One has to weigh the benefits of retaining a company that takes in your waste paper, assuming your environmental sensibilities extend to your own wastepaper, sorts it, re pulps and produces new recyclable paper products from it.

Yes, the manufacturing process does produce some hits to the atmosphere.

That is a fact of life. I don’t know anyone who does not fart. Do you?

The question is this. Does having this facility which processes half the waste paper generated by the state produce a positive result for the community that outweighs the perception that a biomass power source fouls the air and does leave behind a toxic ash disposal situation that requires careful management?

Real problems require realistic solutions not knee jerk feel good reactions that please the masses who have not been apprised of ALL the ramifications within the situation.

Arrange a tour of the Rock-Tenn facility. They will accommodate small groups. You will see first hand the process, products, and service they provide to the environment and the State of Minnesota.

651-641-4938

Curious how this comes out here. Oft times, the outlook of people who pride themselves on their environmental activism and correctness as they view productive pursuits (i.e., work, employment, “industry”, evil corporations) is quite negative – “industry” is destroying the earth, “industry” has ruined our air, The Evil Corporation has despoiled the homeland of the cricket-eyed owl, etc.

But “industry” is mostly us: people making a living, producing some product which others of us wish to buy. The Evil Corporation is typically staffed by thousands of people who drink, try to decide if Lost is better than Survivor, argue about who has the best haggis, and post comments on internet boards, and the stock in those companies is typically owned by all of those same people in their 401ks or IRAs. If you have some sort of retirement or pension account, you’re likely one of the owners of Haliburton and Exxon.

It gets sort of delightfully clearer when someone phrases it as indelicately as was done here – “jobs” are hurting the environment. Yeah, and they’re our jobs, and, when you stop and realize that “industry” can be personalized right down to “Joe in accounting”, or “Jane the weird Marketing VP”, you see that it’s not simply a matter of some evil, Gaia-hating fiends who must be stopped. It’s us, and our demand and expectation that we’ll work and garner rewards from work and produce things that make the world function, and any call to “stop industry” really means, let’s lose all these neat modern products and go back in time to when things were simpler and cleaner.

But everyone died before thirty then, so I think we should think about it first.

I have an article on the controversy here : rickleaf.com

What happens to Minnesota’s waste paper when the largest paper re cycler in the state is forced to shut its doors?
What will be the energy cost of transporting the raw material much of which was collected in curbside recycling buckets of the states population?

Rock-Tenn in St. Paul recycles nearly 1% of the countries waste paper into consumer products such as beverage containers, cereal boxes and cardboard boxes.
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“Yeah, the excuse that people will be loosing their jobs is quite annoying, especially when it comes to nasty or worthless jobs.”
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I take offense to your observation since it’s my damn job you are talking about. It is not nasty or worthless and the average Rock-Tenn salary in St. Paul comes in around 60K.

A slightly more informed analysis (from law.com) than what the BBC can normally do:

“The Court had three questions before it.

“EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change,” Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the Court’s swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.

(Note that the “and if it tries to make the case that CO2 is not involved, it would have a hard time winning it” comment was only the slghtly mad reporter’s opinion, and is not part of the opinion.)

You mean, things like “we recycle all of our garbage, and now luvie drives this cute little pink Prius, and we turn the lights off in rooms as we leave, and on those three trips to Paris that we took this year on luvie’s frequent flier miles, we only chose hotels with recycling facilities!” – ?

Sort of coincides with my point – recycle, drive less, sure, but if you’re spending $500/month for half the year for heat, you’d be doing the ecology better driving a Hummer and throwing McDonalds wrappers out the window down in Houston, wearing shorts and thin shirts and eschewing AC.