Is recycling newspaper TRULY a good thing?

Question

Why is recycling newspaper truly a good thing? I don't believe it truly is regardless of the brainwashing...

1. A truck has to drive the newspaper to the recycling depot. Wasting a non-renewable energy (gas).

2. A front end loader pushes the paper around the recycling depot again wasint a non-renewable energy (gas).

3. A conveyor moves the paper along a belt while machinary and people remove metals, etc. from the waste. This uses electricity (70% of which uses coal or gas to produce).

4. Electric is used to process the paper and extract the ink.

5. You get the idea....

In all total 6 times the energy consumption and pollution of simply producing a new piece of paper and dropping off the old one at the landfill! The landfills are high tech now a days and can extract methane gas for energy usage. Why are we wasting energy, human resources, etc? Please don't say its a lack of space in landfills, cause Canada/US has tonnes of space and landfills make up a tiny tiny percentag

Answer 1

No, it's not a good thing. The items that you have listed are all correct, although collecting methane is difficult from a landfill because of the low heat content per unit volume. You also need to expand your consequences to include the disruption to logging and paper communities. Many of those communities have lost huge populations as jobs were lost. Those people had to move - gas. They had to have new homes, highways and longer commutes to new jobs. Many of them moved to areas of the country that were already concerned about water. The list goes on...

Answer 2

recycling takes a lot less energy than does chopping  down trees and moving them thousands of miles to the mills to make paper. it also helps in the reduction of CO2 gasses by leaving the trees alive to do what they do best, use CO2 to make oxygen and remove other pollutants from the atmosphere.

Answer 3

<<In all total 6 times the energy consumption and pollution of simply producing a new piece of paper and dropping off the old one at the landfill! <<

Answer 4

All those are good points.  Operating a recycling program is not cost free and the operators have to make money, too.

However, I think the recycling company already crunched the numbers for you. When a community or township start their recycling programs, they look into the cost, which is provided by the recycling company. They charge different post comsumer paper at different rate: newspaper, magazine, corrugated paper board, mixed paper, etc. It takes into account the "value" of the final products they can make out of each of the above and any additional process cost which including the consideration of the energy you mentioned above.

People who own the landfill also charge the city and township for their diposal. You can transport your garage further and further away but the transportation cost will go up. As the landfill around the cities used up, they have to go further and further away. There will be a point when tip of the balance tilt and making sense for implementing recycling.

Price for recycled paper also help shifting the balance sooner. As more comsumers ask for recycled paper products, the manufacturers are more willing to switch and making the demand of recycled paper higher, which in turn help financing the paper recycling program at the local levels.

The paper recylcing facilities and transportation companies can also work on improving their energy efficiency. That's nothing different from any other manufacturing facilities. The energy reduction and efficiency improvement will go directly into their profit margin. So there is direct incentive for the operators to work on their ends as well. Don't worry.

Paper recycling reduces demand of virgin paper, which helps reduce the destruction of our forests.