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and now all you see is some grocery bags and other minor items made of recycled paper...
Again Ted you get the prize for the closest to but shy of the facts post of the day.
According to the EPA (who just might be a tad more creditable source) our paper industry's source materials are:
Recycled paper: 33 percent
Whole trees and other plants: 33 percent
Wood chips and scraps from sawmills: 33 percent
And they say:
About 70 percent of newspaper/mechanical papers and 91 percent of corrugated cardboard were recovered in 2012. Starting in 2012, newsprint and groundwood inserts expanded to include directories and other mechanical papers.
This and many other facts about recycled wood fibers are at:
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/material...tm#recycle
edited to add: I am a farmer. I have a lot of use for waste cardboard as a weed control. When I first tried to get cardboard by the bundle in Hilo I went to Sears and other big box stores hoping to get large ink free cardboard. Think the boxes refrigerators come in. I quickly learned there's a real business in recycled materials and all the big boxes are sending theirs back to the mainland in the empty containers all their goods come in and selling the stuff into the waste recycling industry there.
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The money that Recycle Hawaii was receiving was for educational purposes - they were to spend it on advertising campaigns, etc. to bring the public up to speed on the what/where/how/why of recycling. After ten years and $1 million, I hope that they got the point across, on an island.
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pahoated seems particularly well misinformed.
For aluminum, the general figures thrown around are that aluminum recycling saves 90% - 95% of the energy used for mining and smelting raw bauxite. Even with transportation, there is plenty of energy savings to be had. Also, Alcoa seems interested in expanding recycling and purchases of aluminum.
http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/tools/lo.../benefits/
http://www.alcoa.com/ingot/en/info_page/recycling.asp
Energy savings from recycling plastic bottles is not as large, although using them in a waste-to-energy stream is just burning petroleum in a different form.
dakine - FYI we've always had good luck getting large boxes from the Sears appliance delivery center on Leilani. We stop by every once and awhile, in the afternoon after deliveries, and grab some refrigerator / washing machine boxes for kiddos to make forts. The boxes end up as LFA-free mulch when they are too soft to stand up anymore.
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quote:
Originally posted by kalakoa
"Not politically motivated", merely a coincidence that the contract they held for 10 years wasn't renewed after they spoke out against the incinerator...
http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/loc...y-contract
Pay back is old school plantation style. Kenoi grew up in that school and is a skilled practitioner.
Assume the best and ask questions.
Punaweb moderator
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"The money that Recycle Hawaii was receiving was for educational purposes."
We have 2 of the compost barrels and they are great.The target audience was probably not me and my wife.
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Well, the majority are still missing the point.
The fact is Hawaii island recycles almost nothing. Regardless of mainland statistics, there are no pulp mills here, no steel mills, no aluminum mills. Are you so emo-biased that you can't even admit to a simple fact? Do you really realize you are living on an island?
On the mainland, those large industrial complexes are there, the material is completely recycled and the material enters the LOCAL market, the mainland.
On Hawaii island, those materials are shipped off this island to complete the final stage of recycling. Those materials enter totally different markets, mostly Asian, the economic as well as environmental benefits going to these value adders. It isn't like the mainland at all, where aluminum cans are collected, and an ingot of aluminum becomes available to the local industry which fabricates it into something else. Think about that. How many people on Hawaii island would repurpose an ingot of aluminum?
Again, dealing with the 10-second American attention span, the point is, for Hawaii island, the waste has much more value as fuel stock than recyclable material in the conventional sense.
Recycling consumes large amounts of transportation energy which requires it to be government subsidized to be profitable. The amount of energy consumed exceeds the environmental benefit of conserving materials.
WTE eliminates almost all sorting and transportation, while producing energy which becomes a large source of revenue when sold back to the utility. The heavy metal ingots from gasification are export recyclable material with good income revenue.
"Mahalo nui Pele, 'ae noho ia moku 'aina" - kakahiaka oli
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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pahoated,
All you are doing is stating the obvious and I still fail to see your point. Are you telling us we live on a remote rural island in the middle of an ocean? If so, thanks I guess.
Are you saying that because we lack the economy and resources such as smelters, pulp mills etc that our recyclable waste should be ignored? There are markets for such materials. Containers arrive here full and leave here empty. What's the big deal?
Assume the best and ask questions.
Punaweb moderator
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It doesn't matter. Uncle Billy has dropped the proposal for a WTE.
So, everybody can go back to maintaining the status quo.
"Mahalo nui Pele, 'ae noho ia moku 'aina" - kakahiaka oli
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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It's funny how people chastise Billy and accuse him of being corrupt and in the pocket of big business, but proof of that never materializes.
Rob stated earlier; "Pay back is old school plantation style. Kenoi grew up in that school and is a skilled practitioner".
I don't believe it. Billy grew up a Kalapana Hawaiian and achieved his current prominence through hard work, determination, and a keen mind.
He didn't "grow up in the old school Plantation style"; He broke the door down and demanded admittance.
