5 good reasons for recycling. Good to see a fresh viewpoint towards the issue.

Do you not have meat composting available, either by home appliance or council collection of food waste?

I use a Bokashi bin which is a bit pricey. Alternatively, a Green Cone can be sited outdoor to compost meat/fish/fat/bone. Removing meat etc from garbage will transform the waste into “clean” material.

I am still shocked when I see people throw cans in the trash.

1.) It’s pretty much a tax. If you’re buying a case of bottled water for a class field trip, you pay the deposit. The kids take the bottles, and you don’t get your deposit back.

2.) It doesn’t work. Around university campus, there are recycle receptacles everywhere that do not give you back your 5 cents. 2a.) So people would recycle even without the motivation of getting back the deposit. 2b.) And other people throw away recyclables even WITH the motivation of getting back the deposit. 2c.) And then there are all the homeless people rummaging through trash cans and carrying around huge trash bags full of sticky beverage containers on public mass transportation… Ugh!

Keep it up and let’s make the world a better, happier and healthier place.

After years of wasting valuable time, money, facility space and other resources, our company initiated a ZERO-RECYCLING policy earlier this year. In each of our six of our plant locations, we eliminated all indoor recycling receptacles in our offices and on our manufacturing lines. All outdoor industrial recycling bins were returned to our disposal company. All steps of the manufacturing process which directly involved recycling to any degree were put to a stop. We completely eliminated the company position of “material handler” and re-hired that individual to work in an open manufacturing position. All employees are forbidden to recycle at work and we encourage them to follow this same policy at home. We conducted workshops on this initiative for existing employees and all new employees also receive it as part of their orientation. Starting in 2009, we will reward each employee who signs an agreement not to recycle at home one extra paid vacation day.

Why did we do this, especially given the current popularity of acting “green”? Because, after doing months of research and investigations (conducted both in-house and by two outside, independent agencies), we realized that recycling is just a “make-work” initiative, one that does NOTHING to benefit business or the environment, and recycling’s primary goal is to make uneducated, “green” people feel good about themselves. As a “make-work” initiative, the main goal of recycling, and the companies that do it, is to create fancy-sounding jobs for people who are otherwise unemployable. We would rather create and contribute to a real, necessary, productive workforce economy, vs. standing standing behind a “green” facade. Most importantly, recycling and the companies that do it, have been proven, time after time, to actually do more HARM to the environment than good.

Bottom line: Recycling has been proven–without a doubt–to be nothing more than an expensive economic and environmental fallacy. Here is more information we used in our research:

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=402
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/1995/103-11/focus2.html
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/92358/detail/

By completely eliminating recycling and initiating a ZERO-RECYCLING policy, our company will save, on average, close to $40k/year, not including the salary of the “material handler” position which were able to completely eliminate. Even better yet, we have seen a huge increase in worker productivity, now that our employees–particularly in manufacturing–are able to focus on their WORK and not be burdened by recycling getting in the way.

The success of our trend-breaking initiative has drawn the attention of other companies in our industry and beyond. Almost every other day, another company calls us, asking for information on how they can eliminate recycling. We have hosted six walk-through tours this year alone, including a company from Finland and one from the UK, and our VP of Operations will be speaking at three business conferences, between now and April, showcasing our initiative. Although it is obviously somewhat controversial, we are very proud of our initiative and why we are doing it.

Clearly, in today’s business environment, companies large and small are finally realizing how damaging the scam of recycling truly is–to their bottom line and to the environment. If you, or your company, thinks it’s good to recycle, good to pretend to act “green”, and good to let the fallacy of recycling get in the way of real work, please get educated and start doing the right thing TODAY. We did, and we, and our shareholders, could not be happier.

Apparently in Pennsylvania, the recycling centers are now charging you to drop off cardboard – about $25 per ton. It’s crazy, because my husband’s business generates about 2 tons of cardboard per week. $200 to recycle?

We haven’t come up with any solutions yet. He wants to burn it, but I find that equal to tossing it in the trash.

1. The Albany City Dump. It is located along Washington Avenue Extension and Rapp Road, and is highly visible right near the Albany exit of the New York Thruway. Here, have a look. Unfortunately, Street View doesn’t give the view of it I see every time I come out of Crossgates Mall from the back exit. You see a mountain of garbage with a backhoe sitting on top of it. It has been encroaching on a nearby nature preserve for years.

2. The Cohoes City dump, loacated along route 9. This one you can see with Street View. Those first two rolling hills on the left are made of garbage.

3. The former Albany City dump, located at McCarty Ave and Hoffman Ave. No longer a dump, there is now a neighourhood built on top of it. When I was in high school, I read in the newspaper about a guy who got up one morning, put two slices of bread in his toaster, pushed down the lever and blew the walls off of his home. He lived in that neighbourhood, and the methane gas leaching up from a century of garbage buried beneath him collected in his home. His injuries, thankfully, were superficial. That neighbourhood is now littered with methane vents to prevent a recurrence. Here is a view of that neighbourhood.

However, the main reason I recycle is that my grandfather’s farm was chosen (and, through activism, unchosen) as a place that the Town of Bethlehem wanted to take by imminent domain as the new dump. As such, it’s personal.

That’s likely true for many people’s workplaces as well, now that I think about it.

You mentioned that you compost, too. Congratulations! I wonder how many so-called greens bother to do that or even try vermiculture.

@jim – It would be a great idea. Some may argue that it would be an extra burden on the gov’t to collect and account for the deposits. But, they already have the infrastructure there in order to collect sales tax. If only they would look at in in terms of the deposits being “float”, investing it and collecting interest until it is paid back out…