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Please Recycle
Every so often, I get a mailer from the American Association of Retired Progressives shilling membership in their organization. I would think that after a decade or so of no response, they’d get the idea that I don’t want to join their damn club. But they keep sending me this garbage and I throw it out with all the other junk mail.
I got another one yesterday and noticed that “Please Recycle” was printed on the back of the envelope. As per my usual practice, I opened it and tore the contents to shreds before trashing them. On every piece of paper was the same request: “Please Recycle.”
I’ve discussed before how recycling of plastic, glass and most paper does not actually help the environment. Recycling of those items uses more resources, energy, and creates more pollution than just landfilling it.
Here’s a suggestion for the AARP for “saving the planet:” Stop sending out ads containing paper and plastic every month to people, especially if they have not responded to your last hundred or so come-ons.
All in all, it is a microcosm of the left: We’ll create a problem, you have to solve it.
Published in General
My FIL used to take the entire mailer & stuff it into the postage paid return envelope & send it all back to them. Seemed amusing but after a while there was just too much.
I do that too. The trouble with the AARP stuff is the return envelope is not postage paid.
Great Adventure’s FIL spoiled it for you, Jose.
Hmmm… wonder if you could do some kind of viral video bit. Assemble twenty thousand AARP requests for recycling and torch them all in one brilliant inferno.
Wow. Dude, you nailed this one.
I learned many years ago, in the days before email ads, that you don’t need to open all your mail. A lot of it can go straight to the waste basket.
I think my wife trashes AARP stuff before I even see it.
After many attempts to stopping their mailings to me, I returned one of them with the notation that “Mr. (my name) has died. So, obviously please discontinue future mailings.” They kept sending them anyway.
I forget when and how they stopped. It might have been due to my signing up on the National Do Not Mail List.
AARP. Just another reason I make my daily trek to check for and dispose of Junk Mail. Occasionally, very occasionally, I get something I keep, usually a bill. The rest goes straight to the burn bin out back. By burning it, I’m releasing the carbon into the atmosphere where the plants can make use of it, therefore I’m contributing my bit to make a greener world. You’re welcome.
Reading the OP: A few moments of our time.
Okie’s response:
…priceless.
You married a spam filter.
She knows I’m not going to belong to an organization whose primary purpose is to beggar my children.
I do recycle some……i would be more motivated to recycle some items if i knew:
A. Which things are actually useful to recycle, if anything. (Not so “save the planet” but if it is possibly more efficient)
B. Are there private companies that have figured out how to monetize recycling without government suplementing them.
I figure from an economic point of view we want to put as much valuable material as possible into the landfills. This will then hasten the day when it becomes viable to mine the landfills for resources, because the density of of useful/profitable materials will be that much higher.
Here’s the rule of thumb: Metals are definitely worth recycling. Before government ever got in the business of encouraging recycling, companies have paid for scrap steel, aluminum, copper, lead, and I’m sure other metals. The cost of melting down and re-refining metals is less than mining and refining ores. Paper, plastic, and glass though, are not cost-effective. It takes more energy to make a sheet of paper from recycled paper than from a tree. One day the technology may exist to make recycling those things profitable, but we are not there yet.
Same. They send me stuff; I think I’ve got at least a decade and a half before I’m technically allowed in. I think they probably got me on the list because I helped my parents set up some Social Security stuff.