Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As what I ve heard, that recycling paper(making new out of the old), takes much more energy and time and resources than to make new paper out of trees

So why recycle?

Plant more trees

And use less paper, than we dun need more paper, no more useless recycle

Its that simple

Because trees suitable for mass-producing paper take a long time to grow.

But recycle take much more energy and resources
Something we are short of

Ha... ha ha..... ha ha ha *snickers*

Scratch time from your arguament. ts got no place there.
Energy. Resources.

Recycling - Sort paper, clean paper, pulp paper done. (Possibly bleach) Byproducts: Sorted rubbish, plastic and metal spinoff.
Dumping and Remaking: Sort trash, clean trash, bury trash. Cut down new tree, grind new tree, pulp new tree. ByProducts - none

Energy comparison - Recycling wins
Resource comparison - Recycling wins.

Hehe well did not see that coming

Paperless folks! Cmon we will soon be at a time, where we will be able to integrate the internet into our own brains, have medical treatments that can completely regrow muscles and the like. The genome project has taught scientists that somewhere, are genes that we can turn on to regrow organs as we need them.
So uh why paper? Just nix the whole thing, and we can save all the trees.

Think you need to look into your argument a little deeper Tony, For one it appears to me that you believe the only source of recycling is sending all your packaging etc to recycling banks to get reused and that just planeting more tree's will work in regards to Paper
(and yes I am aware that your example only includes paper for your example for what I assume is clarity of reading)

You can easily do cheap recycling that take minimal effort. At my work for example we cut up old and used bits of paper when they are no longer needed into A5 and A6 sized sheets and reuse it as notepads, saving the need to buy .. erm .. notepads and thus saving paper in the long run. Old milk cartons and boxes are reused in our workshop to hold liquids and items.
All of these kinds of things are items that we get automatically during a day when we purchase stock and items, print documents, or even buyign milk for our tea's and coffee's

And are you proposing to just ignore all the stuff that we chuck out just because its easier to plant tree's or use other things. No, all that stuff would simply go to landfill, taking up space and becoming an environmental issue in years to come. I like the way things are and hope they continue to improve. It will give jobs to more people and promote scientific research because they'll need to research into new methods of re-using certain materials. For example at the moment, polysteinreen(spelling) cannot be largely recycled. Once suggestion I've heard is to use it in compost to aid drainage, though not sure thats good longterm

Perhaps Recycling is done differently in the US, I'd have thought it would be very similar considering, but I am only going from what I know in this country

Recycling isn't just sending it to the recycling plant, HG316 is right, i recylce as much as i can and much of it i take to the local recycle bins (a short walk away) but do stuff like:
re use bottles
re use packaging you get in the post (either in storage or sending stuff in the post yourself)

the things we need to sort out as a society is the mass production of utter gak, things like mcdonalds toys, all the stuff china floods into the county that a kid will play with for 2 mins then forget about, flyers, over packaging, this is the stuff that needs to be delt with

Paper is easy. Waxed cardboard/plastic coated board is harder. As it forms wet strength in the pulper, even steam won't break it down.
plastic bottles caps etc, can be granulated and reused to make plastic toys.

I don't belive in recycling! It's all just a libral lie to backrupt the logging companies and save the black spotted owl or something. Hippies need to stop smoking weed and get a job logging trees in the red wood forest!

/sarcasm

Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Skin animals and start using pergament again!! 8 Is that the english word??) please correct me if im wrong !

I think you mean vellum - this was the old writing surface made from animal skin.

I'm all for recycling. Soylent green here I come.

Unfortunately, I don't feel that this thread has helped my life.

I don't understand people who HATE the idea of trying different things in order to save the environment! Maybe it's an American thing - gotta keep people buying stuff! Musn't re-use anything! Keep the wheels of commerce turning!

All of which is fine, except that by re-using and recycling old stuff, fixing broken stuff instead of buying a replacement and generally cutting down on waste, you can actually SAVE a fair bit of $$money$$. And let's face it - if you people want to keep driving un-necessarily large petrol-guzzling military attack vehicles to the local supermarket - you're gonna need it. The more petrol we use, there more expensive it will eventually get. There isn't an unlimited supply.

I re-use all the time.

I recycle packing materials into terrain.
My original casting efforts back in the late 80s recycled left over lead flashing to extend the offcuts (Using a filter mask as well as proper PPE, as lead fumes can be nasty).

We recycle plastics, paper and metal cans through the local council system. My model kit sprues go into it (as we recycle ALL plastics).

My current metal offcuts get recast into ingots for eventual reuse in other ways.

I ride a pushbike to the shops if it's longer than a 15 minute walk.

Tony the guardsman wrote:As what I ve heard, that recycling paper(making new out of the old), takes much more energy and time and resources than to make new paper out of trees

It's kind of true, and kind of not true at the same time. It can, depending on the paper mill and the recycling plant, take more energy to process old paper than it would to process new trees. But that's purely a measure of manufacturing costs, and it ignores the cost of the resources needed.

It is a land intensive process to grow trees for new pulp. It is also a very long process, and using faster growing trees will risk damaging the land. Right now we avoid this issue by cutting down natural forests, a solution with a very limited lifespan.

There's also the issue paper recycling reducing landfill.

My mother would kill me if I wasn't environmentally friendly. We're not hippies, it's just a Tasmanian thing (along with multiple heads and other fascinating mutations).

We don't use plastic shopping bags, we frequently take a load of stuff to the tip for recycling, that sort of thing. I grew up with it, living in the country for most of my life. It's not bad at all, not for us or the environment either.

Albatross wrote:you can actually SAVE a fair bit of $$money$$.

The problem is that saved money does not exist in a public sense.

sebster wrote:

Tony the guardsman wrote:As what I ve heard, that recycling paper(making new out of the old), takes much more energy and time and resources than to make new paper out of trees

It's kind of true, and kind of not true at the same time. It can, depending on the paper mill and the recycling plant, take more energy to process old paper than it would to process new trees. But that's purely a measure of manufacturing costs, and it ignores the cost of the resources needed.

It is a land intensive process to grow trees for new pulp. It is also a very long process, and using faster growing trees will risk damaging the land. Right now we avoid this issue by cutting down natural forests, a solution with a very limited lifespan.

There's also the issue paper recycling reducing landfill.

Its not true at all!
It takes the same amount of energy to transport 30 tons of pulp as 30 tons of waste paper.
Processing both uses the same energy in the mill, both systems run side by side for the most part.
The refiner used for pulp has the same sized motors, as the selectifier used for waste paper.
Pulp is more expensive to buy because it costs more to process, at the pulp mill.
It is not feasable to make 100% recycled paper, (low tear strength).
So a mix of 50% waste paper 25% soft pulp 25% hard pulp is the normal mix.

Twenty plus years ago I can remember traveling to various Newspaper distributors in London in my Dad's lorry filling it to the brim and then heading off to a paper mill in Silvertown and throwing it onto a conveyor to be pulped, this is also where I got so many of my comics from!

The fact is we have been recycling paper for many years, long before the Environment be came an issue. This is because it has always been cost effective to reuse rather than create new, the fact that it is now seen as green is a bonus. It was only collected from industrial locations then because they were the only places to have effectice amounts of waste paper, of course we now have domestic collections that makes it effective of an even larger scale.

I don't know about the rest of you but I am an avid recycler, constantly in an endless struggle with the Mrs and her ignorance of what is and isn't recycleable!

In common with most people in my area I now almost have a sort of OCD with regard to it as I must have my many many bins and bags sort under pain of middle-class angst! No other reason, but hey I'm British!

The problem is that saved money does not exist in a public sense.

But it does in a personal sense - just goes to show that you don't have to be a socialist to want to recycle. Even if you do it out of self-interest, it still makes sense.

I don't know about other countries but what annoys me about the UK is that we do NOT do business recycling. Unless a company has its own contract for recycling (and some do) waste collected is simply landfilled. I had a long winded talk over 6months with my local Council trying to get some sort of "anything!" sorted. On a positive note they did say that they are indeed planning to make business recycling happen and will have collections in the same way as Residential area's. Though this will be done Council by Council at each council's discretion rather than it being a country wide thing I fear. And with the obvious red tape I don't expect it to happen this year, but its a step forward.

I've also noticed in our stationary cataloges that recycled products tend to be far more expensive that normal products. So unless the company has a GREEN drive, no one will really be buying these as they they are sometimes 4x as expensive and I'm not making that up. We can get 2500 sheets of paper for £30.99, as opposed to 500 sheets of recycled paper for 16.99. I'm sure that if they managed to make the act of recycling manufactored things cheaper, then it would become far more profitable for companies and everything to get on the band wagon.

They are conning you.
Using green issue to raise prices

That thought had indeed crossed my mind

Yup thought you'd be supprised.

Loki wrote:They are conning you.
Using green issue to raise prices

What an eloquent and well-reasoned argument. I'm convinced.

Bye folks, I'm off to burn my old TV in the street.

Don't do that, bad for the enviroment. and your lungs

Cheese Elemental wrote:Because trees suitable for mass-producing paper take a long time to grow.

Hemp is a good alternative. It grows much quicker.

loki old fart wrote:It takes the same amount of energy to transport 30 tons of pulp as 30 tons of waste paper.

Assuming the collection point for the pulp and the paper is the same, which it will never be. While there can be savings as the distance for recycled paper is actually shorter, it is a fallacy to assume there will never be greater distances travelled, and therefore times when travel distances are greater.

Processing both uses the same energy in the mill, both systems run side by side for the most part.
The refiner used for pulp has the same sized motors, as the selectifier used for waste paper.

No, the processes are different - in fact there's a reported saving of up to 40% from using recycled paper according the US Energy Information Administration.

You have to note that I'm not arguing against recycling here, I'm saying either recycling yay! or recycling nay! are too simple. Recycling is a complex process that varies considerably from place to place - and as a result it is often a lot more beneficial in some places than others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

loki old fart wrote:They are conning you.
Using green issue to raise prices

Sorting paper is labour intensive, and labour is expensive.

Growing trees is land intensive, and land is cheap.

sebster wrote:

loki old fart wrote:It takes the same amount of energy to transport 30 tons of pulp as 30 tons of waste paper.

Assuming the collection point for the pulp and the paper is the same, which it will never be. While there can be savings as the distance for recycled paper is actually shorter, it is a fallacy to assume there will never be greater distances travelled, and therefore times when travel distances are greater.

Processing both uses the same energy in the mill, both systems run side by side for the most part.
The refiner used for pulp has the same sized motors, as the selectifier used for waste paper.

No, the processes are different - in fact there's a reported saving of up to 40% from using recycled paper according the US Energy Information Administration.

You have to note that I'm not arguing against recycling here, I'm saying either recycling yay! or recycling nay! are too simple. Recycling is a complex process that varies considerably from place to place - and as a result it is often a lot more beneficial in some places than others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

loki old fart wrote:They are conning you. Using green issue to raise prices

Sorting paper is labour intensive, and labour is expensive.

Growing trees is land intensive, and land is cheap.

I used to work at a paper mill, both systems run side by side.
making paper products from only waste paper is not feasable, and yes paper made from waste is cheaper, (So if someone says they need to charge you extra for recycled paper products THEY'RE CONNING YOU.) please read all posts before posting