Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

What about making some of the facts from www.wiserplanet.org into catchy catch phrases! Or Leaves grow from leaves.

The Expert answers:

Yes! Recycling is VERY important!!!! My class and me & my
teacher are CRAZY about recycling! In fact, my class and I have started a recycling project in the whole school. My class and I made recycling bins and put them around the whole school for the other kids in the school. Especially the 8th graders! Recycling is very, very important! If you’re wondering why I mentioned the 8th graders is because they throw trash all over the school. My school is a K-8 grade school. It is very important to recycle.

The Expert answers:

The reason recycling is important is the fact that it helps keep waste out of the landfill’s. Another reason recycling is important is the fact that raw materials are constantly in demand, and every time we cut down a tree, or dig something out of the ground, we upset the balance of nature. If we can reuse the materials it is less strain on the environment, and leaves our grandchildren something long after we’re gone. A beautiful world. I like the name Sheena for a female robot.

The Expert answers:

Real facts.

Vampires do not exist, and this can be proven with the application of logic, critical thinking skills, and verified scientific and medical data:

1. Vampires, defined as a humanoid being that MUST consume blood or energy to survive do not exist. Cut and paste time, as it is too much work to type this out over and over and I “recycle” my own answers instead of retyping them so here goes. A brief discussion of the human digestive system and then the probable vampire population given an exponential growth rate should explain why vampires are not possible.

2. The human body is not designed to process large amounts of blood for nutrition. There is not enough protein, carbohydrates, and fats present in blood to maintain a complex creature such as Homo Sapiens or any theorized offshoot mutations. When a human ingests food it is first broken up into a bolus by chewing, then churned up in the stomach with digestive juices to form a mass called chyme. It then passes through the pylorus into the duodenum, part of the small intestine where it mixes with bile salts and secretions from the pancreas and liver which continue breaking it down on a molecular basis, mostly affecting fats at this point. The broken down nutrients pass through the wall of the intestines and into the bloodstream where they are carried to each cell or stored for later use. Indigestible bulk continues through the intestines, turning a dark brown from the bile. Water is absorbed from this mass in the large intestine depending on the needs of the body – a well-hydrated person will usually have a softer stool than a dehydrated person will. Water also enters the bloodstream, and this is what helps to maintain blood pressure. The pressure tends to balance itself in a healthy person because the bloodstream goes through a formation in the kidney called the Loop of Henle, where the narrowing blood vessel forces excess water and cellular waste such as urea out through the cellular wall into the kidneys, where it is excreted through the ureters into the bladder, and then out of the body via the urethral passageway.

3. IMPORTANT – A person physically unable to process his own food for nutrition therefore also could not process blood – it’s the same process. Ingested blood does not transmit directly to the veins anyway – it would be chemically broken down by the digestive system.

4. Theoretical ingestion of blood to supply these nutrients would therefore have to occur at least once a day, and would require the ingestion of the entire blood supply which could not happen as the stomach is far too small to hold that much liquid volume. Hold up your clenched fist – under normal conditions your stomach is about that size. Furthermore, such a mass would be difficult to pass thru the intestines as it has no fibrous bulk, would create an intestinal impaction, causing massive vomiting from the large concentration of iron present, and any “real” vampire would have to eventually expel the waste, which would come out as a black, tarry, smelly goo, just as stool does when blood is present from a upper GI bleed.

5. These humans that affect the whole “vampiric lifestyle” are NOT vampires. They are simply humans playing their own little game, in their own little fantasy world, usually pandering to their own little sexual fetish, which may or may not actually be sexual. I too, play my own little game, in the SCA, but mine is a game where the deeds that I do are determined by the strength of my arm and sword – I am a warrior, with just as much skill and ability as any warrior of ancient times. The difference is that I am claiming to be something physically possible: a warrior, and I prove it everytime I strap on my armor and walk onto a SCA battlefield. The so-called “vampires” are claiming to be something physically impossible: a walking corpse, and all they prove is that black Victorian clothing, a pair of false fangs, and a little makeup make for a good Halloween costume – it does not make you a vampire.

6. Even if a vampire feeds once a week, and his victim also becomes a vampire, that is exponential growth, with four iterations a month. First iteration: One makes one, total two. Second iteration: Two make two, total four. Third iteration: Four make four, total eight. Fourth iteration: Eight make eight, total sixteen. 16 vampires at the end of one month, 256 at the end of the second month, 4096 by the end of the third month, 65,536 by the end of the fourth month, 1,048,476 at the end of the fifth, and 33,572,832 vampires at the end of half a year! By way of comparison, there are currently approximately 33 million people who have HIV/AIDS and the disease is a world-wide epidemic. I see people every day in the hospital with AIDS, but never has there been one documented case of a vampire attack. Do the math – vampires are a mathematical impossibility.
As for the idea that vampires existed “a long time ago” consider the estimated global population 5,000 years ago – using the above mathematical rationale, a single vampire could have converted every human on the globe in less than six months. This falls therefore, under the logic of Occam’s Razor – which states that when you have removed every impossible answer, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Since there is no “vampiric plague” swarming the earth, the logical deduction is that they don’t exist.

7. Point of clarification about “vampire” bats: vampire is simply the name we have given them because they do drink blood, same as a flea, mosquito, leech, or spider. Are these creatures vampires? No. They are living creatures, not legendary monsters. They can subsist on blood because of their smaller size and proportionately larger stomach volume. Drinking blood does not make you a vampire anymore than eating raw meat makes you a werewolf, although it might make you a mosquito.

8.The humans who profess to be vampires are victims of an all-encompassing self induced delusion. They are as human as you or I, regardless of their claims, and if they ingest HIV tainted blood they can most certainly contract the disease, esp. If they have any cuts, sores, or lesions in and or around their mouth. It is a very dangerous delusion to be laboring under. Note that there is absolutely no scientific or medical proof that these people derive any benefit at all from the ingestion of blood, and even worse are the so-called “psychic” vampires, because their delusion is one that they cannot substantiate with any concrete evidence at all.

9. There is no “vampire” gene. People are not “born” as vampires. When a woman goes to the hospital for prenatal care there are many tests done on mother and child, even while still in the womb, to check for many things, including genetic anomalies that result in deformities and birth defects. If such a gene existed, in today’s world with today’s technology it would have been found – we have already completely sequenced the human genome. It would also have to follow Mendel’s law of dominant/recessive gene theory. Again, the odds on that many “vampires” all escaping the notice of the medical/scientific community are so low as to be almost nonexistent. The idea that there is a global “vampire community” engaging in controlled breeding to keep the “bloodline pure” is delusional in the extreme.

10. There is no “vampire virus” – as I have already pointed out, HIV is a virus, and look at how fast it has spread – virtually everyone knows someone with the affliction. According to the “vampire websites” there are “thousands” of vampires running around. If that was so then at least one of them has ended up in a hospital for bloodwork when they became pregnant, had a bloodborne infection, was injured in a car wreck, etc, etc, ad nauseum. The anomaly would have been detected and medical science would have isolated it, studied it, applied for research grants on it, published papers on it, and turned it into the talk of the medical and scientific community, as well as making its “discoverers” celebrities and rich beyond their dreams. A virus cannot alter your DNA in such a radical fashion without killing you.

The Expert answers:

Tires don’t decompose for a very long time, not sure how long but it’s certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of years. If they weren’t recycled they end up in landfill sites or dumped on the roadside.

A lot or recycled tires end up as ‘crumb rubber’ which can be used as bonding layers and underlays, incorporated into road surface or as safety surfaces in children’s play areas. Recycling them in this manner means less raw materials are needed for the surfaces – less mining and quarrying, less costs, less pollution, less oil etc.

There’s more info here… Http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/recycling/awareness/facts/tires/

The Expert answers:

I recycle all glass, paper and cans but I don’t recycle plastic, simply because the council don’t take our plastic for recycling and I don’t have time (or space to store loads of plastic until I can take it) to make regular trips to the local recycling depot.
I did ask the council why they take our glass, cans and paper but not plastic and they told me that it was “too expensive”.
It does make me feel a little bad though when I’m throwing away plastic milk bottles every week and knowing that they can be recycled.
Recycling never used to bother me, in fact if I’m honest, I thought it was a waste of time and pretty annoying but since the councils have started recycling collections and I’ve been seperating our rubbish, it is shocking just how much of it goes into the recycling containers rather than the binbag and it makes me think.

The Expert answers:

Facts not Myths.
Http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/paper_recycling.html

Paper Recycling: Exposing the Myths
INTRODUCTION

Every year more than 11 million tonnes of paper and board are consumed in the UK [1]. Much of this comes from Scandinavia. In order to satisfy our increasing demand for wood and paper products, the majority of the natural boreal forest in Scandinavia has been converted into intensively managed secondary forest or plantations, where the inhabitants of a true and complex forest eco-system struggle to survive. About 5% of Scandinavian old-growth forest remains, and yet this is still being logged [2]. As a result, hundreds of plant and animal species are endangered. The traditional way of life of indigenous people, such as the Saami, is also threatened and their cultural identity is in jeopardy.

Despite the ecological and human cost of paper production we continue to throw vast amounts of this resource away after using it only once, even though the capability exists to recycle much of it. Less than half of the paper used in the UK is recovered and over five million tonnes gets dumped in landfill sites [3] adding to the mounting waste disposal problem faced by this country and many others around the world.

Yet if paper is recycled the amount of waste going to landfill is cut and less timber is used. Managing our insatiable demand for timber should reduce the need to clear old growth forests, rich in biodiversity, which must instead be protected from commercial logging.

Despite these clear benefits of paper recycling it has been criticised both as a product and as a process. It has been suggested that producing recycled paper uses more energy than virgin paper production, is more polluting and may make a greater contribution to climate change. Such arguments have been used to promote the view that it is preferable to incinerate paper to produce energy rather than to recycle it [4].

This briefing examines the arguments surrounding the potential environmental impacts of paper recycling in relation to energy use, pollution, contribution to climate change and in comparison to incineration as a waste management option. Market barriers to increased recycling are explored, along with waste paper recovery rates in the UK and other countries. Throughout, the term recycled paper refers to post-consumer waste i.e. Paper that has been used and is then recycled.

Http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/paper_recycling.html

Incidentally………I acre of hemp produces the same amount of paper in a year as does 1 acre of softwood trees in 20 yrs and of much greater quality and much less damage to the environment.

The Expert answers:

Yes, in fact the shredded paper is easier and better for recycling because it takes up less space in the first stages of the recycling process.

And as far as I know, the ink should not be a problem. In schools, recycling paper is a big thing. Instead of throwing their printed/written on papers away, they recycle them. (Ink and all! (= ) Plus, many things are recycled with ink on it including aluminum cans, bottles, and boxes.

Hope I could help! =)

The Expert answers:

I really like this fact that I have been using lately, when I first researched it I really was shocked at the energy that was used through production of aluminium.

By recycling aluminium cans, it takes only 4% of the energy to recycle them than to produce them from raw materials. Saving 64 300 kWh/t. Taking the UK average price of 7.52p/kWh, this equates to a saving of £4 835/t of aluminium in energy costs and emissions of about 29t of Co2. This is enough to power a Virgin Pendolino train for 4537km, that’s over 15 one-way journeys from London Euston to Manchester Picadilly.

Ultimately the cost of production of packing is bourne by the consumer.

There are also details of energy savings by recycling here;

http://howtosaveenergy.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-recycle.html

Energy Saving
http://howtosaveenergy.blogspot.com
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