Recycling paper doesn't mean it's a clean or "free" process. While I'm not an expert, it appears that its main benefit is to reuse paper products so that less trees are cut down (which is good, since the "renewable" resource takes several decades to renew, removes the ability of the tree to process CO2 when cut down, and destroys the habitat for wildlife living there in the mean time - not to mention all the fuel burned to cut down the trees and transport them to the pulp and paper plant). There is still impact on the environment from the recycling process (from wikipedia):
Quote:
The process of waste paper recycling most often involves mixing used/old paper with water and chemicals to break it down. It is then chopped up and heated, which breaks it down further into strands of cellulose, a type of organic plant material; this resulting mixture is called pulp, or slurry. It is strained through screens, which remove any glue or plastic (especially from plastic-coated paper) that may still be in the mixture then cleaned, de-inked, bleached, and mixed with water. Then it can be made into new recycled paper.
|
Presumably making it into "new recycled" paper involves many of the same processes as making "new" paper? Is there actually an energy/water/pollution savings/benefit to this?
I like the idea about plastic recycling, though even recycling has an environmental penalty (i.e. energy use, chemical use required, etc. - but presumably benefits outweigh negatives). That system could be used to recycle all the other plastic packaging that still remains in many (most) products out there, because getting rid of plastic grocery bags doesn't get rid of the problem. HRM can ban grocery bags but products will still have plastic bags that are used to contain, keep fresh, keep sanitary, etc., the food products that the store sells. That stuff will continue to go to the land fill or get shipped overseas (how much energy is used to do that?) until somebody comes up with a better idea.
What about the issue of bacteria growth in the reusable bags? Is cleaning enough to remove/kill it? I'm guessing if your haddock fillets leak into your reusable grocery bag it will probably be the last time it's reused... then what? It will have to be recycled, or more likely tossed out, as even recycled items are required to be clean.
So yeah, make life more difficult for the average person just trying to get through their day, but don't worry about all the other stuff that also causes similar or worse issues. Honestly, to be effective this type of thing needs to be handled at the federal level - country wide, but our federal government is too busy buying pipelines to sell more oil, while at the same time charging carbon taxes to discourage people from using oil (seems a little hypocritical doesn't it?). The oil shipped overseas (using more fuel to ship) will still be burned and return pollution to the atmosphere that everybody on the planet shares. (sorry strayed a little off-topic there)
The whole environmental issue irks me, not because it changes things or makes things inconvenient, but because there doesn't seem to be any actual leadership involved, just a bunch of groups with conflicting agendas not actually accomplishing anything. The problem is much larger than just taking away the obvious things that people see and that become a popular target to complain about. And it has to be handled at a global level, with collaboration and work towards real solutions. The real solutions will involve solving problems at the root level, and not dealing with the by-products ad hoc.
We can do it, but it takes real work and real thought, not just a bunch of councilors patting themselves on the back because they banned plastic bags without doing any research and trying to work on other solutions. What it often seems to come down to is that people do whatever looks good to everybody else, without actually knowing whether it makes a real difference.
Anyhow, I fully expect to hear about the glut of reusable grocery bags in our landfill within a year or two... I hope I'm wrong.