Re: Recycling - tin cans or trays
Posted: January 12th, 2018, 3:47 pm
ap8889 wrote:JessUK98 wrote:Watis wrote:I detect a grand assumption in the media that all recycling is always good. But there are energy and other costs associated with recycling that partially (or wholly - who knows?) cancel out the benefits of recycling some materials.
Therein lies the conundrum. The H&S guy that I used to work with said that recycling was pointless as to clean and reuse materials also costs money & resources so counters out any benefits. He was quite pessimistic in general though.
I think plastics are the worst. The amount of plastic bags and bottles you see littered about and stuck in trees is astounding (and the photos of the plastics in some parts of the ocean is shocking). I'm trying to cut down on the amount of plastics I buy, but it's very hard nowadays as literally everything perishable comes with some form of plastic. Even the cardboard juice cartons have a plastic lid! I think I'm also going to have to look into my poop bags. I buy what I thought were biodegradable poop bags, but then I read articles like these: https://www.rover.com/blog/truth-about- ... p-bags-in/ and http://www.dogster.com/doggie-style/dog ... een-review and I wonder if the bags I have *are* actually any better than your standard poop bags (at least the core in the roll is cardboard and not plastic...).
I guess my question would be what is the point of recycling anything, given the choices made already?
Why? The impact of the decision to own a pet is so heavy. The only possible excuse for owning a dog in my view is if it is a working dog or guide dog. If we are serious about reducing your waste, then pet ownership is one of the lifestyle choices that is incompatible with maintaining a healthy biosphere. A dog has a pretty heavy carbon footprint itself. Some claim a dog is equivalent to an SUV in terms of carbon emissions. I think that is an exaggeration, but they certainly have a heavy impact.
The best thing one could do for the environment would be to have no pets and thus no pet related consumption and also no pet related waste packaging.
So why fret over recycling when a pooch is a meat eating indulgence requiring the support of vast exploitative industrial agriculture for its continued existence?
Well I adopted my pet when she was 8, and I would never get a puppy, so I think I'm doing my part to recycle pets
As I'm sure you are well aware, humans do far more damage to the environment. I was watching a short clip with Sir David Attenborough and he said a lot of our environmental problems are caused by population growth, and that he can't think of a single problem that wouldn't be easier to solve if there were less people. Apparently the population of the world has tripled in less than his lifetime. That's insane. I suppose the argument to recycle or not is a moot point if population continues to grow so fast. There won't be anything left to try and save.