And even entrain my ideal.I agree with you all this is in extra expense that we don't want to be bother with. Before I was not some" green person" .I just seeing piles of plastic bottle all over, and seeing them go to the trash.(I felt the guilt of it tug at my heart. So again I agree I have a video/film career that I love so why bother. I don't have an answer for that it I was just compelled to do it. Now for some reason my eyes have been open to seeing this waste everwhere bathroom,in the kitchen. When I first went to Troy's office to talk about it, we just kept on meeting. We didn't have the slights ideal, we would jus brain strom and try diffrent tactics. Now we find ourselves here.(In a RECYCO cotruvertiy)
We have learned alot and I'm sure we barely sctached the surface. We are trying to put a bandaid on a gushing wound. It was just an ideai and thought I could be apart of something that made feel good. I sure if I continue to be apart of this bisness, I will be well off, but I wouldn't enjoy it. Its a life of a const battle.(Like this one). I don't enjoy this, I don't want people mad at me for starting a recycle company in Limon. But I guess I'm fight the good fight now. Let me give you some of the information that we have found out sence this begin.When recycled materials are used in place of virgin materials during manufacturing, we avoid the environmental damage caused by mining for metals, drilling for petroleum, and harvesting trees. Of course there is always some degree of pollution created in any manufacturing process, including recycling, but production using recycled material is dramatically less polluting and resource intensive than production from virgin materials: • Producing recycled white paper creates 74% less air pollution and 35% less water pollution than producing paper from virgin fibers. • Using recycled cans instead of extracting ore to make aluminum cans produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution. • Recycling and remanufacturing are 194 times more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than landfilling and virgin manufacturing. Eco-Cycle’s Ten Reasons to Recycle 2 3. Recycling saves energy. Every year, Americans generate more than 230 million tons of solid waste. By recycling about 30% of our waste every year, Americans save the energy equivalent of 11.9 billion gallons of gasoline and reduce the greenhouse gas equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road. For every one million tons of material recycled rather than landfilled, we save the energy equivalent of • Aluminum: 35,680,000 barrels of oil • Glass: 460,000 barrels of oil • Newspaper: 2,920,000 barrels of oil • Office paper: 1,760,000 barrels of oil • Mixed residential paper: 4,010,000 barrels of oil • PET (plastic): 9,100,000 barrels of oil • HDPE (plastic): 8,870,000 barrels of oil 4. Recycling saves money. It is untrue that recycling costs more than disposal. Selling recyclable materials offsets the extra costs of collecting and processing recyclables, making recycling the cheaper option for the community. For example, in Boulder, landfilling costs more than three times as much as recycling as seen in the following table. The town of Loveland, Colorado built an efficient, government-operated recycling program that saves the town more than $40 per ton over landfilling. Loveland does not require residents to recycle yet still boasts a residential recycling rate near 55%, making the community a huge success story in the Rocky Mountain region. Plus, all the environmental and public health benefits of recycling, such as reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and the avoided health care costs from a cleaner environment, have economic value as well— more than $55 per ton compared to landfilling. Trash Recycling Collection $60/ton $70/ton Landfill fees $20/ton Processing at recycling facility $45/ton Sale of material ($90/ton) NET COST $80/ton $25/ton Eco-Cycle’s Ten Reasons to Recycle 3 5. Landfills and incinerators are economic losers. Landfill owners are only responsible for their landfill for 30 years after it closes even though the EPA has acknowledged all landfills will eventually leak and their toxic leachate, or garbage juice, can seep into and contaminate soil and groundwater supplies. Roughly 20% of the sites on the Superfund list (the nation’s most hazardous sites) are solid waste landfills, including Marshall Landfill in Boulder County and Lowry Landfill in Denver. Clean-up costs at these sites commonly run into the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars and increasingly fall upon the shoulders of taxpayers rather than the polluting industries. It was recently ruled by the EPA that the city of Boulder is financially responsible in perpetuity for maintaining the integrity of the “cap” on the 160 acre Marshall Landfill site to prevent any rainwater from entering the old landfill. No one knows how much this will cost, but it will certainly be in the millions of dollars, and these future landfill costs will compete against other city services in tight city budget years. Incinerators require vast amounts of capital to construct—upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars—and then require a continual stream of garbage to stay operational, thus creating an economic incentive to waste more and recover less. They are hands down the most expensive waste treatment option, and worse yet, this investment provides very few local jobs. communities have found themselves financially in debt to the incinerator for failing to supply the necessary trash volume under long-term “put or pay” contracts. To repay the bank, a community must perpetually feed the incinerator with waste, thus preventing the growth of recycling or composting. Furthermore, because of the low heating value of mixed garbage, many plants cannot compete with open market electricity prices and will look for a town or utility to guarantee an inflated price. 6. Landfills and incinerators are major sour.
