One way that we can reduce global warming is to ban all the bottled water that people drink. Do you think Cheryl Crow would go for that?
It turns out that it requires 1 and a half million barrels of oil to make all the plastic bottles that Americans use per year--and that's just for the ones that contain drinking water. That's assuming that some of us don't use some of the water to finish cleaning our hands after we use just one square of toilet paper after our morning bowel movement.
Actually, we could improve our situation if we recycled more of our plastics. (And this time I'm being serious.)
Despite the fact that I think the announcements about man's overweening effect on global warming are a hoax, a swindle, an exaggeration, and a lot of hot air, I still do think it is wise to recycle when possible.The kind of plastic most commonly used for water bottles -- polyethylene terephthalate, or PET -- is recyclable. But consumers recycle just one of every five bottles they drink, with the rest ending up in landfills, said Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, a Washington group that promotes recycling.
"It's wasted energy and wasted resources that are being landfilled unnecessarily," Franklin said.
We have become a very disposable society. In most cases, this is simply because it is more convenient and less costly to buy something new rather than to have our old something fixed. In the case of newspapers, plastics, etc., let's do it! We can recycle better than we are doing now.
It will help clean up the environment, increase air cleanliness, and make a dent (although small) in our dependence on foreign oil.
I live in a city that has curbside recycling. Some recycling is very effective and beneficial. But some is not. I have written a couple of posts about this issue, including this one two months ago.
ReplyDeleteFor others reading this post, I recommend reading Reach Upward's article linked above. It touches on a point that I didn't make, but that I agree with--letting the free market solve this problem because it makes sense. As you'll see when you read Scott's article, government messes most things up when it gets into something that the free market can naturally do better.
ReplyDelete