CompuServe Messages

Don, actually, recycling _can_ be cost effective. The fundamental problem with current approaches to recycling is that they target only a few niche items, be it aluminum cans, newsprint, or greenery. If you examine the actual composition of a standard landfill, utilize techniques pioneered by the steel mini-mills, and more recently, techniques for the treatment of hazardous waste utilizing an electron beam, it is quite feasible to recycle most, if not all, of current waste. The problem, as stated above, is that no one corporation or agency has gone full bore on attempting to recycle the whole load. There is another problem, this time regulatory. Under current provisions, no material that has been placed in a landfill can ever be used to contain a food product, no matter how it has been treated. This is why you will see napkins made of recycled paper at a fast food restaraunt, but not food containers. This is patently silly, given current sterilization techniques. If nothing else, you could expose the material to gamma radiation, much as the industry wishes to do with respect to fruit, and completly sterialize the material. This, and other similiarly idiotic regulations, prevent a rational approach to recycling. Brian Bartlett