Recycling habits?

I'm not sure if it's just the city in which I live, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of recycling availability now as compared to when I was growing up (10-15 years ago). Back in the late 80s and early 90s in Garland, TX (of King of the Hill fame), each household was supplied with different containers for each recyclable, and these were picked up once a week. Now, in Houston, there are special dumpsters spotted sparsely throughout the community where you can recycle paper products only. What gives?

I always emit a little groan when people talk about how the Europeans do this or that so much better than Americans, and how we should emulate them. For example, there seems to be a psychotic sect of the renewable energy sector that seems to believe we should discourage fossil fuel use by taxing the hell out of gasoline. But I digress.

One area where I nostalgically recall my stint in Europe (at least Germany, France and Italy) was their dedication to recycling. We had separate containers/dumpsters out front for different colors of glass, aluminum, etc. France had the same setup, but I know France also had plastic, but I don't remember if Germany did.

Recycling one can supposedly saves as much energy as half the internal volume of the can in gasoline. Aluminum processing is far more energy intensive than glass or plastic, but plastic is made directly from fossil fuels, so we could save a lot of energy by effectively recycling them as well, but I've read a few things that claim that plastic we recycle is not turned back into beverage containers, but into non-renewable stuff, like car bumpers.

If you are a climate change guy, you will also be surprised how much carbon is emitted in aluminum processing--and not just from the energy used to do the job. Use your favorite search engine and read a few articles on aluminum processing and you'll see that while it is extremely energy intensive (low voltage, high amperage current passed through molten aluminum oxide (660C or 1220F--smelted at over 1000C) to perform electrolysis). The US manufactures 3.4 billion kg of aluminum a year and uses 44.2 billion kilowatt-hours of power to do it. The electrodes used in the electrolysis are made of carbon, the anode erodes away, takes oxygen from the alumina and releases 1.5 lbs of CO2 for every pound of aluminum. That means the aluminum industry releases 11.2 billion pounds, or 5.6 million tons of CO2 a year just from their anode corrosion during the smelting process. If I understand this correctly, recycling avoids this altogether because you don't have to re-smelt the aluminum, you just have to melt it and reform it because it's not aluminum-oxide.

Just to stir the pot.

Recycling is more a convenience for me no matter where I have lived, here in the US (the best place in the world) or abroad. I lived in places where they required you to have a recycle bin, of which you had to pay for, and others that provide the opportunity if you wished. Needless to say those few places where I was forced to pay for a recycle bin, I absolutely refused to recycle (down with micro-manage government). Now I live in Washington, land of liberals and tree huggers, where we are given a recycling bin for free (sort of). So now I recycle when it's convenient and typically the easy stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that we are stewards of the Earth. My point is that if we want to be serious about recycling and all that jazz, then it needs to begin with us not imposed by some wasteful governmental institution. If people want to reduce, re-use, and recycle (the three r's by non-other than Jack Johnson & friends) more power to them, and I'm on board with all that to an extent.

The second point,wasteful government, is just that; micro-government sanction are wasteful and cost tax-payers way too much money. Think about it for a moment. We live in a remarkable economic system such that if it recycling truly was profitable we'd have booming private business markets for it. Instead, we have government incentive programs that cost tax payer's money.

As far as gas taxation and forcing private business to comply with the "green initiative"; that's just plain stupid. So lucky, for the US that we are so prosperous and tough luck to all those others trying to compete in this new global era. Lets just stick it to all those other 3'rd world nations and make sure they stay there. Get serious. Consumption taxation, ok, but government "be green" taxation NO.

I'm off my soap box now. Let me just say I totally dig reducing waste via reusing (halleluiah to Criag'sList and hand-me-downs) and recycling when I get around to it.

In some ways all of our trash has been recycled for a long time because it all goes to a Vicon incinerator which burns the trash at 1800 degrees in a process that converts it into steam and later into electricity to power four paper mills operated by Crane and Company; which is the company that makes all the paper and also helped develop much of the security for U.S. currency.

A few months ago, a notice came from the guy who collects our trash saying that a new town ordinance requires us to recycle and so we had to begin separating paper and glass and plastic. Honestly it doesn't take a lot of effort to do this; the hardest thing is remembering to take it out on the designated monthly pickup day. I have to say, we used to have at least 2 barrels of trash each week, sometimes more if there was a lot of cardboard, and now we don't even quite fill one barrel each week with regular trash.

If what we are putting out to recycle is truly being recycled, then this really shows a difference just from our house.