---
title: ""Here’s some perspective: To offset the greenhouse impact of one…"
date: 2015-10-04
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships shared a link.
---

# "Here’s some perspective: To offset the greenhouse impact of one…

*October 4, 2015 · Facebook*

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[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html){target="_blank"}
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\"Here's some perspective: To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger's round-trip flight between New York and London, you'd have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in business- or first-class, where each passenger takes up more space, it could be more like 100,000.\
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Even those statistics might be misleading. New York and other cities instruct people to rinse the bottles before putting them in the recycling bin, but the E.P.A.'s life-cycle calculation doesn't take that water into account. That single omission can make a big difference, according to Chris Goodall, the author of "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life." Mr. Goodall calculates that if you wash plastic in water that was heated by coal-derived electricity, then the net effect of your recycling could be more carbon in the atmosphere.\"
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