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Monday, December 29, 2003

Why the Trash You Sort Isn't Getting Recycled

Of course, we are now learning that the fearful warnings we've been force fed by the environmentalist wackos aren't entirely true. In this article in American Outlook we find:

-- People today are actually throwing away less trash (in both volume and tonnage) than in previous, less-affluent generations. ...the average U.S. household today generates one-third less trash than the average family in Mexico!

-- Commercial processing and packaging of 1,000 chickens adds about 17 pounds of paper and plastic wrap but turns (recycles) about 2,000 pounds of chicken by-products into useful purposes.

-- All the trash we're expected to dump in the next 100 years would fit into a landfill about 10 miles square.

-- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), never likely to minimize a pollution risk, says leakage from modern America's landfills can be expected to cause one cancer-related death over the next 50 years.

-- Franklin Associates, which consults for EPA, says extensive recycling is 35 percent more expensive than conventional disposal, and curbside recycling is 55 percent more expensive.

In other words, the dire warnings were overwrought (at best, and more likely, just lies). Here's my new strategy - save only aluminum cans and put them out once a month.

posted by Gary at 10:32 | [Permalink] (0) comments

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