Why Recycling is bad for Climate Change …..or a carbon point of view
by Martyn Robinson
It’s widely accepted that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been increasing over the last 200-300 Years, more so since the Industrial Revolution.
Once before there was life on the planet the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today this with water and sunlight was the perfect environment for algae which started to break down the CO2 into carbon and oxygen later as the algae broke down they formed soils and with higher levels of oxygen t lead to higher forms of plant life which provided an environment for insects and animals, that reversed the process taking oxygen and producing CO2 but they retained some carbon and on death this returned to the soil eventually everything stabilized to a self sustaining eco-system.
Then came man who cut down most of the trees and burnt them (burning=Carbon plus oxygen = CO2) not only producing CO2 but limiting the ability of the trees to convert the CO2 back to Carbon and oxygen.
Then man advanced to coal and oil releasing carbon long locked in the earth into more CO2.
The immediate conclusion is that if you make a lot of artificial oil and coal and bury it in the ground we can solve the problem (ironic).
Unfortunately right now nobody is going to do that
But if you understand the basic problem now then its slightly easier to determine what course of action to take.
We can define things as being good or bad for the atmosphere and that’s not the same thing as being environmentally friendly.
Some things we know like cars burning fossil fuel are bad. But we can see that plastics for example are good in that they lock in carbon, less iron and steel more plastic is a good move, interestingly recycling plastic is a bad thing the best thing to do is bury old plastic in the ground.
Those so-called environmental power stations that run off waste can also be classed as a bad idea now. The best thing to do with waste is bury it in the ground (take the carbon locked in it out of the equation.)
Polyurethane foam is a better choice for packaging because it doesn’t break down as apposed to cardboard, even re-cycled cardboard is better off in the ground from a carbon point of view.
Growing more crops planting more trees and managing CO2 emissions in relation to carbon management is our best choice.
Bio-fuel is the key in the transition to a non combustion future but the politics of oil are hindering the change over .Oil companies that have huge stock piles of free oil underground don’t really want to be buying the stuff from the farmers and in turn the farmers have been growing fuel crops instead of food crops pushing up the price of food. However when it comes to food crops farmers don’t all grow the same crop because of government intervention and subsidies. Some how bio fuel farming slipped through the normal regulations.
It would be nice to think that an US steel company could fund a Bio-Fuel farm on some barren land in Africa , but then a whole load of politics comes into play, but that’s the way forward and maybe we can develop algae farms it worked once.
Remember don’t Re-cycle Save the Planet .
