Recycling, it's sold as one of the potential saviors of our planet. The idea of taking old things, reducing them to base resources and creating new products; sounds like a plausible solution in theory right? Wrong! Recycling doesn't make economic sense, nor does it make total environmental sense. But let me explain myself a little better.

Economically speaking manufacturers normally would pay for their raw materials. A drink bottle manufacturer for example would normally either pay per ton of plastic pellets or (if they process their own plastics) the going price per barrel of oil. Now throw recycling into the mix; suddenly the bottle manufacturer has a way of recovering their product without cost, then reworking it to produce a new bottle. Due it doesn't stop the need for raw materials, but that's down to lack of recycling volume, not concept. Essentially recycling means we, the consume provide to the manufacturer their raw materials, for FREE, which they then sell back to us. Can you name one other example of where a company is able to get product legally for free?

This I feel is the single biggest reason for lack of total adoption of the recycling schemes. If however the manufacturers were willing to pay for their product, that is to say they buy off of us the raw materials, this not only makes more economic sense, but would mean a greater take up of recycling. Think about it, if you knew your drink bottle, newspaper, catelogs, tin cans or other recyclables had a dollar value, you'd be more likely to recycle now wouldn't you? You'd also be less likely to litter. This simple change to the scheme would make a massive difference and would see landfill shrink dramatically.

Environmentally however, sure recycling cuts the amount of new raw materials needed, but it doesn't cut out the need for new raw materials all together. Even with 98% - 100% adoption of the recycling scheme we still need to use new raw materials in order to manufacturer recycable products; at best it slows the problem down it however solves nothings. Beyond that, recycling doesn't change the pollutants industral manufacturers produce; if anything it increases it. So on an environmental front, it only slows the consumption of new raw materials and does nothing to fix the problems caused by the manufacture process itself.

Recycling, a scheme that makes big claims, but makes no economic sense and little environmental sense.

My weekly series on the bible continues this week where I explore some of the Contradictions in the bible.

Section 2: Contradictions

The bible is absolutely filled with contradictions. It seems one moment it's telling us to or not to do something, or that things are or aren't a certain way, then suddenly and inexplicably takes the complete opposite stance. Lets take for example the 6th commandment (5th of your Catholic or Lutheran) “You Shall not Murder” (“You shall not Kill” if your Catholic). Think about that for a moment, here is a commandment which states very clearly that killing is a major sin, note the significant lack of the word Human in that commandment. That is to say the commandment itself makes no definition as to it referring to a particular species, and thus one can only make the generalised assumption from the text that murdering anything that is alive, be it human, other animal or planet is a sin under the bible.

But lets forget that a moment and for argument stake take it under it's traditional interpretation as to only applying to the killing of other humans. The bible still very much contradicts this stance in itself. Take the following verses taken from the bible for example, and please note that a reference to both where you can find the verse and in what version of the bible it will appear.

“Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel.” (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

“A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death.” (Leviticus 20:27 NAB )

“If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)

"If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB )

"If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare... See More or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst." (Deuteronomy 13:7-12 NAB )

"Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:15 NAB )

"A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death." (Leviticus 21:9 NAB )

Now of course there will be those who talk about old and new testaments but before you do, let me just say this. If the bible is the word of God, then how does it really matter if it's old or new testament? Think about it for a moment, if you believe the bible is the world of god, then the old testament has to be just as valid as the new testament, otherwise heck why would it be in the damn bible? I mean we've already talked about how each version of the bible includes only the scripture which that religion finds relevant to their own Christian values, so if it's in your bible then clearly your church wants you to believe in that stuff just as much as everything else in the bible. If it's all the word of the apparent divine creator then guess what, you have to believe in and practise the whole lot of it, you can't just pick and chose the bits that sound nice and leave the rest. It's one of those black and white things.