Please read carefully what I say about Waste in Switzerland at
http://www.cypenv.org/Files/waste.htm
If the commune have their costs reimbursed by the waste processors, this
must mean it is profitable, doesn't it? It may be that, in Europe, there
is so much waste processed that the economy of scale makes it
profitable, whereas in the US, you say you don't recycle much paper
(actually, I find it hard to believe that Kraft paper, cartons and the
like are all made from virgin material, what a waste!). In Europe, many
books are printed on recycled paper, even high-class art books. This may
be only partially economically motivated, as the price difference is
relatively small in the total cost of publishing, but more a desire to
be environmentally correct.
As for growing wood for paper-making, of course newsprint is largely
virgin paper, but that is the cheapest paper there is. But the energy
costs of cutting and transport it are a high proportion of the overall.
This energy is mostly from petroleum products (chain sawa, log handlers,
trucks, etc.). In Europe, this comes mostly from Nordic countries. I can
imagine that, as the price of crude oil rises to vertiginous heights in
the next few years, even newsprint will cost more than recycled paper.
Brian
Charles Dolci wrote:
> Brian, et al.
>
> I am waiting for the article to download so I can read it, so while I am
> waiting for that I thought I would throw in my $.02 worth.
>
> I don't know about Europe, but in the US virtually all paper comes from
> plantation trees that are grown and harvested just for paper production.
> It is a crop, just like wheat or corn.
>
> Here in my quaint little community we are required by city ordinance to
> recycle all houdehold paper, glass, plastic and metal waste. I was
> recently at a Home & Garden show in SFo and the theme of the show was
> recycling (i.e. how to use recycled materials in the home and garden). I
> noticed that the recycled products were a lot more expensive than the
> "natural" materials for which they were supposed to be substitutes.
> This is interesting in that we pay the city to pick-up the
> recycleables. So if I have to subsidize the raw materials and still pay
> more for a product containing recylced materials where is the economic
> viability of that?
>
> Just a thought.
>
> Chuck Dolci
>
> Brian Ellis wrote:
>
>> As you know, Gordon, I am very much pro-recycling, ....
>
>
>>
>> In fact, much recycling is already done and is economically viable.
>>
>> As for the paper you cite, a 10-year old kid could drive a horse and
>> cart through a lot of what is said. For example, it cites Germany's
>> green dot system and its cost. But it does not offset this against the
>> need to not to produce virgin materials. Paper and plastics recycling,
>> which is what it applies to, IS economically viable and the recycled
>> materials cost about 90% of virgin materials for paper and cardboard and
>> 80% for plastics (and reduces oil-dependence). It quotes electronics as
>> being flame-retarded with deca-bde, when tetrabromobisphenol A is used
>> for FR-4 AND polycarbonate housings. There is another point that should
>> be considered and that is that WEEE is European and Europe has far less
>> available space for landfills, so it is not possible to extrapolate
>> conditions to countries like the USA.
>>
>>
>>
>> Brian
>>
>> Davy, Gordon wrote:
>>
>
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