Germany Recycles 70% of Its Waste; US Only Gets 33%

Nonsense. Recycling paper spares trees and doesn't pollute, and bleaching it with oxygen doesn't pollute. Also, think about the years it takes for trees to grow. Recycling glass pollutes less than smelting new glass. There are rare metals and minerals in cars, electronic apparatus and machinery that not only pollute if thrown in landfills but also contributes towards slave labor and wars in Africa - recycling them diminishes this. Who cares if it is cheaper to make new than to recycle (usually, it is not cheaper at all). It is not about making more money, it is about sustainability and a cleaner environment. Then there is mercury pollution. You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

yes it spares trees, but collecting the paper in the trucks, processing the reusable paper in a plant, repurposing the paper that causes more pollution than cutting a new and planting a new one in it's place.

we're already cutting trees. if the world could remotely survive on recycling everything we have and never have to cut anymore trees, then maybe it'd be viable, but even with 100% recycling, new trees would still be cut, so since it's happening, the recycling industry is just extra and adding more of a carbon footprint.

tree farms are grown specifically for paper goods, it's like any other agricultural product, why worry about those trees? global deforestation was a problem once, but not anymore, and it wasn't always just for the trees, it was also for the real estate.

Not so - I don't know about the US, but on my side of the pond, the paper is recycled in local plants, so the carbon footprint is far lower than making new paper from trees. Nobody said the world could survive on recycling, but recycling considerably lessens the problems. Global deforestation is an ongoing and increasing problem. Real estate is only a small part - clearing forests for growing palms for palm oil and for planting vast swaths of deforested land for growing sugar cane for biofuel and GM soy for feeding cattle for the gluttonous Americans, along with the pulp for paper industry, are the principal culprits. Tree farms for paper are very few and far between, and account only for a tiny fragment of the paper industry.

You never mentioned the 80s before this post of yours. You really ought to re-read yourself before posting lies about what you allegedly said.

well i don't even know what you're referring to there, the only thing i edited was about the tree's.

but regardless, you can give me all the links and blurbs you want, you're not changing my mind, i've read the links and blurbs that support what i believe and your info isn't converting me, did you think it would?

if it's fun for you, by all means keep responding to me, if you're working hard to dig this stuff up just save yourself some time and effort because it's falling on deaf eyes.

Yep - deaf eyes, deaf ears, and a hermetically closed deaf mind totally incapable of learning and expanding, which leads one to wonder for which corporation you are shilling.

wow, really?
you and i have agreed a quite a lot of posts in the past, we've bumped eachother up and we've replied with the same sentiment to the same person with whom we disagreed...

but now i don't agree with you on this thing so i must be here schilling for a corporation?

wow.

All you need to use is common sense to see your logic as flawed. I lived in Germany for 2 years and saw a great system to reduce waste. There is no way that it is cheaper or makes more sense to make a new bottle than to wash and reuse an old one. There was a time the US recycled the same way Germans do now, back when there were bottle deposits and milk came in glass containers.
In Germany, when you go to a bar and ask for a bottled beer, they pour the beer on a glass container put the bottle back in a crate to be sent to wash so they can be used again. When you drink at a fest they actually serve you a beer in a glass stein. You pay a deposit for the stein once and they refill it or replace it with a full one. at the end of the night you return the stein and get back your deposit. When you buy a 2 liter Coke bottle, it comes in a thick plastic bottle of which you pay a deposit. The reason the bottle is so thick? They reuse plastic Coke containers. They wash them and refill them with Coke.
In the US we are wasteful even when we recycle (hence your false idea of recycling being worhtless, propagated by the corporations that profit in waste). When you buy a bottled beer here, if it is recycled, very few bottles are reused. most of them are crushed and used in a different way (such as countertops) or crushed and turned into new bottles. When you go to the fair, your beer is served in a disposable container. At first that plastic cup seems cheaper than washing a glass cup but when you think of the cost of war to secure petroleum to make the cup, the cost of disposing the cup and the envoronmental degradation caused by it, it is not so cheap. When it come to soda plastic bottles they are the biggest joke. First of all most of the are not recycled. They either end up in landfills or in the environment. What little gets recycled is turned into something else (polyester clothing and plastic lumber) Hence keeping the bottle makers in business.

Learn and have an educated opinion before spouting corporate propaganda.

We have? I do not recall it - your avatar is new to me.

so i should learn?

you told me the same thing i (kind of) said above, in my post with the graph. i may not have been clear enough, but generally i agree with you that we don't use refilling bottles and it's screwing us.

i don't demonize recycling from the angle of, "fuck the world, let's make more trash" i'm coming from: "is this actually the most productive thing." which i don't believe it is.

science has given us plastic eating microbes and they know how to take care of landfills, it ends up having a smaller carbon footprint and could be cheaper (although we'd lose jobs most likely) to not recycle.

i'm saying what you're saying about bottlers, they profit, then they get behind the recycling movement so we keep on buying bottles. they they put on their bottle "made from X% of post-consumer materials" so we feel good about buying that bottle versus the other brand that isn't from recycled materials-- and so on.

when i was a kid i too used refillable bottles. everyday afterschool my mother sent me to the corner store to turn in our two liter bottle and get another one. this was in a different country mind you. our soda's were still in glass bottles there and if you wanted to save your deposit money you'd drink it from a sandwich bag with a straw.

so even if you don't recall my name (because avatars can be changed...)
then all i can take is that you think i'm new-ish, or at least you've never really read any of my comments--

so based on that you still go straight to implying i'm some corporate troll?
i was trying to be adult with you and let you know that the comment arguing was getting nowhere-- where i could have told you that you didn't know anything, or i could have patronizingly put up video links and told you to "watch and learn" but i didn't... and your solution to my "let's drop this" is to accuse me of shilling for some corporation... on current.com. thanks.

I have a very poor memory for names, but a very keen visual memory for faces and pictures.

Based on what you have written in *this* thread, I concluded that you could well be shilling for corporations.

-----" but even with 100% recycling, new trees would still be cut, so since it's happening, the recycling industry is just extra and adding more of a carbon footprint."-----

So, where is it written that if we cut down a tree---we can only use it once?

If we recycle paper and cardboard and get two, three or four uses out of it----we don't have to cut down nearly as many trees.

Your way of thinking is like a locomotive speeding down a track at full throttle----and at the end of the track is a huge granite cliff.

Look around. Nature does not work in linear paths like your train track. Nature works in circles. EVERYTHING in nature is completely recycled from dead whales to the smallest cracker crumbs. COMPLETELY recycled.

We are part of nature----like it or not, we have to operate by nature's rules or we will run out of resources, no matter HOW plentiful, or we will drown in our own waste. Both are starting to happen right now.

If we keep on as you advocate and ignore the obvious----we are doomed.

-------" so you actually have a problem with a tree farm?"-------

Not at all. Managed timber lots are renewable and sustainable and can support a vast array of products. As long a we replant what we use---we always have trees. Nothing wrong with that. It is a circular path.

What we need is protected reserves and an end to slash and burn.

I have no problem at all with you using your dishwasher and hot water---but the energy that you use needs to come from clean, renewable and sustainable sources. Destroying the earth and its ability to sustain life to run your dishwasher is not a good idea.

There's nothing wrong with using soap----and biodegradable soap works just as well as harsh chemicals. The difference is----it biodegrades after it runs down the drain. So then you CAN have clean water and oceans.

It sounds to me like you sort of know what is involved in recycling, renewable and sustainable. But for some reason, you don't want to be a part of it. Why not? Is it something political? You don't want to appear to be one of those "environmental whack jobs"? Are you mad because you think I'm a "greenie libtard" who's going to tell you that you are bad because you run a dishwasher?

Well, run your dishwasher all you want----just use renewable energy(wind, solar, biofuel, hydro, geothermal---anything what doesn't destroy the earth)----and use a detergent that says biodegradable on it.

In fact---I'd far rather you ran your dishwasher than eat and drink everything from styrofoam dishes and cups and used plastic spoons, knives and forks and just keep throwing it in the trash making mountains of plastic trash. Plastic trash does not decompose and it will not for compost----you can't have your park in the picture on top of a mountain of plastic trash.

why do you keep changing the subject we're talking about?
this isn't about me using a dishwasher-- that was an analogy (which i stated it would be)

i don't want to recycle because i think it's more of a carbon footprint (the same thing i've been saying) i think it's extra money, extra trucks, extra machinery-- too much work is done which outweighs the benefits. especially considering how evolved we are when it comes to our trash (developed countries at least) the only downside to not recycling is the lose in jobs.

there used to be a time when we were stupid about trash, yes. when we didn't watch what we put in storm drains and we threw away batteries and oil and when we filled a valley with garbage, left and then filled another valley, or buried it in caves.

as i've said, the science is there to take care of the stuff, the precaution is there to have the materials in a renewable way. plastic obviously doesn't break down well, but science is helping, chemicals and microbes do some of the work.

in an ideal world people would dispose of their trash correctly, they'd take their oil and old computers to the proper plants and we could avoid plastic shorelines some offshore islands are dealing with.

but i don't think recycling fixes those things, i think it's a glamor thing, "i feel great about recycling, i'm helping the earth, this company helps the earth because they use post-consumer products" and the bottling company, or the fast food restaurant, the recycling company they're all raking it in because they facilitate a way for you to feel proud, but they don't actually benefit the planet enough. it's a cost benefit analysis for me, and it's just not worth it. for example, the carbon footprint it take to make ethanol is fucking ridiculous. the precious metal needed to make a toyota prius-- extracting and shipping that do more damage than the car reverses.

i'm telling you my opinions, they've been steady throughout my comments, i'm not just arguing for the sake of opposing you. i'm not calling you names or implying i'm better than anyone. please stop changing the subject or coming at me with a new angle in your replies and don't paint me with an "i hate you because you're a "greenie libtard" or "environmental whack job." i just don't believe in recycle, why do you then paint me with some corporate crone, or simply a stubborn earth hater?

i grow my own vegetables to not be part of the problem of the agricultural machine that pumps chemicals into the earth and monopolizes food. or i eat locally grown food, same with meats. when i can, i don't drive a car. i conserve water and electricity around my house. i don't litter and i pick up random trash i see. i'm not here to use the earth's resources and fuck future generations... i just have a different opinion then you do on recycling based on the information i have. the anti-recycling evidence i've been presented with is more compelling to me than the evidence supporting recycling. simple.

------" i just have a different opinion then you do on recycling based on the information i have"------

OK.

i hear ya , i dont disagree i just feel like the corporate pocketbook has overwhelming strength and usually has an advantage over the common man , plus the ideology in the u.s about making money vs making a better world is not supportive of the movement you describe , hence the dragging of the feet.

Population size makes no difference - what makes a difference is policy and mentality.

even if we recycle MORE volume than them, per capita they win since they're 70%.

per capita breaks it down so all things are even and the number is truer, you meant we recycle more-- not more per capita.

Yeah you're right, corrected.

I'm saying we recycle more trash than Germany does. Which is TRUE if you look at those numbers given. It's all about numbers. We don't recycle more "of our" trash than Germany does "of theirs". But overall it's a lot easier to recycle 70% of a small country's trash than one of the largest countries in land and population in the world. 1/4th of 70% would be? ....anyone? Anyone? 17%. Meaning of the total trash output of both countries Germany 'could' recycle 17% of America's trash in a year, whereas America can recycle 33% of it's own trash.

OR INVERSELY America could recycle 130% of the trash output of Germany every year.

For Example: If tomorrow Costa Rica announced it recycled 95% of it's trash then everyone would be saying "WHAT IS COSTA RICA DOING RIGHT THAT AMERICA IS DOING WRONG?!?!?!"

Well.... it's considerably easier to recycle the trash output of a country the size of Connecticut than it is a country with the population of America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

The European Union as a whole is doing better than the US but Germany alone, no.

So true. As an example, how many incarnations of the Iphone do we need? Business models are built on obsolescence to maximize profit, and it is killing our planet.

that's why i prefer pc to mac. i can upgrade.

you're only getting mad at the periphials because they cost $30 and millions can afford to get a new one, and in turn throw their old one away.

if phones and their accessories cost thousands like a car or a home, then we wouldn't buy them as often, no one seems to mind that there's a new car every year.

yes business models are based on obsolescence because no one technically needs new stuff. other than groceries no other consumer product leaves room for renewal-- how would people make money?

you're honing in on phones because people get them every year-- but what about newly built homes? cars? bigger technology like tv's and computers. what about the turn around in style of clothes?

can't we all get around in model t's and live in log cabins? they're suitable, but people made money, wanted new stuff, so we hired people to make the new stuff, and then those people took their paychecks and bought they're own new stuff, and then they wanted new stuff and so on.

if you want to judge the upgrade nature of the culture you have to judge it all.