Should compost chipping machines be banned?

Question

The same amount of carbon is let into the air if the rubbish is burned or alowed to rot. However if it is chipped the chipper uses electricity which means MORE carbon has been generated.

Answer 1

i agree with you. these gadgets are just consuming plenty of electricity for nothing and taking money out of pockets of people who buy them. cant be actually banned but people should realize it is silly to purchase them and that it is definitely not environment-friendly. their energy consumption is quite big. small parts of garden waste can be put in the compost bin in your garden as they are and larger chunks together with non-compostable trash should be removed (we have such programm here that such waste is collected once in a while) and burned in municipal incinerator that has all the filters and produces heat for heating houses. yes, the possitive exffect of composting is cancelled if high energy input is necessary to enable it.

Answer 2

Ahh, the person who asked this question must live somewhere that produces electricity from burning fossil fuels???? So that may be his point. However, many places have hydro eletricity.

I believe though, that the benefits of chipping and thus reducing land fill on top of creating usable organic material is huge. For example, Barbados currently handles 1,000 tonnes of solid waste PER DAY at the landfill and a LOT of that is garden waste - plants grow very fast here. Chippers would cut that down as well as helping to produce much needed organic material for supplimenting the dwindling amount of top soil on the island. So -my answer would be: No, chippers should not be banned but instead, encouraged.

Answer 3

You're forgetting about the purpose of the compost... that is to grow new plants which will provide more Oxygen and consume more CO2. Takes years for large plant material to rot sufficiently to reuse. The amount of electricity the chipper/shredder uses is negligible by comparison. Now, if you really want to do something useful... worry about your car which wastes more energy in 1 minute than your chipper/shredder uses in an hour. How long have you been at the computer? How much energy have you consumed in doing so? Surely, you must have something more important to concern yourself with.

Answer 4

Burning your yard debree and leaves is a health hazard. Most areas where I live in Illinois have banned burning all together due to health hazards and health risks.

By chipping the yard waste up into small pieces allows you to be environmental friendly by using what has been chipped as mulch for shrubbery and can also be used for composting.

I do not feel that banning a chipper machine wouldn't accomplish anything but would be a detriment to the environment!

Answer 5

Aren't we really splitting very tiny hairs here? I realize the carbon/C02 global problem,, it's just,,,

Plain silly to think wood chippers are going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back,, Automobiles in general are the elephant in the room.

Shouldn't we focus our energy and time in finding a means of getting away from internal combustion engines rather than creating a witch hunt for any little thing that produces carbon?

Answer 6

yes they do use a lot of electicity. also, if the wood is infact broken into little pieces, micro organisms break down the material and release the carbon into the atmosphere a lot quicker then they would if the plany was left as a whole. i'd say that the amount of carbon dioxide release by the machine and the accelerated speed of the decomposition, its probably just as bad as just burning the plant altogether.

in short, i'd say both method are just as harmful as each other. the best method is to let the plant rot as a whole. it will release its carbon over a period of a few years (usually at a rate that plants around it absorb the carbon...........hence neutralisation.

Answer 7

So what do your suggest? Put the garden rubbish in the back of your car and drive to the tip? Do you know how much electricity is consumed by the chipper, have you even thought about this question?

Answer 8

You want to ban chipper-shredders and not cars or air conditioners? No fair! Banning some carbon emitters and allowing others is not fair to the banned ones.

Answer 9

And the compost provides fertilizer for more green growing things which in turn will release oxygen from the carbon dioxide.

Answer 10

Perhaps it's time for our governments to start investing R & D money into alternative sources of electricity then instead of the next round of weapons to kill innocent civilians eh?
Then we could have solar-powered chipping machines or wind or wave or tidal or hydrothermal or... shall I go on?
Whats the point in stopping doing something positive about waste just because of one minor flaw? Just sort out where you get you energy from and then go to it and chip away!