Penn & Teller - Bullshit!: Recycling

submitted by nibiyabi
1 decade 7 years 9 months 3 weeks ago

40 Comments

theo47says...

When I first saw this, it just confirmed my suspicions.
Not many people ask what happens after you throw the stuff in those bins or blue bags.
I will reduce and reuse whenever I can, but I generally don't recycle.

bamdrewsays...

pretty fun.

what about recycling glass? they didn't do my homework for me on that front... anyone else know about whether recycling glass is worth it?


My recycling center has hazardous waste collection (motor oil, antifreeze, batteries large and small, etc.) and also has reusable materials areas that functions similar to a free Goodwill store, and set-aside areas for consumables others might like to reuse (its where I get all my cardboard moving boxes... its a college town).

obscenesimiansays...

I have always hated the tone of Bullshit, its very confrontational and angry. While in general they are correct about many things, they don't ever show the whole truth. It's entertainment, so they pick and choose what they portray.

The truth on recycling in the UNITED STATES is that it is poorly managed and a great proportion of the volume of recycling is inefficient and driven by subsidies instead of market forces. (excluding valuable metals, etc.)

There, summed it all up very quickly without any bullshit

k8_fansays...

And of course, their whole focus was on consumer recycling, ignoring the whole area of businesses. My brother is a plumber. When he went to work for the firm he's is now with, he insisted that they get a cardboard dumpster. They had to threaten to go with a different refuse company to get them to install one - even though cardboard is something that is VERY recyclable, and businesses that use a lot of boxes (like grocery stores) sell their boxes for recycling. Why? Because every box that gets crushed and recycled is one less box more profitably filling a regular dumpster. They charge per dumpster load.

One of my customers is a bar. Back in the 70s, they used to recycle their bottles and cans. Different bins for clear, green and brown glass. They fill up a dumpster every single day now because none of the refuse companies (now calling themselves "recycling" companies in the Bushian manner of the "Clean Air Act" and the "Healthy Forests Initiative") will actually recycle glass. Yes, one suburban Mom driving an SUV to the recycling center is less efficient than just throwing her paper sack of bottles away. But if every bar in a college town recycled their bottles and cans? That is a significant difference. But, follow the money. Refuse company owners and bar owners have more political clout, so no business is required to recycle, and instead we get only "feel good" programs for private citizens.

conansays...

ah screw P&T. Just because you US guys can´t manage your recycling it doesn´t mean other countries fail also. Boy if the whole world was so plain dumb about enviroment, recycling etc. as the US we all would be dead already.

Science, economy, military, you have it all. But a sense of responibility? No.

Oatmealsays...

Nice... P&T manage to come accross sounding like assholes (well, teller doesent really talk) and at the same time use pretty weak examples. I'm not an environmental nut or anything, but they just said recycling paper doent save trees, without backing that up at all. And as for the trees planted for paper bit, they didn't mention that it takes about 40 to 50 years for a planted tree to be harvestable, (and having treeplanted my self, I can attest that that job is far shittier than any of those in the recycling plant). Comaring that to a potato crop is just ignorant.

snaremopsays...

Oatmeal, thats a load of shit.
Planting treees in the outdoors is way nicer than being in some building sorting out other people cans and shit. Obviously there is going to be some work somewhere in the garbage industry that most people wouldn't like to do, P & T are just saying that it shouldn't be in the recycling center, since recycling is bullshit (so they say, I'm not so sure....).

Oatmealsays...

Do a little reaserch on treeplanting, and you will probably find its just about as harsh as a job can get. I was working up to 14 hour days including the drive, planting 2500 trees a day, all the while avoiding wasp nests, inhaling clouds of black flies and mosquitos, and dealing with all manner of pesticide coated seedlings... and its not like you can slack off, you're paid by how much you plant. Its definately not a stable carreer type job. And guess what? Its also partly subsidezed by the government! (at least in Canada). So if a few thousand people can have stable, moderately paying jobs close to home, out of recycling paper products, why not? Making new paper requires chemichals, and has waste, just like the recycled product, ans as long as the recylcled stuff goes into cardboard and other industry related products, the whole ink waste thing isnt really a big deal since in can all be ground and mulched together. P & T were right on about their PETA rant, but the rycycling issue is a little more involved then they let on.

bamdrewsays...

agreed, Oatmeal; bit too simplistic, bit too one-sided, and they only really have that one professor feeding them talking points.

They successfully point out a lot of problems with recycling, and point out that the landfill argument is junk, but they avoid discussing what recycling is doing right and what the next steps to making reusing and recycling more cost effective and economically valuable, especially to corporation.

darksunsays...

Isn't this going against the videosift guideline No. 3.5:

Please do not post entire episodes of television shows. That's what BitTorrent is for.

I say 3.5 because it dosn't have a number. It's stuck between 3 and 4.

JSDsays...

that whole argumentation is based on money: the main argument is the COST for recycling compared to the cost of non-recycling. Since it does not cost anything to destroy our enviroment (at least in short-term), it is of course less expensive not to recylce.
in long-term, recycling pays off, also economically.

k8_fansays...

I enjoy Penn and Teller as entertainers, and find them amusing as provocateurs, but their political opinions are simplistic at best. This episode, and the one on "12 Step" programs made me re-evaluate the episodes of their show that I enjoyed and agreed with. In general, most of them stood up. But for the most part, they seem to be out to prove H. L. Menchen's claim that:

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong."

BicycleRepairMansays...

in long-term, recycling pays off, also economically.

I'd say that may be true for some recycling, like old fridges, paint, chemicals etc in short hazardous materials. as for food, paper, cardboard, most plastic, wood, iron etc, recycling the stuff actually not only costs more, but its actually MORE dangerous to the environment than not doing it, like the video says.

Is all that waste good? No, so the best thing to do is to think environment BEFORE making all the waste, like less packaging, not using chemicals in stuff and to produce stuff etc. Theres plenty of stuff to do to help reduce the amount of dangerous waste outside recycling.

Paper recycling for instance, is bullshit, because unless you only throw away blank sheets of paper (almost noone does) and/or separate colored from "text" paper (I believe germany is best at this (around 90%, most are 40% or less..) they need to bleach it, process it, and mix it with new mass just to make toilet paper, a process that does more harm than good. Not to mention that it can only be done once for paper so the BEST we can hope for is that paper can be used maybe 1 and a half times. "recycling" sounds like we can use the same paper over and over forever, well, no luck, we're not even using it twice.

BicycleRepairMansays...

Btw, my dad actually works with this stuff, and when I mentioned this video, he just says "this is what we've been saying for years" and when you ask him, he just says "Burn it[in a facility with cleansing systems]", that way you instantly transfer the energy to something useful. The ashes can even be used to create concrete, he said they do this in places like Belgium and Holland, and the concrete is used to make levees etc.

gorgonheapsays...

I think the point of the video is that recycling can be more wasteful then utilizing our trash for other reasons. And that recycling is not something that should be imposed on us and that the scare tactics for it are, as they say bullshit.

mas8705says...

not too sure if this video was previously what you had for the Penn & Teller recycling, but it still makes fun of the idea with the nine different colored bins... Hopefully that will work for now...

siftbotsays...

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.

siftbotsays...

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - findthumb requested by eric3579.

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