It's refreshing to see a libertarian talk about environmentalism without sounding like a liberal's caricature. This guy comes off as entirely pragmatic.
The older I get, the more I realize one important idea: as a general rule, if the environmentalist's agenda isn't economically feasible by free market standards, it isn't really better for the ecosystem. Innovation, free trade and the rule of law are by far the best things we can pursue to achieve the environmentalist's goal of a greener planet. Generous government subsidies and arbitrary regulations to one point or another, more often than not, does more harm than good.
Prof. Benjamin, your intro micro class in 1997 positively changed the direction of my life and in no small part is why I'm a subscriber to Learn Liberty today. Thanks for this video. It was a rare joy to see you here.
I believe it was Penn and Teller's show BS that found aluminum to be one of a few, if not the only thing economically-worth recycling. I think the reason people still promote recycling despite the environmental and economical discourages it creates are based on two reasons: 1. People FEEL better by recycling, and because they don't see the wastes created by recycling they choose to keep ignorantly promoting recycling anyway. 2. They are some how gaining some monetary benefits by keeping recycling a thing, and so even if it were wasteful and environmentally harmful...would hypocritically promote it for the sake of their own economical gains and nothing else.
"Hey boys and girls! All you have to do is recycle and all the environmental problems will be solved! Thus there is no need to think seriously about the real causes of real environmental problems." Well at least they told us to turn lights off as kids. They didn't tell us to pee in the sink to save water but I did it anyways.
While this was all true, Penn and Teller did not 'discover' that aluminum was one of the few things worth recycling. This has been known for a long time. It's more than just getting people to FEEL good about recycling, it's also about SCARING them about NOT recycling.
I know this is old but however, for example with glass, yes it's wasteful to melt them down but if they were just washed thoroughly and re used like the old days, that'd be way better than throwing them away or melting them down.
More videos in this format please (like the early videos of this channel), the information itself is already extremely interesting, in an age where people like me who has an attention span of 35-70 seconds, we don't need acting, pretend dialogues / scenarios / popular culture reference, more content, less polishing, thanks!
It has already been said, but just to make sure it's seen: Learn Liberty, please make more of these videos, there is something of a gap before this one with more short story type stuff, but this type of content is your best.
Thanks! I thought the paper recycling process wasn't very environmentally friendly. Glad to have some validation on my decision. Also worth looking at is the Cradle to Cradle design concept and book with advocates that products are designed to be disassembled for even easier recycling. Cradle to Cradle also makes a distinction between recycling, down-cycling, and up-cycling. Cheers!
Excellent. I've long been cognisant that much of the recycling mania was baloney, but have been unaware as to where the dividing line was as to what is truly worth recycling, and what is not. I am going to be reading that book.
Though there is an obvious line of speculation to follow, I'm curious as to the professor's opinion: When I was young (child of the 80's), the popular slogan was 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' - in that order. Implying that the green hierarchy was, imho quite sensibly, topped by the concept of 'if you don't need it, don't use it. If you do need it, use what you can from what you've already got. Then, and only then, evaluate what is waste and recycle what you can of it.' Now, it's 'Recycle, reduce, reuse.' At least, that's the only jingle I hear coming from current PSAs aimed at children. So, professor Benjamin (or, anyone else with actual knowledge on the issue), is it, in your opinion, reasonable to suppose that recycling has become a lobbyist issue, as opposed to a step in regreening our society?
EVERYTHING is a lobbyist issue nowadays. The idea of climate change, for example, is such a politicized concept that it's damn near impossible for a layman to actually get straight, unbiased facts on the subject. The thing is, if problems get solved, politicians are out of the job. They get elected by promising to solve problems, or insinuating that their opponents are creating problems, or both. Then, when they're in office, there's no motivation to actually solve the problem- it's easier to just *say* they're fixing the problem and invoke legislation (remember that "military-style weapons ban"?) that pretends to solve the problem than to actually fix it, and since the electorate has such an incredibly short attention span, there's no reason to take the more difficult option (except principles, of course, but no politician in office today has those).
TOASTEngineer Thanks for the rant. Though, since your premise is demonstrably untrue (unless there's, say, a hidden pro-suffering lobby I'm unaware of), it paints the rest as pure hyperbole.
TOASTEngineer I thought I had, but I'll try again: Starting your post with "EVERYTHING" (in all caps, no less), emphasizes that your view allows for no nuance. Is the statement '2+2=4' a lobbyist issue? I assert that no, no it isn't. Which means your premise is faulty. If the premise is faulty, the conclusion is suspect. This is logic 101.
woobmonkey p The casual use of hyperbole in conversation isn't exactly an uncommon thing. It's clear to any human being reading that that I did not literally mean all possible ideas. Pedantry is unnecessary, and just makes you look like a jerk. But, for the sake of argument, let's replace "everything" with "the vast majority of scientific and cultural issues".
The price system does a great job of helping me decide. If somebody will pay me for it, I recycle it. If not, it goes in the trash where it belongs. This video reminds me of a hilarious headline in our local newspaper a few years ago. It read, "Mayor Says Recycling Pays." Then the story explained that after income and expenses were tabulated, it had cost the city $60,000 to run its recycling facility for the past year.
Funny; but of course it doesn't prove it still wasn't the best choice. How much would it have cost to dispose of the stuff if it hadn't been recycled? If more than $60K then the mayor was actually right.
anbudmor Good point, but I suspect the answer to your question is very very little, since residents who recycle could simply leave the stuff in their trash, which has to be picked up regardless. BTW, the loss that was reported in the story was despite revenue channeled to the recycling operation from surcharges that the city imposes for that purpose on trash haulers every time they dump at the city-owned landfill.
i worked in a recycling place and I sorted thru trash for copper, aluminum, metal and the rest was sold for burning. that creates jobs and it is better for the planet. (people will be more likely to do this if we separate trash
It seems easy to me to decide what is recyclable. If a company can make a profit without subsidies by recycling something then it is environmentally responsible to recycle that thing. The surest measure of how much resources go into making something is the actual monetary cost of making it. So if it is cheaper or about the same cost to recycle aluminum to make a can than it is to mine it then recycling is the way to go.
People need to think of recycling in a larger scale. Paper being an organic compound will decompose naturally in a relatively small ammount of time and release resources to nature, so any effort you put in relycling it is wasted energy.
Technically, it does slightly reduce the consumption of new trees. As this is the conventionally understood goal of paper recycling, people think recycling ALL paper does the job. Which does indeed miss the point. Not only about larger conservation needs, but also how recycling works. Paper can only be downcycled. The weaker the fibers are from repeated processing, the fewer options there are for reusing it. Tissue, for instance, is nearly unusable in recycling.
enkiduslover If the energy used to chop down the tree and turn it into paper and plant another in it's place is less than the energy to take old paper and turn it into new paper then recycling is bad. And energy in this case is usually fossil fuels. Contrary to what I was told as a kid, cutting down trees to make paper does not mean we will run out of trees. The exotic woods market, and economic conditions in places like South America cause the problems of deforestation, the wood at Home Depot is from trees being constantly replanted so that they won't run of out trees/profit in a few years.
Ozbrithian Which is, apparently and sadly, not really that well know. When I went to elementary school we where also told that crap about recycle paper or cause deforestation... it took me a loong while to learn that that was quite incorrect. :/
***** I blame the Lorax. To be fair deforestation I think was more of a thing is Seues's day nowadays we have more trees than we did a century ago IIRC and reforestation is a thing in the developed world. If you want to help prevent trees getting cut down support GMO farming that yields more per acre requiring less farm land, give natural gas stoves to poor countries so they stop cutting down trees for charcoal and dying breathing it in, and stop subsidizing ethanol raising the price of food worldwide while wasting more gasoline.
Like most things, recycling has trade-offs. It's not surprising that some things are better recycled than others, once you think about it. But of course, you have to actually think about it.
Can we compress factory emissions into an inert solid or into a small tank for storage and/or slow release back into the air? If so, how much of air pollution could be burned as a very simple fuel?
This is good but there are a few flaws in the idea at least in the UK. One is that if you put out a bag of clothes the night before it is not unlikely that a rough sleeper or some such will take the bag somewhere quiet, have a look through to see if there is anything he wants and then just leave the rest to blow about the neighbourhood, something that would have gone into the recycling system of the local authority has now become trash.
My question is, does recycling household paper reduce the number of trees cut down? What I am wondering is that for the average Joe who is concerned about deforestation, what other easy options are there for reducing deforestation? For instance, while giving to charity is not economically efficient, it is done by a person for the moral benefit. To me, this seems like the reason that people recycle most household waste. Not because it is economically efficient for society, but because it is a way for them to impact deforestation or reduce landfills... I am just wondering what easy actions may serve that same purpose?
If curbside consumer recycling saved any resources, the city would pay me for my trash. Obvious, the cost of processing and transporting this stuff far outweighs the value of the material, even for aluminum. Only government cronies benefit. They get taxpayer dollars to do all this.
I think the smarter idea is to keep the aluminum can, then on trash day dig through your neighbors recycle bins, crush them, then sell them for 20 cents a pound.
I just don't worry about it. I figure if it gets into the trash I'm doing good. I don't have time or interest to recycle and you don't get much for cans at the recycling center. I live in America so I'll never have to worry about food or resource shortages anyway.
Its not 95% of the energy saved for cans. The energy required to melt the cans is roughly a twentieth of the energy required to extract the metal from ore, but this isn't the only energy used. And figuring out how much is really saved or lost is an incredibly complex task.
Then that's unfair as you have to transport and remake the can from recycled material (and probably a hundred things I can't even imagine), or did they include all this in the analysis as well?
Oh good, since you've obviously seen this analysis and not pretending to know this without looking into it at all maybe you can find who actually did this. The 95 percent figure is quoted endlessly but sources lead to sources that just say it, never how they came up with the figure. But since you know what was included in the making the analysis, surely you can show me the analysis itself. And look up the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide to see how facts can be unfair.
One thing I wonder about is centralized composting--is there a real energy/environmental impact savings to be had there over just transporting the waste to a land fill? Does anybody have any good sources I can look into?
Or another question is centralized trash sorting--how would just doing a rubbish collection, and then transporting it all to a central location for sorting into recyclables and rubbish impact the bottom line? Could that bring the actual numbers into closer proximity to industrial recycling, or is it another way to just waste scarce resources?
Oh, absolutely. But it used to actually be semi-profitable. Kids would scavenge for cans and bottles to get candy money. Good incentive to get kids doing something good at a young age!
A tissue is a bad example. Here in San Francisco, they are supposed to be put in the compost bin. A book or a cardboard box would be better examples. There are a bunch of guys with pickups and trucks going around the city picking up cardboard and recycling it. These are independent operators who pick up mainly from stores and bring it to paper recyclers. If you had a load of paper they'd be happy to take that. So clearly, around here, paper products can be recycled profitably.
@@jbond7 You still don't see that happening in places that don't subsidize recycling. What you see is companies paying to get their cardboard recycled.
Surely the words, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are a step by step method and not a choice method? First reduce the amount of stuff you buy, if not then Reuse the stuff you buy, and finally if all fails, recycle it :)
I'd be more incline to recycle if America wasn't provoking WWIII all the time. With the Fed debasing currency and the majority of the dollars held overseas ready to be dumped, I'm more worried about hyperinflation than helping the environment one can at a time.
...it's a bunch of ones and zeros. You copy it, and send it to your friend. If it has DRM, you crack it and send it to your friend. Or you download it without the DRM via your favorite method.
Prometheus720 I know it's a bunch of ones and zeros, what I didn't know is how you could give it away - but if, as you say, you copy it and give it to your friend, it's a violation of copyright law, isn't it? digital editions are still copyrighted aren't they?
4TIMESAYEAR It IS a violation of copyright law. It is also a violation of traffic laws to come to a rolling stop at a a stop sign rather than a full stop. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to notice when people do that. Even more unfortunately, it's even more difficult to determine if electronic books are stolen. No one has ever been prosecuted for handing their friend a usb stick with books on it. How sad.
Show me studies indicating aspartame causes cancer. I've only found studies tested on mice that indicated even when injected with far more aspartame than you consume through diet soda, that no ailments were detected as being caused by Aspartame. Please though, prove me wrong if you can. I take my health seriously.
UnknownXV From the FDA's own website: "According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following list contains a selection of chronic illnesses which may be caused or worsened by the chronic, long-term ingestion of aspartame. (Mission Possible 1994, Stoddard 1995)*: Brain tumors Multiple sclerosis Epilepsy Chronic faigue syndrome Parkinson's Disease Alzheimer's Mental retardation Lymphoma Birth defects Fibromyalgia Diabetes Arthritis (including Rheumatoid) Chemical Sensitivities Attention Deficit Disorder" www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/jan03/012203/02p-0317_emc-000199.txt
I've actually switched over almost entirely to iced tea and water. There is sugar in this ice tea though, but I think it's better than artificial sugars, and it's less sugar than soda.
It's refreshing to see a libertarian talk about environmentalism without sounding like a liberal's caricature.
This guy comes off as entirely pragmatic.
Join the classes man. its free and fun and worth infinitely more than your degrees.
It's time for you to check out PERC.
Not a libertarian, he's just a caricature for capitalism.
+bob loblaw I thought he was a librarian and you ???
An odder experiment, instead of a sign that says free, put a sign out that says $10. I bet you will find more stuff is taken overnight.
The older I get, the more I realize one important idea: as a general rule, if the environmentalist's agenda isn't economically feasible by free market standards, it isn't really better for the ecosystem. Innovation, free trade and the rule of law are by far the best things we can pursue to achieve the environmentalist's goal of a greener planet.
Generous government subsidies and arbitrary regulations to one point or another, more often than not, does more harm than good.
And nuclear power
Prof. Benjamin, your intro micro class in 1997 positively changed the direction of my life and in no small part is why I'm a subscriber to Learn Liberty today. Thanks for this video. It was a rare joy to see you here.
I believe it was Penn and Teller's show BS that found aluminum to be one of a few, if not the only thing economically-worth recycling. I think the reason people still promote recycling despite the environmental and economical discourages it creates are based on two reasons:
1. People FEEL better by recycling, and because they don't see the wastes created by recycling they choose to keep ignorantly promoting recycling anyway.
2. They are some how gaining some monetary benefits by keeping recycling a thing, and so even if it were wasteful and environmentally harmful...would hypocritically promote it for the sake of their own economical gains and nothing else.
"Hey boys and girls! All you have to do is recycle and all the environmental problems will be solved! Thus there is no need to think seriously about the real causes of real environmental problems."
Well at least they told us to turn lights off as kids. They didn't tell us to pee in the sink to save water but I did it anyways.
Yes, when listening to this I too was recalling Penn and teller's Bullshit episode on recycling. That was a good show.
While this was all true, Penn and Teller did not 'discover' that aluminum was one of the few things worth recycling. This has been known for a long time. It's more than just getting people to FEEL good about recycling, it's also about SCARING them about NOT recycling.
I know this is old but however, for example with glass, yes it's wasteful to melt them down but if they were just washed thoroughly and re used like the old days, that'd be way better than throwing them away or melting them down.
More videos in this format please (like the early videos of this channel), the information itself is already extremely interesting, in an age where people like me who has an attention span of 35-70 seconds, we don't need acting, pretend dialogues / scenarios / popular culture reference, more content, less polishing, thanks!
It has already been said, but just to make sure it's seen:
Learn Liberty, please make more of these videos, there is something of a gap before this one with more short story type stuff, but this type of content is your best.
Thanks! I thought the paper recycling process wasn't very environmentally friendly. Glad to have some validation on my decision. Also worth looking at is the Cradle to Cradle design concept and book with advocates that products are designed to be disassembled for even easier recycling. Cradle to Cradle also makes a distinction between recycling, down-cycling, and up-cycling. Cheers!
Excellent. I've long been cognisant that much of the recycling mania was baloney, but have been unaware as to where the dividing line was as to what is truly worth recycling, and what is not. I am going to be reading that book.
Though there is an obvious line of speculation to follow, I'm curious as to the professor's opinion:
When I was young (child of the 80's), the popular slogan was 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' - in that order. Implying that the green hierarchy was, imho quite sensibly, topped by the concept of 'if you don't need it, don't use it. If you do need it, use what you can from what you've already got. Then, and only then, evaluate what is waste and recycle what you can of it.'
Now, it's 'Recycle, reduce, reuse.' At least, that's the only jingle I hear coming from current PSAs aimed at children.
So, professor Benjamin (or, anyone else with actual knowledge on the issue), is it, in your opinion, reasonable to suppose that recycling has become a lobbyist issue, as opposed to a step in regreening our society?
EVERYTHING is a lobbyist issue nowadays. The idea of climate change, for example, is such a politicized concept that it's damn near impossible for a layman to actually get straight, unbiased facts on the subject.
The thing is, if problems get solved, politicians are out of the job. They get elected by promising to solve problems, or insinuating that their opponents are creating problems, or both. Then, when they're in office, there's no motivation to actually solve the problem- it's easier to just *say* they're fixing the problem and invoke legislation (remember that "military-style weapons ban"?) that pretends to solve the problem than to actually fix it, and since the electorate has such an incredibly short attention span, there's no reason to take the more difficult option (except principles, of course, but no politician in office today has those).
TOASTEngineer
Thanks for the rant. Though, since your premise is demonstrably untrue (unless there's, say, a hidden pro-suffering lobby I'm unaware of), it paints the rest as pure hyperbole.
woobmonkey p
Mind clarifying?
TOASTEngineer
I thought I had, but I'll try again:
Starting your post with "EVERYTHING" (in all caps, no less), emphasizes that your view allows for no nuance. Is the statement '2+2=4' a lobbyist issue?
I assert that no, no it isn't. Which means your premise is faulty. If the premise is faulty, the conclusion is suspect. This is logic 101.
woobmonkey p
The casual use of hyperbole in conversation isn't exactly an uncommon thing. It's clear to any human being reading that that I did not literally mean all possible ideas. Pedantry is unnecessary, and just makes you look like a jerk.
But, for the sake of argument, let's replace "everything" with "the vast majority of scientific and cultural issues".
The price system does a great job of helping me decide. If somebody will pay me for it, I recycle it. If not, it goes in the trash where it belongs.
This video reminds me of a hilarious headline in our local newspaper a few years ago. It read, "Mayor Says Recycling Pays." Then the story explained that after income and expenses were tabulated, it had cost the city $60,000 to run its recycling facility for the past year.
Funny; but of course it doesn't prove it still wasn't the best choice. How much would it have cost to dispose of the stuff if it hadn't been recycled? If more than $60K then the mayor was actually right.
anbudmor Good point, but I suspect the answer to your question is very very little, since residents who recycle could simply leave the stuff in their trash, which has to be picked up regardless. BTW, the loss that was reported in the story was despite revenue channeled to the recycling operation from surcharges that the city imposes for that purpose on trash haulers every time they dump at the city-owned landfill.
Shouldn't the used tissue go into the compost, and instead of the garbage?
In San Francisco: aluminum, glass (because of 5 cent deposit), and corrugated cardboard.
i worked in a recycling place and I sorted thru trash for copper, aluminum, metal and the rest was sold for burning. that creates jobs and it is better for the planet. (people will be more likely to do this if we separate trash
It seems easy to me to decide what is recyclable. If a company can make a profit without subsidies by recycling something then it is environmentally responsible to recycle that thing. The surest measure of how much resources go into making something is the actual monetary cost of making it. So if it is cheaper or about the same cost to recycle aluminum to make a can than it is to mine it then recycling is the way to go.
Is it profitable to recycle?
Yes? Recycle it.
No? Don't recycle it.
People need to think of recycling in a larger scale. Paper being an organic compound will decompose naturally in a relatively small ammount of time and release resources to nature, so any effort you put in relycling it is wasted energy.
Technically, it does slightly reduce the consumption of new trees. As this is the conventionally understood goal of paper recycling, people think recycling ALL paper does the job. Which does indeed miss the point. Not only about larger conservation needs, but also how recycling works. Paper can only be downcycled. The weaker the fibers are from repeated processing, the fewer options there are for reusing it. Tissue, for instance, is nearly unusable in recycling.
enkiduslover
But paper-grade trees (or "pulpwood") are so common and cheap that it's wasteful not to use them.
enkiduslover
If the energy used to chop down the tree and turn it into paper and plant another in it's place is less than the energy to take old paper and turn it into new paper then recycling is bad. And energy in this case is usually fossil fuels.
Contrary to what I was told as a kid, cutting down trees to make paper does not mean we will run out of trees. The exotic woods market, and economic conditions in places like South America cause the problems of deforestation, the wood at Home Depot is from trees being constantly replanted so that they won't run of out trees/profit in a few years.
Ozbrithian
Which is, apparently and sadly, not really that well know.
When I went to elementary school we where also told that crap about recycle paper or cause deforestation... it took me a loong while to learn that that was quite incorrect. :/
*****
I blame the Lorax. To be fair deforestation I think was more of a thing is Seues's day nowadays we have more trees than we did a century ago IIRC and reforestation is a thing in the developed world.
If you want to help prevent trees getting cut down support GMO farming that yields more per acre requiring less farm land, give natural gas stoves to poor countries so they stop cutting down trees for charcoal and dying breathing it in, and stop subsidizing ethanol raising the price of food worldwide while wasting more gasoline.
I've always threw tissues in the trash while recycling things like junk mail because I thought it would be disgusting to recycle boogers.
Do you want to know what really pisses me off?? ------the fact that I have to PAY THE CITY to pick up my recyclables!!!
Like most things, recycling has trade-offs. It's not surprising that some things are better recycled than others, once you think about it. But of course, you have to actually think about it.
Can we compress factory emissions into an inert solid or into a small tank for storage and/or slow release back into the air?
If so, how much of air pollution could be burned as a very simple fuel?
"increases the demand for trees" - haha is that a dig at keynsian aggregate demand?
***** i never thought of it like that, good point.
This is good but there are a few flaws in the idea at least in the UK. One is that if you put out a bag of clothes the night before it is not unlikely that a rough sleeper or some such will take the bag somewhere quiet, have a look through to see if there is anything he wants and then just leave the rest to blow about the neighbourhood, something that would have gone into the recycling system of the local authority has now become trash.
My question is, does recycling household paper reduce the number of trees cut down? What I am wondering is that for the average Joe who is concerned about deforestation, what other easy options are there for reducing deforestation? For instance, while giving to charity is not economically efficient, it is done by a person for the moral benefit. To me, this seems like the reason that people recycle most household waste. Not because it is economically efficient for society, but because it is a way for them to impact deforestation or reduce landfills... I am just wondering what easy actions may serve that same purpose?
Paper pulp comes from tree farms and managed forests. Deforestation for papermaking is not a significant concern.
If curbside consumer recycling saved any resources, the city would pay me for my trash. Obvious, the cost of processing and transporting this stuff far outweighs the value of the material, even for aluminum. Only government cronies benefit. They get taxpayer dollars to do all this.
Love this!!
I want to read it in the aluminum version
I think the smarter idea is to keep the aluminum can, then on trash day dig through your neighbors recycle bins, crush them, then sell them for 20 cents a pound.
After sorting out the cans that have a ten-cent deposit on them.
what about plastics?
+NotBen101 Try it
I just don't worry about it. I figure if it gets into the trash I'm doing good. I don't have time or interest to recycle and you don't get much for cans at the recycling center. I live in America so I'll never have to worry about food or resource shortages anyway.
This comment aged well.
Its not 95% of the energy saved for cans. The energy required to melt the cans is roughly a twentieth of the energy required to extract the metal from ore, but this isn't the only energy used. And figuring out how much is really saved or lost is an incredibly complex task.
Then that's unfair as you have to transport and remake the can from recycled material (and probably a hundred things I can't even imagine), or did they include all this in the analysis as well?
Oh good, since you've obviously seen this analysis and not pretending to know this without looking into it at all maybe you can find who actually did this. The 95 percent figure is quoted endlessly but sources lead to sources that just say it, never how they came up with the figure. But since you know what was included in the making the analysis, surely you can show me the analysis itself. And look up the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide to see how facts can be unfair.
Care to tell me where in that 276 pages he makes his case on the 95 percent figure?
read the section in his book, he has a free E version of it
One thing I wonder about is centralized composting--is there a real energy/environmental impact savings to be had there over just transporting the waste to a land fill? Does anybody have any good sources I can look into?
Or another question is centralized trash sorting--how would just doing a rubbish collection, and then transporting it all to a central location for sorting into recyclables and rubbish impact the bottom line? Could that bring the actual numbers into closer proximity to industrial recycling, or is it another way to just waste scarce resources?
Nobody's gonna take my cans or newspapers. Did this dude grow up in Compton or something?
What about my time? If I should be recycling cans, given market conditions, why don't they pay much for them?
Because they're not worth much, each.
Nick Russell If they're not worth much, then I shouldn't be recycling them.
***** Recycling used to be worth a LOT, yeah. It's kind of disappointing to see it dwindle into pocket change these days.
***** There are other considerations for recycling something besides money...
Oh, absolutely. But it used to actually be semi-profitable. Kids would scavenge for cans and bottles to get candy money. Good incentive to get kids doing something good at a young age!
This guy was on the recycling episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit.
A tissue is a bad example. Here in San Francisco, they are supposed to be put in the compost bin. A book or a cardboard box would be better examples.
There are a bunch of guys with pickups and trucks going around the city picking up cardboard and recycling it. These are independent operators who pick up mainly from stores and bring it to paper recyclers. If you had a load of paper they'd be happy to take that.
So clearly, around here, paper products can be recycled profitably.
You don't see that happening in places that don't subsidize recycling.
@@stormisuedonym4599 I'm talking about commercial operators that deliver cardboard to commercial recyclers.
@@jbond7 You still don't see that happening in places that don't subsidize recycling. What you see is companies paying to get their cardboard recycled.
Surely the words, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are a step by step method and not a choice method?
First reduce the amount of stuff you buy, if not then Reuse the stuff you buy, and finally if all fails, recycle it :)
Let the market handle garbage then we will know if it would be best to recycle it or something else :)
but if we separate it will be more profitable for people to recycle and therefore encourage it
I'd be more incline to recycle if America wasn't provoking WWIII all the time. With the Fed debasing currency and the majority of the dollars held overseas ready to be dumped, I'm more worried about hyperinflation than helping the environment one can at a time.
if a bussiness is making off of recycling it always pays to recycle.
If you can't carry it to somewhere and get some money for it. It ain't worth recycling.
Ok
Penn and Teller's Bullshit TV show already informed me of this but nice video nonetheless!
Ah, but if you buy the paper version of your book, you can pass it on to someone else.
You can still do that with an electronic book.
Prometheus720
And still keep your device?
...it's a bunch of ones and zeros. You copy it, and send it to your friend.
If it has DRM, you crack it and send it to your friend. Or you download it without the DRM via your favorite method.
Prometheus720
I know it's a bunch of ones and zeros, what I didn't know is how you could give it away - but if, as you say, you copy it and give it to your friend, it's a violation of copyright law, isn't it? digital editions are still copyrighted aren't they?
4TIMESAYEAR
It IS a violation of copyright law.
It is also a violation of traffic laws to come to a rolling stop at a a stop sign rather than a full stop.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to notice when people do that.
Even more unfortunately, it's even more difficult to determine if electronic books are stolen. No one has ever been prosecuted for handing their friend a usb stick with books on it.
How sad.
Aspartame sodas.. Drink smarter than a cancer patient.
Show me studies indicating aspartame causes cancer. I've only found studies tested on mice that indicated even when injected with far more aspartame than you consume through diet soda, that no ailments were detected as being caused by Aspartame. Please though, prove me wrong if you can. I take my health seriously.
UnknownXV From the FDA's own website: "According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse
effects of aspartame, the following list contains a selection
of chronic illnesses which may be caused or worsened by the chronic,
long-term ingestion of aspartame. (Mission Possible 1994, Stoddard
1995)*:
Brain tumors Multiple sclerosis
Epilepsy Chronic faigue syndrome
Parkinson's Disease Alzheimer's
Mental retardation Lymphoma
Birth defects Fibromyalgia
Diabetes Arthritis (including Rheumatoid)
Chemical Sensitivities Attention Deficit Disorder"
www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/jan03/012203/02p-0317_emc-000199.txt
redman6657 Wow, that is very informative. Thanks.
No problem, I'm very passionate for health and had to deal with this a couple of times before :)
I've actually switched over almost entirely to iced tea and water. There is sugar in this ice tea though, but I think it's better than artificial sugars, and it's less sugar than soda.
That experiment is a dumb idea.