Members chubrocker Posted July 17, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 We're averaging two 33-gallon bags a week. Almost half of that is unused food and dirty diapers. I'd have a compost pile, but I can't through out our food as we have a family of raccoons that live under the next-door neighbor's front porch (ala yesterday's post about them eating half of my corn crop in one night!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SA Rios Posted July 17, 2009 Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 Separating your trash is the scam. They want you to do it so they don't have to. There is a lot of money to be made from paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass. Companies like Waste Management, which picks up our garbage in suburban Chicago, are really brokerages. Aluminum is around .70/lb right now. Corrugated paper is hovering between $5 and $15 /ton. Other grades of paper like mixed office waste or newsprint are selling for over $100/ton. With all this money to be made do you really think these companies are just tossing the trash in a landfill somewhere? They are sorting it and selling it. At least now they are. Back when the markets crashed in November, paper/pulp prices crashed as well. From Nov.- May, when the prices started to climb again, if you were separating paper out of your trash you were wasting your time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members chubrocker Posted July 17, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 Separating your trash is the scam. They want you to do it so they don't have to. There is a lot of money to be made from paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass. Companies like Waste Management, which picks up our garbage in suburban Chicago, are really brokerages. Aluminum is around .70/lb right now. Corrugated paper is hovering between $5 and $15 /ton. Other grades of paper like mixed office waste or newsprint are selling for over $100/ton. With all this money to be made do you really think these companies are just tossing the trash in a landfill somewhere? They are sorting it and selling it. At least now they are. Back when the markets crashed in November, paper/pulp prices crashed as well. From Nov.- May, when the prices started to climb again, if you were separating paper out of your trash you were wasting your time. It takes ZERO time to separate---OK, not zero, but very little. Trash mail goes in one paper sack. I take six extra steps to put something in a different sack. It's not that big of time-waster IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JovialEvil Posted July 17, 2009 Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 It takes ZERO time to separate---OK, not zero, but very little. Trash mail goes in one paper sack. I take six extra steps to put something in a different sack. It's not that big of time-waster IMO. Everything that we recycle gets put on my work bench until I put the stuff in the bin. I often have to decide if working in my lap is good enough or do I HAVE make room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members P1gg1e Posted July 17, 2009 Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 We're averaging two 33-gallon bags a week. Almost half of that is unused food and dirty diapers. I'd have a compost pile, but I can't through out our food as we have a family of raccoons that live under the next-door neighbor's front porch (ala yesterday's post about them eating half of my corn crop in one night!) This might actually keep the raccoons out of your corn if you feed them the food they likely wont eat it all...or you could bate some live traps Or you could get a compost bin or worms... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dark Slide Posted July 17, 2009 Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 I did a paper in my social problems class on recycling because there were some women in my class spouting off about how wasteful people were. I could go on and on, but we're not exactly drowning in garbage. In fact, we've actually increased the amount of room we have, and P&T summed it up pretty well. Recycling is bull{censored}. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members s4001 Posted July 17, 2009 Members Share Posted July 17, 2009 I did a paper in my social problems class on recycling because there were some women in my class spouting off about how wasteful people were. I could go on and on, but we're not exactly drowning in garbage. In fact, we've actually increased the amount of room we have, and P&T summed it up pretty well. Recycling is bull{censored}. Actually the recovery model is incomplete. Most landfills use the natural gas from the decomposition to generate electricity and sell it on the power grid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super Bass Posted July 18, 2009 Members Share Posted July 18, 2009 Funnily enough I read the other day that someone in one of the universities here is working on a method to make any plastic biodegradeable. It's done using a special strain of bacteria which are only found in Ireland. Pretty cool! Here's the link http://www.biotechnologyireland.com/pooled/articles/BF_NEWSART/view.asp?Q=BF_NEWSART_313728 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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