Green vs. Green? California, where I live, is in the middle of a bad drought. The governor has ordered unprecedented mandatory water restrictions with the aim of reducing water use by 25 percent. Restrictions on watering lawns, washing cars, and even showering are expected, as well as price hikes.
Here’s another potential water-saving idea: A moratorium on mandatory recycling. I would guess at least 10% of my water use comes from washing/rinsing all the recyclables I am required to separate out from the regular trash. We single yuppies use a lot of plastic take-out containers. Rinsing them makes recycling them easier and, more important, avoids having the recycling bins become a magnet for rats. All that rinsing is a huge hassle. I assume it is normally worth it because it cuts down on land fill use and conserves raw materials like aluminum.
But are those worthy ends more important, right now, than saving us from running out of one of the necessities of life? Seems like a no-brainer: It’s more important to save the water. We could start recycling again when it starts raining again.
Why hasn’t there been conspicuous talk by politicians of a pause in recycling? I don’t know. Maybe because environmentalists have too much invested in the recycling-industrial complex to even admit there are higher priorities. Maybe because greens don’t like to fight greens. Maybe nobody wants to depart from the pat, moralistic narrative of humans using too many resources and now paying the price. Or maybe there is some technical problem I don’t know about.
It seems worth at least discussing. Wouldn’t we make more progress fighting the drought if we made it the easy thing to do — i.e. by simply not doing something most people don’t like doing anyway. “You don’t have to eat your spinach!” is apt to find a more receptive audience than “Stop taking showers.” Or do environmentalists only know how to hector?
To Fight the Drought, Stop Recycling? http://t.co/Rm9A7ImBtk
Kausfiles has a plan to help CA save water: Stop mandatory recycling! #constructive #solution-oriented http://t.co/Rm9A7ImBtk
Plus — tons and tons of CO2 emissions in the high-energy process of reprocessing those materials. In the desire to minimize landfill expansion, most recycling proponents fail to recognize any environmental trade-offs. Ever notice that recycled paper costs *more*? I vote, aluminum only, except when market conditions might one day mean that private recyclers would pay us for other materials as well. Most recycling is at odds with reducing CO2 emissions.
According to conservatives #CAdrought caused by environmentalists, can be solved by abandoning mandatory recycling http://t.co/W8ZBo1vnPk
“You Don’t Have to Eat Your Spinach!” http://t.co/Rm9A7IEcRU
First suggestion; don’t wash your trash.
Plastic take out containers? Time to outlaw them and make everyone bring their own tupperware. For the planet.
Or tell the corporate farms to stop growing Almonds and cotton and rice in California until the water crisis has passed.
Ken M is right. Use a tight lid for the rats but don’t rinse. Let the recyclers use their economies of scale to handle cleaning. It goes against your bourgeois upbringing but it’s the right thing to do.
[…] CALIFORNIA: To Fight The Drought, Stop Recycling. […]
Being Green is a religion, not a rational exercise. Ethanol, organic food, renewable energy, and in this case recycling are dogma, regardless of the effect on the environment.
Second suggestion; if you MUST wash your recycling, use waste water to do it. Put a dishpan in the sink, and capture the water from other tasks like hand-washing. Rinse your recyclables in the (slightly) dirty dishpan. Then dump the dishpan of organics-filled water on your ornamental plants or vegetable garden. Use all water at least twice!
Didn’t I just see something about recycling companies hanging on for dear life?
Why don’t we just end this futile experiment and get on with our lives?
Perhaps people should start asking questions about the 200 plus dams and water impoundments that have been dismantled and destroyed as a result of green activists. It sure would be good to have bit more water storage now.
“I assume it is normally worth it because it cuts down on land fill use and conserves raw materials like aluminum.”
On what do you base those assumptions? The first is certainly unwarranted. There is no lack of space for landfill. Penn and Teller did a great episode of BS about this, far better to watch on YouTube than I put all the reasoning here.
As for aluminium, does anyone pay you enough for recycling to be worth rinsing? If it is worth recycling then they will.
RT @AIIAmericanGirI:
This only applies to containers of food with actual nourishment. It wouldn’t apply to paper and cardboard recycling, or to containers of non-food products such as detergent or cleansers, or to containers of non-nutritive “food”, such as water or diet soda.
And I really doubt that rinsing out some bottles or cans is 10% of Mr. Kaus’ water use, unless he never bathes.
Consumer water restrictions is much more about politics and “raising awareness” than it is about saving water. The amount of water saved is insignificant. It is all about building political consensus by having the average citizen participate in “solving” the problem.
The exact same thing is true about recycling, of course. Recycling is a psychological exercise that is almost always bad for the environment. It is all about building a movement by having people participate and accept the intrusion of government into their daily lives.
Gridlock – Almost. Its about deflecting the blame. They don’t want you to think about statewide water policies. They want you to think that you and your neighbors are the problem for watering your lawn and taking long showers. They want you to get angry at ordinary people like yourselves instead of being angry at them.
Not washing the plastic containers, or removing only the large gobs of food, doesn’t seem a good option. My neighborhood, like most in LA, has a rat problem. They will like even the residue of food. Tight lids won’t work because a) the attached, hinged llids the city gives you aren’t airtight and b) when you put the cans on the street gleaners come by and open them up, looking for aluminum. The only way to avoid rat (and insect) infestation — a public health concern — seems to me to be to clean the items.
RT @AIIAmericanGirI:
Green cognitive dissonance? To ameliorate CA drought, stop recycling! http://t.co/3J0a6oPUv9
Myth: You Must Rinse All Containers Before Recycling Them, Or Else
http://www.ecomythsalliance.org/2013/10/myth-you-must-rinse-all-containers-before-recycling-them/
More proof that the recycling thing is ideological, rather than practical. http://t.co/HTFlfo8tgo
jwthiwg2ku – Did you read than nonsense you posted?
The conclusion is that you don’t have to rinse all containers, but you do if the local regulation requires it. It is a bunch of gobbledegook that concludes with “do whatever your local Commissar of Recycling demands”.
In California, the demand the demand is that all containers be rinsed.
How about a temporary suspension of river level restrictions? The west coast has, through amicable lawsuits, enacted various requirements to support fish populations by keeping rivers at natural water levels. Water is literally being poured into the ocean to keep freshwater fish populations healthy. Sooner or later such rigid policies should have to yield to human needs, if only temporarily.
If the water goes down the drain, it is not lost, it is captured and reused. For that reason, restricting shower times is stupid. OTOH, watering golf courses is a waste.
Man Made Drought — the majority of the water that falls on CA as rain or snow is flushed out the GG to save a few minnows. If CA just dialed that back there would be plenty of water for farmers and city dwellers.
Recycling is the new Kashrut.
Only here it’s not about a moral purpose, but to extract obedience from the masses.
Therefore recycling must continue, at any cost, lest the masses lose the habit of obedience
Ken’s washtub idea is good.
Better: Wash recyclables in the toilet. After the next ‘big job’ flush. Problem solved.
How about a poster of Gov Moonbeam in his new shower inspector uniform.
Most folks might not know a significant amount of recycled containers are shipped overseas for processing. As much as 70 percent of plastic is shipped overseas. Some countries like China have balked at processing dirty recyclables.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/galleries/34.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231649/China-refuses-recycle-Britains-rubbish-poor-quality.html
If you don’t rinse it, you’d best start building processing plants and holding yards.
Mickey, this could also be the way to end illegal immigration! Once the greens ban lawns, the gardeners will be out of work.
The greens are racist! Pass it on.
To Fight the Drought, Stop Recycling:
http://t.co/s4K8gK6egA
#tcot @cspanwj @communist_dog #greenies #moonbeam #CA
I’ve never washed a single recyclable. Why would I? When an aluminum can gets thrown in the melters, it doesn’t need to be clean, since any organics will burn up or just add a smidgeon to the final impurities of the recycled project.
If your area is making you wash, it must be because they are crazed libs who don’t get it.
Actually, we need to recycle the old kids rhyme we used as a kid.
“If its yellow let it mellow…
If its Jerry Brown flush it down.”
See? Still usable!
Rhetorical question (it’s OK, I have a rhetorician license): Would the situation be helped if several million illegals were not busily consuming water in California?
Californians in the big cities have embraced policies that hindered the development of the state’s water resources even as the population doubled. Favoring endangered species over humans and agriculture now means that the folks in Los Angeles and San Francisco have to reconsider their lush, green lawns. As we can see in some of the comments, though, they’ll blame “corporate farms” before they blame their own liberal policies for refusing to develop the state’s water resources.
Meanwhile, while you folks in California go without showers, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Ohio have all the fresh water we could ever need in the Great Lakes. Nice beaches too and Niagara’s pretty impressive.