a newspaper?
a metal can?
an aluminium can?
a plastic bottle?
a glass bottle?
a glass eye?
…etc???
We’ve all heard the sermons and drank the kool aid. Recycling is not only a hip dictum and secular virtue, it’s selbstverständlich a no brainer righteous duty to pay penance for the wasteful sins of our forbearers and save the universe for the precious issues of our over producing loins. I’m OK with that.
What I’m wondering is what is the relative green gain of recycling the items we use on a daily basis as opposed to discarding them. Obviously, producing these things anew from primary materials and then collecting and discarding them uses resources and produces waste. But recycling these things also entails collecting them (via a separate and in some ways redundant collection system), transporting, processing them into “secondary-primary” materials, and then reconstituting those materials into usable goods. All that uses resources and produces waste as well.
So, is there any way to come up with a SIMPLE figure to reckon the green gain of recycling versus just cyling? What I’d really like is a creditible (preferably with references) formulation that says something like: Recycling a 12 oz glass beer bottle gives the universe an X% green gain in total resource usage and waste production over just using and chucking same bottle.
While lacking the specific numbers you’re looking for, Cecil has a column on this subject. Of course, it’s ten years old now, but I would think that the reasoning still applies.
The short answer is that some types of recycling play out economically better than others, and that’s probably still true. Cecil noted ten years ago:
FWIW, our local curbside recycling program used to take only aluminum cans, glass bottles, newsprint and #1 and #2 plastic. More recently, it has expanded to take nearly all paper products (magazines, newspaper inserts, non-corrugated cardboard, with no need to separate them) and most any plastic, regardless of its number.
On the surface, at least, it would seem they’ve found a way to make it pay to take in these materials.
Aluminum is by far the most economical material to recycle. The ore is almost free, but it takes a huge amount of energy to process the ore into metal. By recycling it, you save all of that energy.
Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time finding just how much energy that is, since everyone on the Web who’s talking about it just quotes the same meaningless statistic about how long you can run a TV with that amount of energy. Well, OK, not completely meaningless, but it doesn’t tell you much unless you know the wattage of the TV in question.
one of the major benefits of recycling is the saving of landfill space, landfill costs.
local garbage dumps are closing, suitable nearby spaces have been filled up. your household garbage might be driven by truck hundreds of miles to dispose of it.
And if you don’t believe that, just have the aluminum siding on your house replaced. Our contract with the residing people stated that they would clean up and dispose of all materials, which I originally thought was part of their being nice. Until other guys in pickup trucks started wandering by offering to take away the old siding. The residing guys made it very clear to them that this was their siding.
You can actually sort out other metals magnetically, too, though it’s a little more complicated. Steel (and iron, nickel, and other ferromagnetic materials) can be pulled out with a static field, but anything conductive will interact with dynamic fields. I believe they take a stream of falling garbage, and use a rapidly-changing magnetic field to knock aluminum to the side.
Maybe for highly urban areas, but at the current rate of population expansion, we could dispose of all the waste of the US population for the next thousand yearswith a single square landfill 44 miles on a side: a tiny fraction of a percent of the US land area. The idea that we’re running out of landfill space in general is a complete myth.
And even the above assumes we don’t reclaim or just build atop landfills, which we are doing extensively. If you’re going to argue for recycling, you’re much better off looking at resource and/or energy conservation than landfill space.
Thanks for the reference (I should have looked there first). That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for, a rational critique without a sermon.
The verdict for recycling 10 years ago seemed equivocal. Cecil also referred to the whole enterprise as a national “experiment” and more or less work in progess.
counties of small and medium sizes are closing landfills as well. to do a landfill that won’t easily pollute groundwater is costly and has to be placed in a correct location.
cities and counties do forbid the placing of recyclables in the waste stream. it either will help cause the early filing up of their landfill or cost a lot of money to transport to the waste site they use often hundreds of miles away. the cost to not recycle is high.
statements from government bodies that prohibit recyclables into the waste stream, a number of counties and cities. they changed their policies and gave those reasons.
many items also can only be disposed of by paying per item disposal fees to have them shipped to recycling centers or landfills that will accept those items.
None of which implies we’re running out of landfill space. Recycling (and in fact manufacturing in general) is also regulated. Speaking of recycling, here’s some capital letters for you to re-use: AAABBBBCCCCCDDDDEEEEFFFHHHHHHHHHHIII JJJJKKKK LLLL MMMM NNNOOOOOO PPPPQQR RRRRRSSS TTTTT UUUU VVV WWWWW XX YY ZZZ.
and the statements of governments that they are closing landfills doesn’t imply the running out of space it explicitly states it. counties with continuing landfills and those who don’t prohibit recyclables in to the waste stream because of costs.