Question What's more eco-friendly

[agentgonzo]

OK, so lets say that I have an efficient multi-fuel stove in my living room and that I have a lot of paper (mix of newspaper and normal A4). Normally I would recycle the paper, but it's now getting to winter. I don't expect an answer as it's not exactly a simple question, but may be fun to discuss.

What's more eco-friendly?

1. Recycle the paper in the normal fashion (put it in the recycling bin, let the council recycle it)
2. Burn it in the wood burner to provide heat for my house.

Option 1 will provide some paper that has come out of the recycling process to be used, but will also use more resources in terms of energy to produce this recycled paper.
However, option 2 will save on natural gas that would otherwise be used to heat my home.

In the end I'll probably end up burning it as fire=fun, but was interested on the impact of it.

 

[Urwumpe]

The first one is usually more energy effective as burning paper to heat your house. Making paper from old paper uses less energy as making paper from raw biomass. Heating your house with paper is ineffective as well, since you can't feed it properly into a modern oven, you can just burn it at low temperatures. Lots of CO2, little energy produced.

 

[Cras]

I always look at recycling having three main benefits:
first is obviously not needing to get more resources out of the Earth to replace the object with a new one.
second is it lowers the amount of garbage going into the landfills.
and third, it saves energy

However not all recycling saves on energy, that it takes more energy to return the used material to a condition that can be used for future production. But there is always the first two benefits of not digging up more resources out of the Earth and lowering the quanity of junk going into landfills.

So always recycle. Always.

 

[Wishbone]

The downside of burning printed matter (newspapers at least) is emitting lead locally. However, if you consider the paper too sensitive to shred and give to the council, burn it. (cue witch hunt skit in the "Holy Grail")