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[GreenYes] FW: Spam: More Re: Dubner's interview on Good Morning America


 

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
 




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