If Rural Chileans Recycle, Why Can’t We?
This picture was taken 50 miles up a desert canyon in the middle of nowhere in the Chilean Andes, underscoring that when there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’m writing this in a city in United States where it’s difficult to recycle paper. In the town where I went to high school, you still can’t even recycle glass.
Photo Credit: Clayton B. Cornell. One of the first signs of human habitation after an 11-day mountain trek, just outside the ‘town’ of Conay, Chile.
yeah, some of you americans still have to learn, sad but true.
I see a picture but no story. Who set up these collection bins? Are they used? If it is in the middle of nowhere is there no road for a collection truck to use to get to these bins? Lots of unanswered questions.
What’s the point of recycling paper?
Trees can, and ARE grown renewably. They are grown in farms, just like vegetables and fruit.
Not only does it cost more to recycle paper, it pollutes more.
Recycling plants take alot of electricity to run, they use alot of chemicals to strip the paper of ink, those chemicals have to be disposed of. More than any of this, when you buy recycled paper, no tree was grown for that paper, so no CO2 was absorbed from the tree and no oxygen put out.
Don’t believe me? study it for yourself, don’t just assume its good because it sounds good.
When you buy paper that came from a tree farm, the store you bought it from orders more paper to replace the stock they sold. The tree farm in turn gets more trees planted to cope with the excess demand.
The idea that its impossible to farm trees because they take so long to grow is idiotic.
Artificial diamonds take years to produce, banks pay people money for their house on the condition that they will take the house after they die, sometimes 20 years down the line.
Recycling metal and glass is useful. Recycling paper is wasteful, counter productive, and most of all the people doing it care more about feeling good about themselves than actually DOING good.
Thanks Clayton. This is proof positive that not being a major urban/suburban locale is no excuse for lack of recycling. Whether it’s done on local scale (a neighbor organized effort) or people find a way to fund and/or profit from recycling, via the raw materials, selling of them, or making products from them, there’s incentive somewhere in there to make it happen. Come on people!
When the dollar is devalued enough and inflation makes it profitable enough we will. Until then we will drive over sized V-8 cars and throw natural resources away like garbage.
well, i’m a Chilean and i have to say that your picture reflects an exception to the rule. we don’t really have a real “culture of recycling” here. in most cities there are places where you can recycle paper, glass or cans, but you have to drive your own garbage all the way to recycling plants, so most people won’t do it because it’s easier just throw everything into a big plastic bag and wait for the garbage truck to take it away. “luckily” we still have a lot of very poor people who makes a living out of picking paper or aluminum from people’s garbage.
sad but true. i’m hoping the image above becomes an everyday reality soon.
In New Zealand the local council pays for it - everyone gets a recycling bin for their house, and the recycling truck comes around every week to collect it all. The only place you have to pay for it is in the centre city, and everyone does it anyway, cause.. that’s just what happens. *shrug*
Why should we recycle?
Who cares about rural Chile. Thats Chile.
What do i get for recycling? It cost me more to do it.
I would rather drive my truck than pay for recycling and take the bus.
We look back at History, and marvel in our superiority over our forebears. They fought the Great War in trenches, and killed millions. They enslaved each other, and their cities were filled with filth. Those peoples looked on at their ancestors with the same contempt, they had no steam-engines to conquer their environment, and those they encountered on far-away continents were savages to be taught religion, or killed in the wake of civilisation.
In time our decedents will have to live in the world we leave for them, and they will judge us as harshly. Our combustion-engines will look as primitive as a steam train, and more polluting. No doubt increased temperatures, resource shortage, and over population will cause future wars, perhaps world-war, and perhaps even decimation of the species, and how foolish will we look, considering the answers are probably within our grasp in this lifetime.
Of course, what this doesn’t answer is whether recycling actually works in rural Chile. It’s easy and great for a politician to craft a bit of empty policy like depositing some bins around the countryside, but are they collected and emptied? Are people actually using the bins? If they are collected, are they actually recycled?
This photograph doesn’t prove that “if there’s a will there’s a way.” Rather, it only shows there are some bins in the middle of no where in Chile. I am dubious that the Chileans are actually devoting the man power and resources to keeping up on these scattered bins. Frankly, if you think about the amount of fuel that would be expended on a collection route for very rural areas (especially mountainous ones), you might ask yourself if a couple kilos of glass is really worth it. I warn you against getting caught up in symbolic claptrap without considering the practical and economic sides of things, but, then again, a lot of activists seem focused on increasing their ability to congratulate themselves and to bolster their own self-righteousness against others.