From: Jeffrey Morris [mailto:jeff.morris@no.address]
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 1:56
PM
To: 'stephan.pollard@no.address'
Subject: RE: Spam: More Re:
Dubner's interview on Good Morning America
Stephan,
You need to read my first response to you
again. What I said was that if there is house-to-house garbage pickup
then house-to-house recycling pickup is environmentally effective. The
examples you are giving, I presume, are for places that don’t have
garbage collection. In that case recycling doesn’t have to be
curbside to compete effectively with garbage. Also, no one in their right
mind would run a curbside recycling program to just collect one material, just
as no one in their right mind would run a garbage collection route to collect
just plastic bags or just dental floss of just some other single
material. Curbside recycling programs that target the full range of
materials collect 500 or 700 or more pounds annually on average from the households
that have garbage collection, and that average is calculated across all
households on the garbage routes even the ones that don’t set anything
out for recycling.
So I think you are missing something
here. Sorry to be blunt, but that’s the way it seems to me.
Regards,
Jeff
From: Stephan Pollard [mailto:stephan.pollard@no.address]
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 4:21
PM
To: Green Yes Jeff; Jeffrey Morris
Subject: Spam: More Re: Dubner's
interview on Good Morning America
To the Group - I'd like
to say that the misunderstandings, dogma being promoted, and the compulsion
amongst certain members of this group (some perhaps with vested financial and
emotional interests) to make gross assumptions, label, ridicule, and otherwise
divert attention from reasonable inquiry and suggestion is more than
regretful. Similar sentiment has been expressed by at least one or two
other contributors to this group in the not-so-distant past.
As an aside, for those who might question my interests or otherwise think I have
a disaffection for reuse, recycling, and composting I would encourage you to
visit the web pages of Maple
Street Apartments. It has one of the most successful, progressive, if
not premier, pilot multi-family recycling, reuse, and household hazardous waste
diversion operations for hundreds of miles in all directions and perhaps even
in the country. I designed it and I operate it and have for the past 7
years.
Jeff,
I must be missing something here. I can well imagine it making sense in
many instances but it is very hard to believe it makes sense in many
others. Driving gasoline guzzling recycling trucks around rural
communities picking up a few pounds of PET the recycling of which might save a
couple of pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually hardly seems like
it makes sense when the trucks are getting around 2 miles per gallon of gas
emitting 20 lbs of (CO2) for every gallon of gasoline burned.
This is even more the case when one considers the other negative externalities
and opportunity costs that arise as a result of putting that collection program
in place and operating it. To put it more extremely, does it make sense
to establish and operate a recycling program that seeks to collect a couple of
pounds of mixed paper annually from a single household a hundred miles out of
the way? If we accept that the answer is NO then the implication is that
there is a threshold at which it does make sense. Under what conditions
does it make sense? I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of
recycling programs don't really know where that line is and that there is a
great deal of inefficiency in them. I'd also be willing to bet that there
are numerous instances/circumstances where it does make sense (a net benefit
results) and numerous instances where it doesn't.
Again, Best Regards,
Stephan
--
Stephan Pollard, Ph.D.-Environmental Dynamics
555 W. Maple St., Apt. C
Fayetteville, AR 72701
(479) 444-7445
(479) 799-9190 cell