Swedes Say Recycling Wastes Time And Money

Rob Parkhill writes "The London Daily Telegraph is reporting that a group of Swedish environmentalists are claiming that recycling is a waste of time and money, and most houshold waste should be burned instead."

Comments

Re:Paper versus Plastic?

[Dancing Tree]

When you look at all the angles, the problem can seem overbearing, but gestalt for a minute. Mainly, the issue is "we use x tons of stuff and produce y tons of waste". Reduce x and y automatically goes down. Food packaging is just one example of riotus overuse. The fact that so many items are individually packaged is just ridiculous! I can make 4 containers to hold 500ml of liquid but use less resources if I package all 2000ml in one package. This is basic geometry. And so much that we produce doesn't recycle easily or is toxic to living organisms. What to do with waste "y" is a difficult question and I'm not sure what the best solution is, but certainly using less product "x" makes the problem smaller in range and scope.

Yes, every method for dealing with waste does cost something. Using less in the first place and reusing whenever possible makes this problem less daunting. Maybe consumption could be reduced to such a point that the amount of waste could be effectively (both environmentally and econimcally) dealt with.

Re:They seem to be a bunch of frustrated ex....

[Sgt York]

one day there will be no oil to produce plastics, not enough wood to produce paper

No more oil to make plastics, no doubt. But as for wood, there is a greater acreage of forest cover (in the US) than there was 300 years ago; lumber companies love to plant trees, it's a very cheap factory. What we have lost is old growth forest, not total ammount of forest. Trees are a renwable resource in every sense of the term; It is unlikely that we will run out of them due to their overuse.

As for the "former former former," these guys are experts in their field, and obviously have strong convictions regarding the environment. The main point is that these are the same people that advocated recycling 20 years ago. They have now reversed their opinion, and that is significant. If we listened to them then, why not listen now?