Naturalpath

In an article published by the U.K. Economist, Recycling is indeed better for the Environment. In a research completed by the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste, in 83% of all programs that included recycling, it was concluded that recyling is better for the Environment. This debunks most of the dubious consumers on the issues on the effectiveness of recycling.

The researchers studied at least 200 different scenarios of recycling with that of burying or burning waste, and did a review of 55 life-cycle of a particular recycled products. The Environmental Protection agency estimates that recycling reduced United States carbon emission by 107,800 lbs in 2005.

Recycling has many benefits too.

• It conserves natural resources
• Reduces the amount of trash that ends up in Landfills or gets burnt which emits toxic chemicals into the environment.
• Landfills take up space and emit methane which is believed to one of the major contributors of greenhouse gas and recycling reduces that greatly.
• Recycling saves energy and the reduction of greenhouse gases when materials are recycled rather than made from the natural resources such as trees, Iron ores, and oil.
• Recycling Aluminum can reduce energy consumption as much as 95%; for Plastics it’s 70%, For Steel 60%, 40% for paper, and 30% for glass.

According to The Economist, Recycling has been a concept that has been used for many centuries. For thousands of years, metal items have been recycled by melting and reforming them into new weapons or tools.

It is said that the broken pieces of the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue deemed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, were recycled for scrap. During the industrial revolution, recyclers began to form businesses and later trade associations, dealing in the collection, trade and processing of metals and paper. America’s Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), a trade association with more than 1,400 member companies, traces its roots back to one such organization founded in 1913. In the 1930s many people survived the Great Depression by peddling scraps of metal, rags and other items. In those days reuse and recycling were often economic necessities. Recycling also played an important role during the second world war, when scrap metal was turned into weapons.

When the recycling program was first implemented; people were asked to sort paper, glass and cans into separate bags, but now it is common to have all the recyclables in one bag. About 700 out of 10,000 programs in America’s curbside program are using this approach (That is why it is important to know the recycling programs policy in your local area; for more info go to earth911.org)

The switch has raised doubts in many people on the validity of the recycling program. However, the switch towards "single-stream collection" is powered by modern technology that can actually identify and sort the recyclable materials. Instead of sorting it, putting it all into one bag makes it easier for the consumers to recycle. This encourages people to recycle more. (Is that so hard to believe with the modern technology now a days?) San Francisco is one prime example of a city that uses single stream collection and now boasts a recycling rate of 69%.

OK, let’s break down the recycling process:

• The recyclables are picked up by a truck and arrives at a recycling facility.
• The materials are piled on a large conveyor belts that brings them to a manual sorting station
• The workers sift through everything, taking out large ticket items such as plastic bags, cardboard, and such that could damage the sorting machine (Plastic bags are the worst culprit in breaking down the sorters)
• The materials are separated by paper and Plastic bottles and cartons and plucked out by hand.
• A magnet pulls out metal materials such as cans while aluminium cans are ejected by eddy current.
• Finally the glass is separated by hand into clear, brown, amber, and green glass.
• This entire sorting process takes about an hour according to Bob Besso, Norcal’s Recycling Program manager for San Francisco

So what happens to these recycled materials? Most will be turned back into useful raw materials. Metals are shredded into pieces, paper is reduced to pulp and glass is crushed. Metals and glass is remelted without any loss in quality and paper can be recycled up to six times.

Plastics, however, is the problem child. Although, they are very useful; since there are so many types of of plastics; they need to be processed differently. Less than 6% of the plastic in the US is recovered from the waste. And only two types of plastic actually are reusable as plastics. Most are “down-cycled” into other materials such as plastic lumber, drain pipes, and carpet fibers which end up in the landfills anyways.

Many of the recyclable materials can be processed locally, but are being shipped to such countries as China. This is becoming a topic of interest to many countries such as the U.K. They fear that many of the exports may end up in landfills instead. However, many experts such as Pieter Van Beukering disagree. Van Beukering is an economist who has extensively studied the trade of waste paper, to India and waste plastics to China, “As soon as somebody is paying for the material, you bet it will be recycled.”

So what is the future of recycling? The future is taking an old concept “Cradle to Cradle” (using a material from start to finish; leaving nothing behind) to another level. The vision is creating a “closed loop” cycles where there is actually no waste. “Recycling should be taken into account at the design stage and all materials should either be able to return to the soil safely or be recycled indefinitely.” states William McDonough and Michael Braungart (Environmentalists and published authors). Well said.

Source: The Economist