Path: utzoo!yunexus!maccs!nusip
From: nusip@maccs.McMaster.CA (Mike Borza)
Newsgroups: tor.general
Subject: Recycling in general(was Re: Recycling Phonebooks)
Message-ID: <2226@maccs.McMaster.CA>
Date: 24 Mar 89 06:59:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: maccs.2226
References: <89Mar15.154034est.19517@me.utoronto.ca> <444@ontenv.UUCP>
Reply-To: nusip@maccs.UUCP (Mike Borza)
Distribution: tor
Organization: McMaster U., Hamilton, Ont., Can.
Lines: 36

Now you've hit a nerve... (the fact that we've got Norm from MOE along
on the topic should make this interesting).

Here in Hamilton, we've got curb-side recycling in place at last,
following the lead of some more progressive communities, and ahead of
some laggardly others.

One of the things that really bothers me about the program, as it exists
here, is that products which should be ideal candidates for recycling are
excluded.  Aluminum foil, for example, is usually scattered on my lawn
after pick-up day.  Given the energy deficit one faces when producing
aluminum from raw materials compared with the cost of reusing refined
aluminum, this should be one of the highest priority reuse items.
It would seem to me that even if it was necessary to set aside a small
portion of landfill sites to store specific materials while recycling
programs are instituted for those materials, we'd be far further ahead
than just lumping them in with other waste for which there is no clear
recycling technology.  Why is there no agressive policy to deal with
relatively simple issues such as this? (he asked naively)  I think that
more than part of the answer lies in Norm's reply on the disposition of
old telephone books in India (no hewers of wood and drawers of water in
this high-tech free-trade society, no, sir).

Incidentally, I saw on the news last night that Bell had ordered the
destruction of what must be a forest's worth of telephone books because
they found the front cover painting of a famous figure skating duo too
racy (although less so than the costumes displayed at last year's Olympics).
Bell was hasty to point out that since they were printers of the phone
books, they could easily recycle them.  Since it's so easy for them to
rectify their own screwup, maybe they should take the (now well-used)
phone books back to slip them in with the new ones.

Or have I missed some fundamental point here?

mike borza     <antel!mike@maccs.uucp>
       God bless the greening of Maggie.