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RE: [RC] Conserving paper - David LeBlancAngie said: "...a National Wildlife Federation study shows that recycling one hundred tons of newspaper produces forty tons of toxic sludge. Thirteen of the 50 worst Superfund hazardous waste dumps were once recycling facilities" (also Taylor of the Cato Institute) So we're getting 60 tons of something useful when we would have had 100 tons of toxic (remember what I said about the ink?) landfill waste. Seems like we ought to be able to do better than that, but I see an improvement by 60 tons. What this also leaves out completely is how much waste you get out of creating that 100 tons of paper in the first place, and that creates quite a lot of sludge, dioxin, and so on. I don't have the data, but I'd expect it's as much or more than the recycling. The water treatment effects of paper creation is mostly what makes the paper vs. plastic grocery bag debate come out pretty close to a draw. Many of the really, really bad superfund sites were around recycling lead-acid batteries. My father told me about a dead _swamp_ he visited in Florida that had this problem. Lead and sulfuric acid are nasty things. My last bout of grad school was environmental engineering - people who do that don't tend to be the Greenpeace tree-hugger sorts, but we do get taught how to properly treat emissions from places like paper mills, as that's often where the jobs are. Figuring out how to deal with all of the waste we emit is a big problem, and just about anything you can name that we use is a disposal problem. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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