Er, last I heard, the first rule is not “recycle.”

It’s:

1.Reduce
2.Reuse
3.Recycle.

If more people were strict about that, maybe there wouldn’t be a excess of used paper.

For example, I don’t have more than one full paper shopping bag per month of used paper to carry out, if that - in part because I read newspapers and magazines at the library instead of buying them. It’s less of a chore that way - and that would be true even if I just put them in the garbage.

Besides, if you care about saving money (I always read the library’s copy of a book before finding a used copy to buy for pennies, IF I want it) chances are you’ll find yourself acting “green” most of the time anyway.

Betsy,

I respect your freedom of speech but a little research would be prudent next time.

Recycling SAVES energy, wastes LESS than makeing material from virgin feedstock, CREATES jobs, REDUCES pollution, SAVES natural resources, REDUCES fuel consumption, SAVES money.

In the end it is a Win-Win scenario.

To start, please check out the most recent life cycle analysis data on material as they are either landfilled or recycled and you will learn a thing or two.

Betsy: When you attack recycling you will reap the whirlwind from folks who have never thought deeply about how resources are used and think that recycling is a progressive approach to conservation. It isn’t. Recycling is a way to insure that garbage is created forever into the future. Why? Because recycling is a primitive approach that says first produce lots of garbage, then scramble at the last minute, when it is too late, when discard and mixing have already destroyed the real value of products, try to find some use, any use at all, no matter how low grade or hopeless, for the degraded garbage. This is not the way that a sane society would conserve its resources. Instead, Zero Waste theory says let us design products right from the start for perpetual reuse, let us reuse the high functions of all products not just some smashed up glass and steel and copper, and let us actually apply our design intelligence to change the wasteful way we create products for a wasteful marketplace. The recyclers hate this because it involves hard work in redesign and does not require hordes of “recyclers” and laws that criminalize ordinary behavior but builds intelligent conservation into every product. You are right on, when you say that recycling is silly - long term conservation is not a job for untrained, presumptuous amateurs (no matter how well intentioned) but for a new profession of trained scientists and designers of every stripe, even those who design buildings, plastics and chemicals.
Paul Palmer PhD
http://www.zerowasteinstitute.org