just gloss over both with my eyes, now

ON TOPIC, PEOPLE.

Have you visited this forum before?

I imagine that's why the councils that collect stuff for recycling collect paper, bottles, cans etc in one hit to make it a little more worthwhile - whether it still makes financial sense to recycle them at all I don't know but I suppose it's better than the alternative of not recycling stuff and it having to be dumped?

Not that it matters as the buggers didn't bother collecting my stuff for recycling the other week.

If we collected up all your misused apostrophes we could recycle them (aaaah back on topic, do you see?) ;P

All in all,

I would fall in favour of the recycling initiative operated by Cherwell District council, as it has reduced the stuff that goes in the black bags, and now the three blue boxes (paper and plastics) are full. It seems to work. They don't do glass, and when I email them about it, they replied explaining why.

Ours collect so few things for recycling it seems barely worth it. There are a billion and one plastics that they won't take as they will only, only only take clear plastic drinks bottles. That's it. No yoghurt pots or anything else.

When councils start recycling properly, then they can start getting scntimonious about people chucking out too much rubbish and not recycling enough. Until then, fuck off.*

A bloke from local government was on Today the other day, and the interviewer said something about people being annoyed at them only getting rubbish colelctions once a fortnight. He replied "no, they get their rubbish collected weekly. One week it's recyclable rubbish, the next it's non-recyclable. That's weekly collection". Tell that to the bags of decomposing food left for two weeks in their bins attracting rats, you twit.


*Actually, given that the majority of landfill is created by industry and business, why not have a go at them instead, you tossers.

But you don't have that problem with your rotting food as the foxes eat it all, surely?

Our food recycling gets picked up three times a week, ner ner

I have fixed this problem, by making the bin men collect out of our bins, so there are no exposed bags lying around. Words were had, see.

Grim... - they don't recycle food round near us, so we're going to start complosting it. Although according to local government man on radio, you shouldn't complost food as it attracts vermin. :rollseyes:

Well, that sounds exciting.

heh, my memory for 'non important things' (such as paying the water bill, judging my the letter I got this morning) has got a fair bit shorter. EU Law is to blame.

If you are going to start composting, don't forget that rats lie to live underneath as it is warm for them as it composts down.

EDIT: I spotted the typo, but decided to keep it, as it projected the mental image of a rat filling in a form for a mortgage, and when he gets to the 'salary' bit, scratches his head for a moment and then writes something huge in, as to secure the house. And then he gets repossesed, but that's probably taking it a bit too far.