Babies: Bad for the environment
I don’t mean they’re bad for the environment in that, aside from turning perfectly good food into shit, they spend most of their time making a ton of diapers. I’ve mentioned before that the Mrs. and I recycled. We always felt it our civic duty, no matter the inconvenience, to make sure the world was a better place by recycling and some other hippie, tree-hugging bullshit that comes with the guilt of being affluent.
We had multiple trash cans for aluminum, plastic bottles, and various colors of glass bottles. We also had bins for newspapers, magazines, cardboard and plastic grocery bags. We’d make the weekly trip to the recycling centers (note the plural: no one recycling center in our area takes all recyclables so the trip always involves two stops).
With the baby, storage space is now at a premium in the Uncle household. We’re storing Junior’s no longer used clothes, toys, knickknacks, and other vital items in the event we have another child. So, we made the decision to screw the environment. No amount of hippie, tree-hugging bullshit will clear up a 10 by 5 feet area of valuable storage space in my garage. We’re not recycling anymore.
Plus, think of all the gas we’ll save and how that will put an end to global warming. Additionally, we spend about $30 per month for trash pickup. At the end of the week, our trash can had only one or two bags of trash in it for them to pick up. Everything else, we recycled. We weren’t getting our money’s worth.
I don’t feel bad. Screw the environment, what has it done for me? At least we’re not filling landfills with clothes, toys, knickknacks, and other vital items.
March 31st, 2005 at 10:15 am
I predict future generations will mine the landfills for valuable raw materials. You’re doing them a disservice by recycling.
March 31st, 2005 at 10:21 am
Republicans are pro-environment. Strip-mining prevents forest fires…
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitress…
March 31st, 2005 at 11:11 am
As I recall, Dr. Pulsipher (sp), Prof. of Geography at UT was preaching (to my class) in the 1980’s that USA babies were a hazard to the environment because they used 17 times the resources of other babies. She said that USA babies were the real problem with “global overpopulation”. No, she did not provide any math to go with these calculations.
Additionally, she claimed that industrial farming methods were incredibly inefficient when compared to “slash and burn” firming methods in the jungles (oops, ‘rain forests’) of South America.
She also was an evangelist for some book, thoroughly discredited by Denish DeSousa (sp), that made all sorts of bizarre claims, all aimed at western industrialization.
Now, if you are not a University Welfare Recipient or other flavor of Leftist, i.e., you believe in and have some understanding of free market systems, they you would realize quickly that if your trash were needed by *anybody* someone would purchase it from you!
March 31st, 2005 at 11:45 am
The wife and I love USA Babies.
March 31st, 2005 at 12:12 pm
I quit recycling a couple of years ago when I found out that most of the non-aluminum recyclables were winding up in the landfill anyway because it wasn’t economical to recycle them.
March 31st, 2005 at 12:17 pm
I’ve heard that claim a lot (and cardboard is profitable too, I’ve heard) but never seen in substantiated.
March 31st, 2005 at 12:28 pm
to quote Mr. Burns:
“Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well I say, hard cheese.”
March 31st, 2005 at 2:31 pm
As for storage space, couldn’t you return the favor to the builder from next door and just store stuff in his office? 🙂
March 31st, 2005 at 2:42 pm
I’m guessing that recycling cardboard is profitable because of all the Mexicans I see driving old (OLD!) Toyota flat-beds piled 8 feet high with flattened cardboard boxes around my machine shop in CA. Or maybe the cardboard is for traction. 😉
March 31st, 2005 at 2:50 pm
Re: Aluminum. The last time I sold some aluminum chips (last week) the scrap metal dealer payed 50 cents/lb., almost double from a couple years ago.
March 31st, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Here’s some info on the economics, though it’s for a centrally-managed recycling program with curbside pickup, rather than DIY recycling.
Obviously, we weren’t recycling corrugated cardboard. Just plastic, glass, and aluminum.
March 31st, 2005 at 3:21 pm
At UT there is an old guy with a NICE pickup (well, it was nice in 1992/93 when I worked for the Physical Plant) that he bought with the proceeds from picking and selling cardboard from UT dumpsters.
Also, we would always throw our aluminum cans into the dumpsters so that they pickers could sell them. The proceeds from the recycling boxes around campus went directly to the Physical Plant budget.
April 2nd, 2005 at 6:52 pm
Except for used Pampers, it’s all worth something to someone, but it’s not worth a whole lot, which makes collection and shipping costs dominate the economics. If it’s worth $1/ton to someone, they’re next door, and you’ve accumulated a truckload, they’ll be happy to pay for it. If shipping it to them costs $1.01 a ton, you’re stuck with it. If it’s all over town in little piles, then it probably costs more to pay people minimum wage to go around collecting it than it’s worth.
But if the cardboard plant (say) is in your town, you have an old truck, and you’re desperate for any kind of work, then driving around collecting used boxes will pay something. I’d suspect that those Mexicans someone mentioned collecting cardboard are in business for themselves, so minimum wage doesn’t apply, and I also suspect that they’re avoiding such overhead costs as city business licenses, taxes, and insurance.
And you know what? That’s the kind of immigrant I like. 😉