Talk:Criticism of recycling

POV fork

This page is in effect a point-of-view fork. I'm also concerned it gives undue weight to a somewhat marginal point of view. Pascal.Tesson 02:28, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

This article has serious POV issues. While many of the points here are well-sourced and factual to at least some extent, the picking and choosing of information which supports the article's argument, combined with the flat suppression of information from the same sources which counters the article's argument is of determinant to any informative value. Canderra 09:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, I think there is much informative value here. The article is titled Recycling criticism so that's what you're going to find. Its too big to include in the main recycling article (which needs serious work itself). If you want to source a counter point fine but don't remove sourced statements just because you have a problem with them. The article is still new right now so it'll take some time to build on. Nevertheless, criticism of recycling is not something new and there is enough of it to warrant its own article. Joshua4 18:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this article definitely adds value to Wikipedia. The whole topic of recycling is pitted with POV that all recycling is good. Recycling has to be taken in the wider context of carbon emissions, value of alternatives etc. I'm also not convinced that it can be considered to be POV if backed up by substantiated claims. Some of what might appear to be POV here is actually a fact. Keep this article and develop it further in a sensible balanced manner!--Alex 12:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this. The recycling article is meant to be about the physical process of recycling. There is very little POV there. What you are talking about is recycling policy, which is a fundamentally different article. There is much political arguing for and against current/prospective recycling policies in most legislative areas, but I have never heard however of anyone claiming that the concept of recycling doesn't or doesn't work. There is indeed criticism of some of the many individual processes through which each material can be recycled (e.g. the quality of some recycled materials) but that is not what the article seems to focus on at all.

For this reason, I think the article should really be renamed something along the lines of Criticism of recycling policy. An article named this could correctly critisice the political assertions that recycling "creates job, saves energy etc." the concept of a technology such as recycling doesn't have the scope to make such claims though. Canderra 12:46, 20 October 2006 (UT

My original point was that this article should be kept as a balancing force to the shortsighted view everything related to recycling is good! You make a contradicting statement in your comments. You refer to the article relating the the physical process of recycling, then you go on to say you haven't heard anyone say the concept of recycling does or doesn't work.

Some of the processes of recycling do themselves have problems. Most notably of which is the amount of carbon dioxide they produce compared to other methods. Some reprocessing methods can be extremely demanding for energy and heat. I use one example mechanical heat treatment I have been looking in my day to day work. Here some firms are looking to recycle mixed waste into biofuels. The production of these biofuels take 1.2 times the energy they provide when actually being used. Hence to produce some things you are using more energy than you get in the end product. There are criticisms of recycling politics, some recycling systems and also collection practices related to recyclable materials. I am on balance for recycling but a balanced debate must be had, for the benefit of everyone --Alex 13:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the article being retitled under a more specific name, as thats just semantics really and wouldn't make much of a difference. Despite what its called it is still going to be given a main article link from main recycling page. I do have a problem with a lot of valid sourced true statements disappearing with little explanation while their counterpoints remain unscathed. Also keep in mind that a criticism of Wikipedia is many people complain but few actually do the work needed to solve the complaints. --Joshua4 01:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Might I remind you that Wikipedia is not a Spanish Inquisition; We are not on a search for Truth(TM), rather verifiability. Please see [[1]]. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth."

204.191.239.171 20:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Apart from the serious lack of neutrality, this article suffers from severely poor grammatical structure and choice of diction. It reads more like a poor high school essay than an encyclopediac article.

Yes, this article is critical of recycling, that's why it's called recycling criticism. I vote to remove the POV tag. Calibas 06:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I also vote to remove POV tag --Alex 09:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I take serious issue with the following statement from the "Saves Trees" section: "The amount of timber in the U.S. has been increasing for decades[14][15] and there is "three times more wood today than in 1920."[8]" The "sources" cite NOTHING to back up their statement. NOTHING! No studies, no data, no statistics from any source. To call these "valid" sources is insulting. These assertions could be manufactured from whole cloth.--Mightydarwin 05:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the sources are questionable but let's try to improve the article instead of puting the POV tag back up. --Calibas 06:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is those assertions were made from more than one reliable source. The sources may not be scholarly articles but they are of good enough quality to use. If you have a counter point then list it with any reliable sources you may have. If you have proof of the assertion's falsity then present it as justification for removal. Nevertheless, the strongest source [8] is The New York Times and not considering that a valid publication is just silly. --Joshua4 10:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Question I just posted onto the "Recycling" discussion: Is this article now "mature" enough to be incorporated into the main article? (This article would then be deleted). Student7 20:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose Merge this article is far too long to be incorporated into the recycling article. it would be the longest section in the article. suggest creating summary on recycling page with link to this page.Some thing (talk) 14:58, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please have a closer look. You will find that there is a substantial overlap between the two articles. Most of the content here is already present in the 'criticism' section of the main article. Also, both articles are very poorly written and can be trimmed down. SPLETTE :] ^{How's my driving?} 15:47, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Christmas card & paper recycling

An interesting email I received:

Perhaps the best thing to do with old christmas cards is one of the following:

1. Compost them in your own domestic composter (having separated the glitter etc. !)
2. Send them to landfill disposal.
3. Burn them, either at home on a domestic fire, or in an energy from waste plant; according to conventional wisdom biomass fuels represent a source of renewable energy. (Personally, I do not subscribe to this view; CO2 is CO2 no matter what the source)

1 and 2 have the benefit of storing carbon in the ground rather than releasing it to the atmosphere. If one believes that biomass represents a source of renewable energy then making paper from virgin pulp from sustainable forrests will have a lower GHG impact than using recycled paper. On this basis, virgin fibre production is CO2 neutral since pulp mills are normally powered by forrestry products, whereas paper recycling uses significant amounts of fossil fuel for waste paper transportation and processing. Strangely, the biggest threat to paper recycling is the rising cost of gas.

The reason that paper producers use recycled paper is because it is cheaper than virgin pulp, and they do not care about the origins of the paper - even if it has involved the destructuion of virgin forrests in the far east. Recycling targets imposed on local authorities ensure that there is an oversupply of waste paper and that sale of recycled paper is often at a distressed price. The true cost of recycled paper from Waste Collection Authorities is around £150 per tonne, but it is born by the collection authority rather than the mill. Cruel world. --Alex 11:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Who says that throwing paper away has a lower GHG impact? The paper doesn't just sit in landfills, it gets eaten by microbes producing methane (which has a higher global warming potential than CO2, 62 times as much over 20 years). --Calibas 23:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Landfills use the methane released by decomposition to power electricity plants. Burning the methane produces CO2. Fresheneesz 20:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

"virgin fibre production is CO2 neutral" is such a painfully ignorant statement. Glad you got this in your email and no one wasted any paper spreading such b.s. ;) -71.249.135.242 (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

No it's not. Alex said that if one takes biomass to be entirely renewable, using trees to make paper is carbon-neutral. This is clearly true, excepting the energy required to grind the wood into paper. Yes, trees are destroyed, but the idea is that for the process to continue, an equivalent number of trees are grown. Obviously the whole process takes energy, and as of right now, energy generally contributes to CO₂ production, but the concept of using virgin wood in and of itself is CO₂ neutral. Furthermore, if the energy required to create paper from virgin wood is less than the energy required to recycle paper, then recycling is still an environmentally bad decision. It's the comparison of the energy requirements of the two that creates the controversy.

However, one can also consider that trees are not grown at identical rates that they are harvested. In order to grow virgin forests, one needs to grow the trees for a long time. While planting trees takes some energy, the trees also reduce CO₂ in the air during their life before being chopped down. Since greater paper consumption means larger paper farms, it is possible (though not currently plausible) that some day virgin paper consumption could overall be carbon negative relative to no paper consumption, or worse, recycled paper consumption. But again, that's what the controversy is. Eebster the Great (talk) 01:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Reduction of farming forests create need to move into virgin forests???

I was wondering how the following sentence (under the header "saves trees") makes any sense: "Incidentally, the reduced forests would be farming forests for paper production, albeit reduction of such forests could create the need to move into virgin forests. " How would reducing farming forests create need to move into virgin forests? I'm going to remove the sentence from the page until its explained (I can't check the source it comes from). Fresheneesz 20:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Article rethink

How about broadening this article to one that looks at both the costs and benefits of recycling, something that isn't just about criticism. Even if we do keep an article on just criticism it should be called criticism of recycling, not recycling criticism (are we recycling the criticism itself?) Richard001 (talk) 23:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I'd agree with that name change. I tend not to like criticism articles in general; with the revamp I've done of Recycling, I hope most points from both sides are covered there. At some point, I'd like to formally merge this article back into the main one. --jwanders^Talk 04:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me that, in order to criticise recycling techniques and policy, it is necessary to understand what the alternatives are. Most defences of recycling are based on a comparison with virgin manufacture followed by (typically) landfill, but there are alternatives - full-life-cycle planning (e.g. burning cardboard and paper locally), re-use (e.g. returnable glass bottles), and simply doing without! It is clear that different kinds of waste, in different localities will need different solutions, so simply taking a position "Recycling is good/bad" doesn't make any sense. Recognising that this article may need rethinking, (and it seems clear that the main recycling article isn't the place to explore these) is this a good place for it? 91.84.53.236 (talk) 09:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I support the remerge into the main article. This criticism article here seems more like loose collection of random (or not so random) newspaper articles. It would be better if the criticism could be condensed to the main points, properly referenced and then merged back into recycling. Splette :) ^{How's my driving?} 15:09, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Creates Jobs?

From the section "Working conditions": "Critics often argue that while recycling may create jobs, they are often jobs with low wages and terrible working conditions."

From an economic perspective, the argument that something "creates jobs" is fundamentally flawed. Creating jobs is only a good thing if the work that's being done is competitively productive. Otherwise, it's just taking labor and resources away from places where they're really needed. If, as some would argue, recycling is inefficient, that would pretty much invalidate the argument that it creates jobs, regardless of what working conditions might be like. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.16.132.180 (talk) 08:48, 16 October 2008 (UTC)