Don't misunderstand, I love recycling. My day care children and I hauled our stuff in Radio Flyer wagons to the recycling center before Minneapolis began curb-side pick-up. I raise my kids to recycle.

   However, as a former geophysicist and current amateur astronomer, I am especially aware of the limited benefit of recycling to the global environment of our planet. I want to teach my day care children something more about "saving the planet".

   Many people seem to feel that careful recycling will help with global warming, loss of endangered species, or "saving the planet". I am concerned that recycling eases the conscience of concerned citizens and reduces the incentive to take more drastic and more effective actions.

   The effect on the atmosphere and surface water of billions of people using using huge quantities of recycled products is pretty much the same as using huge quantities of first use products.

   The story of recycled material versus ‘first use' material is mostly the same story. Both involve people, energy, mining, farming, roads, trucks, cars, buildings, heating, light, machinery, packaging, handling, accounting, planning, taxes, laws, meetings, analysis, management, and more recycling.

   Let's use alminum as an example. Aluminum ore is mined, shipped to a processing plant, processed, shipped to a manufacturer, made into cans or cars or whatever, stored, shipped to a business or store, sold, used, and then perhaps recycled.

   Recycled aluminum is picked up by a recycling truck, cleaned and stored, shipped to a processing plant, and the rest is about the same. Processing recycled aluminum uses less energy than processing aluminum ore. This represents a fine benefit of recycling. Unfortunately, the rest of "The Life of A Can" offers no additional savings.

   Billions of people making, shipping, using, and recycling "stuff" are changing our planet in unpleasant ways, and recycling, although a fine practice, makes little global-scale difference.

   Creating one new car uses up more energy and materials than can be saved by a lifetime of recycling. One plane ride uses the energy saved by several years of recycling. Our daily commute to work uses far more energy and materials than we save by recycling.

   If we could magically know the date when global warming will melt one-half of our polar icecaps – assuming no recycling – was 2100, then the date if everyone recycled perfectly might be 2101. We could perhaps gain as much as one extra year.

   I do favor recycling. Recycling saves trees, non-renewable resources, some energy, and some landfill space, but it will not even come close to saving this Earth. That is assuming the planet needs saving, which is still, unfortunately, being debated.

   I will suggest a few Earth Day questions to ask yourself and your children:  Do you believe in global warming? Is the earth running out of resources? Should  governments encourage conservation? Should we drastically reduce our personal consumption? Vacation close to home? Give up meat? Can humans mine the sea or near-Earth asteroids? Develop nuclear, solar, or fusion power?  What else might we do besides recycling to help the Earth?

   We adults are far from agreement. Perhaps for Earth Day we might individually work with the children we know to pick one thing, beyond recycling, to do or support, to help preserve our planet.

Sincerely,

Michael Kauper
Child Care Provider

Rev. 05/20/2004
MTK

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