movielib

Showtime, 9:00pm CDT:
Another episode I'm looking forward to.

Next week: The Bible!

TeeSeeJay

I wonder if they're going to content that all recycling is bullshit (taking aluminum cans down to the scrap metal place for some $$$), or just the curbside recycling that many cities, and now my own, shove down our throats.

movielib

I think this was one of the best jobs P&T have done with a subject. It was not such a huge subject that it was way too much to cover in a half hour. They pretty much hit the high points and dispelled some myths such as "we're running out of landfill space," and we save energy, money and create (productive) jobs through recycling. And they made a point of pointing out the one area where recycling makes sense (because it makes economic sense): aluminum cans.

Big P&T!

das Monkey

This is a great contrast to my complaints about last week's show. It's the difference between simply railing on something you disagree with vs. systematically breaking down the misconceptions about a certain subject. I was a little skeptical at the beginning, since they spent almost half of the show just pointing out that we waste time, without really pointing out how; but in the second half, they did a good job isolating each "benefit" and pointing out the flaws.

I do think they should have reversed the priority just a bit. They spent a lot of time on how it doesn't benefit the economy, which is fine, but people recycle to save the environment. I would think many people believe that recycling costs us more money, but it's better for the environment, so it's worth the cost. Given that, showing that it's not economically helpful isn't overly relevant to the root cause of why people recycle in the first place. Dispelling that myth was essential to their case, and I think they should have spent just a little more time on it. Still, an excellent episode, and I wish the last couple had been so well done.

Doing some quick math: that one lady said 35 x 35 miles^2 would be enough for 1000 years. That's 1225 square miles. The United States has 3,537,441 square miles of land area, so that's about 0.03%. For more manageable numbers, divided evenly among 50 states, that's roughly 5 x 5 miles^2 per state. Georgia's right in the middle in terms of state size, and we have 57,919 square miles of land. Compare that to the ~24.5 we'd need for 1000 years of landfill, and it's even smaller than I would have guessed. And I assume those numbers discount the turnover rate for a landfill, which is much smaller than 1000 years.

das

movielib

I read this article almost 8 years ago when it was published in the New York Times Magazine of Sunday, June 30, 1996. It was perhaps the first article written for the popular media which attempted to dispel the myths surrounding recycling. I just reread it and it appears not much has changed since then. People may find it interesting.

Recycling is Garbage by John Tierney

Mad Dawg

This has to be my favorite episode. I loved the point-by-point dismissal of common misconceptions. This is one of the first times I've felt the time frame worked in the show's favor.

Red Dog

Yeah - well done. Ironically, the only product I have ever gone out of my way to recycle is aluminum. The test with color-coded recycling bins was hilarious - carbon blobs will do anything you tell them to.

I can't wait for next week. That is sure to be GOLD!

movielib

Yes, this is an indication that they should choose somewhat narrower topics and hammer the hell out of them for the half hour. For example, in the area of environmentalism they could take on one subtopic at a time such as ozone depletion, acid rain, recycling (as they did), global warming (which was too lightly treated in part of the show on environmental hysteria last year) etc.

In the area of the paranormal they did do that to a degree last year.

Doing that would also ensure many topics available for programs for years to come.

boredsilly

What das said. Well you can take away the math 'cause I'm too much of a lazy poster to go that extra patended das step.

Y'know this was the first PT that actually changed my position on things. I just assumed that recycling was the thing to do. I had no clue about a lot of the stuff there were getting at. Same with the landfill business. A real eye opener for me.

Though they didn't totally right off recycling, I wish they would have spent a few seconds talking about...whats the word I'm trying to think off? Where people take furniture, electronics, clothes, etc to a place and drop it off and anyone can take it? It's kind of like the goodwill but everything is free. I saw something about this on Dateline or something about how they do this in the Hampstons, only the junk is all name brand and designer. Am I making anysense? I think this kind of recycling should be encouraged.

Roto

"This is our purple bin" They could've kept going with those people but they probably ran out of bins.

I still don't like clear cutting of forests though. It's damn ugly when they do that.

Groucho

I still feel the show would be better suited to a full hour, but this was one of the tightest and "complete" episodes they've done.

GeoffK

Great episode. Debunking more things we take for granted. Painful but good!

spainlinx0

I thought it was a good episode, although I have to keep recycling or risk paying a fine in my town so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

I was curious about those bins you see for cell phones nowadays? Is that a waste too, or should we be throwing our old cellphones in there?

RoQuEr

while I found it interesting and informative, I also feel they left out some key information. I agree that recycling paper and food is dumb. If recycled plastic is largely useless, then it shouldn't be recycled, but since petroleum is a limited resouce, I feel it should be recycled. Glass doesn't decompose, even if it spends 1000 years in a landfill. If it can be recycled and reused, it should be.

mmconhea

Recycling isn't going to save anyone any money... currently, but really what we are doing now is preparation, and pushing back the time where trash collection and storage will be more expensive. Recycling now is important to shaping our culture to not just throw things away, but to think about reuse. Penn and Teller point out it's expensive and we have all these ideas about what it saves. Good. As long as we do it and get it into our minds that reuse is beneficial, we should be better prepared for the future. You have to start somewhere and if we just waited to recycle until their really was a trash disposal problem, then we'd be scrambling to get an infrastructure to handle it and education out to the people-- that would be an expensive problem. I think Penn and Teller are funny, but this show is getting too preachy. They are just arguing their points and not really looking at the facts. I think they just ran out of real bullshit to base shows on and are now just arguing things one-sided.

Groucho

mmconhea,

Did you see the part where they showed that a landfill with 1000 years of garbage for the entire United States would only take up a 35x35 mile area? There's no immediate problem here.

Besides, in 1000 years no doubt we'll have figured out another way to dispose of garbage. Like shooting it into space.

Roto

But then we'll have to deal with the space environmentalists who don't want us polluting the only pristine place left, infinite space