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Recycling

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I have heard that recycling paper is actually bad for the environment because of the chemical pollutants involved. What I would like to know is has anyone ever worked out the cost to the environment of recycling various different things such as plastic, paper, aluminium, etc. eg. in litres of water used or some other criteria/on. Does anybody have any expert knowledge in this area and wish to set me straight?

also could anybody point me to some resources where I can find out about this sort of thing?

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Originally posted by mosquitorespect
I have heard that recycling paper is actually bad for the environment because of the chemical pollutants involved. What I would like to know is has anyone ever worked out the cost to the environment of recycling various different things such as plastic, paper, aluminium, etc. eg. in litres of water used or some other criteria/on. Does anybody have ...[text shortened]...

also could anybody point me to some resources where I can find out about this sort of thing?
I have heard that the carbon trust has worked on a system that effectively commoditises carbon emmissions in tonnes of carbon dioxide released. Different to what you are talking about but kind of related in that it is a system that measures meritous and demeritous environmental activity in tonnes of carbon dioxide.

I found this on google fairly quickly:

http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/carbontrust/climate_change/iocc4_3_1.html

Best of luck!

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Good question Mosquito.. . I've often wondered whether the environmental impact of manufacturing polyesters , rayons , nylons etc . for clothing is more detrimental than tanning animal hides .

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Originally posted by Corsair
I have heard that the carbon trust has worked on a system that effectively commoditises carbon emmissions in tonnes of carbon dioxide released. Different to what you are talking about but kind of related in that it is a system that measures meritous and demeritous environmental activity in tonnes of carbon dioxide.

I found this on google fairly quickly:

http://www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/carbontrust/climate_change/iocc4_3_1.html

Best of luck!
Thanks Corsair. Unfortunately the carbon trust website doesn't seem to have what I want. It happens often that i am after certain information like this and I just don't know where to look. Searching the web seems to get me nowhere:'(. Maybe I am just bad at it, but what I found about recycling is that there is the general idea that it is environmentally friendly, and maybe it is, but nobody seems to have questioned it's efficiency or exactly how environmentally friendly/unfriendly it can be. Partly what prompted me to ask this question was that I recently took a GCSE in Human Biology at night school and a girl in my class said her dad was involved in waste management and had carried out a study showing that recycling was actually worse for the environment than just dumping waste.

People seem to have shunned this post, perhaps because they can't believe I am so ignorant or that they don't know any of the answers themselves, or they are simply not interested, so hopefully pushing it back to the top of the thread list will get a few more people to contribute.🙂

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try this on for size
http://www.ofee.gov/recycled/calculat.htm
put in 100% recycled compared to 0% recycled and you can compare the lifetime environmental impacts by type