Sometimes It Just Doesn’t Make Sense To Recycle
I know I’ve written about this subject before, this time I want to point out some additional proof that sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to recycle. In this article, there is a big push to recycle glass, with the glass manufacturers getting in on the show as well. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the push is going to be in the cities where there is a glass production plant. Why would that be? As committed to glass recycling as this group may be, even they recognize that if you’re not near a plant, the economic and environmental costs are too high to recycle glass.
There is also potentially an unintended consequence to their education plan. Their focus is children (which I have always encouraged due to the success of seatbelt education) who will become avid glass recyclers and will some day move to another area away from a glass manufacturing plant. Their passion will cause them to spend energy and money getting a government facility up and running just to have it fail. Hopefully, their education initiative will include a bit about when it doesn’t make sense to recycle glass.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Is there a glass manufacturing plant near Boise? My guess is no. What would that cost?
September 10th, 2009 at 9:11 am
No, there is no plant near Boise. Any glass that is collected there is crushed and used as roadbase material. I haven’t seen any statistics but the process of collecting and crushing the glass uses up a significant amount of energy so there is very little if any environmental benefit.
September 10th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
So let me just put this out for debate.
What is more expensive? Using the landfill to dump a material that can be recycled? Or the resources that are used in recycling glass?
If we had to do away with all plasitc containers or plastics that are not easily recycled and use glass bottles again as we did in the OLDEN days that could solve alot of our problems? “SAVING” the world from becoming an endless dumping ground should be our goal should it not?
September 11th, 2009 at 9:01 am
There are just so many variables to take into consideration. Glass is much heavier and thus more expensive to transport, both in terms of money and environment. Plastic is petroleum based and released toxic chemicals as it slowly breaks down. There are a lot of people pushing to have aluminum become the packaging of choice because it is so easy to recycle. Lots of things to consider.