Well damn it, I thought we were doing well with recycling until I had a thought and did some digging and research.
So tell me this: If a plastic bottle is made in China from China's resources and then shipped to the US and then recycled who's environment does it aid?
Think about it. The energy/environment was spent in China to make the bottle. So from an environment here in the US, it is a zero environmental impact item, but then we want to recycle it. It takes us more energy to recycle that bottle here than it does to send it back. Sending it back to China to be reabsorbed into China's direct environment is the better way to execute this whole recycling process.
Environmentall an mathematically speaking, we need to send the trash back to the environment from which it was created so that environment can "heal".
As it stands now beleive it or not we are making a bigger mess by recylcing items out of their place of origin.
I also think that no matter where a factory is built, attached to it should be a recycling plant. The trash made from that factory's output consumption can be recycled directly from that environment and put back.
All in all recycling does take less energy than to process virgin materials but getting it to its place of origin for direct benefit remains undone.
This whole things is like celery and the negative calorie. You actually spend more calories to digest celery than it contains.
But hey, what do I know...?
Interesting post,D! Until you stop to think about the intracacy of the process, you really miss the critical connections of production vs. recycling. The piece that leaves me puzzled is undertaking transport of the 'trash' to its point of origin for recycling. And, further, in what state do you hurdle the task of transporting? Could be a messy, and cumbersome process that then incurs additional costs.
ReplyDeleteWell in my linear mind, the trash is sent back to its place of origin sorted. We would still separate glass, plastic, paper, and simply send it back. Its really not complicated or difficlut.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the costs associated with transporting the trash back cannot be any more expensive than producing the virgin material to begin with. Lastly, there shant be a concern of "cost" to begin with when considering the environment.
Sorry, just a rant and observation of a broken process my six sigma eye saw.
Yea, I concur. My point was more so that 'return' of the product to producing country would be an additional cost. It may be of interest to understand, from a cost analysis perspective, the cost of end country recycling vs. return to producing country for recycling. Things that make you go 'hmmm'!!
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