recycling, should it be taken more serious Options

[pandamonium]

It has been on my mind for a little bit but i think that Recycling should be taken more seriously, because in the future our earth can or might be a huge trash can lol i know that sounds funny but there are many towns out there that are next to land fills and they have to suffer of the stench and the dirt that washes off..

letting trash just decompose will help slightly but i dont think enough to help.

If all homes just recycled simple things like paper/metal/plastic things can be a lot more better.. and to think it will help out because if these things are recycled they will be a lot cheaper for us to buy in the end.

[ComradeRed]

Recycling often hurts the environment more than it helps it.

Cost is a function of expense going into production. As of right now, many materials (but certainly not all) cost more to recycle than to simply build more of. Thus, MORE resources are going into recycling than would be expended simply by building something new. This hurts the environment.

There's a very easy way to tell if recycling actually helps the environment by conserving the amount of resources used: If a recycled product costs less than a newly produced one, then it helped the environment. If it cost MORE than a newly produced one, then the resources and energy used to recycle it actualyl damaged the environment more than it helped.

Also, its a generally stated rule that, when giving two of the same product at different prices, people will buy whichever is cheaper. Thus, people will naturally buy lower-cost (i.e. environmentally friendly) recycled items, thus causing companies to recycle items.

The only times when people will chosoe to trash over recycle is when its something that would be cheaper to build from scratch than to recycle (glass comes to mind -- this is one reason why we have the 'ease of recycling' labels on many products), so our combination right now is most beneficial. Forcing people to recycle more may actually end up using more resources and hurting the environment more.