Recycling
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Recycling is the collection of used materials that would otherwise become waste in order to break them down and remake them into new products. This is in contrast with reuse: collecting waste such as food containers to be cleaned, refilled and resold. Recycling prevents the waste being sent to a landfill or incinerator, and reduces the consumption of new raw materials. Commonly recycled materials include glass, paper, aluminum, asphalt, steel and textiles. These materials can be derived either from pre-consumer waste (materials used in manufacturing) or post-consumer waste (materials discarded by the consumer).
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In theory, recycling allows a continuing reuse of materials for the same purpose. In most cases this is true, especially with metals and glass. In the case of fiber, recycling most often extends the useful life of this material, but in a less-versatile form. For example, when paper is recycled, the fibers shorten, making it less useful for high grade papers. Other materials can suffer from contamination, making them unsuitable for food packaging.
History
Resource shortages caused by wartime has been a driver for recycling. Massive government promotion campaigns were carried out in World War II in every country involved in the war, urging citizens to conserve metals and fibre. In America, the process of recycling was given significant patriotic importance. Resource conservation programs established during the war were continued in some countries without an abundance of natural resources, such as Japan, after the war ended.
In the USA, the next big investment in recycling occurred in the 1970s, due to rising energy costs (recycling aluminum uses only 5% of the energy required by virgin production; glass, paper and metals have less dramatic but very significant energy savings when recycled feedstock is used). The passage of the Clean Water Act of 1977 in the USA created strong demand for bleached paper (office paper whose fibre has already been bleached white increased in value as water effluent became more expensive).
In 1973, the city of Berkeley, California began one of the first curbside recycling programs with monthly pick ups of newspapers from residences. Since then several countries have started and expanded various doorstep collection schemes.
One event that initiated recycling efforts occurred in 1989 when the city of Berkeley, California, banned the use of polystyrene packaging for keeping McDonald's hamburgers warm. One effect of this ban was to raise the ire of management at Dow Chemical, the world’s largest manufacturer of polystyrene, which led to the first major effort to show that plastics can be recycled. By 1999, there were 1,677 companies in the USA alone involved in the post-consumer plastics recycling business.
Methods
The methods used to recycle materials differ for each material recycled.
Aluminium
- Main article: Aluminium recycling
Aluminium is shredded and ground into small pieces. These pieces are melted in a furnace to produce molten aluminium. By this stage the recycled aluminium is indistinguishable from virgin aluminium and further processing is identical for both.
Concrete
- Main article: Concrete recycling
Concrete aggregate collected from demolition sites is put through a crushing machine, often along with asphalt, bricks, dirt, and rocks. Smaller pieces of concrete are used as gravel for new construction projects. Crushed recycled concrete can also be used as the dry aggregate for brand new concrete if it is free of contaminants.
Electrical equipment
- Main article: Electronics recycling
Glass
- Main article: Glass recycling
Organic waste
- Main article: Compost
Composting is a form of recycling using natural decomposition of organic materials. In many countries, organic household waste, especially yard waste such as leaves, is collected and heaped up to form compost. Organic household waste is collected separately in some towns in Germany, and used for fertilizer or landfilled in more sensitive locations which are unsuitable for other waste.
Paper
- Main article: Paper recycling
Paper is separated into its component fibers in water, which creates a pulp slurry material. A cleaning process removes nonfibrous contaminants, and if required, sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate is used to de-ink the material. This fibre is then ready to be used to make new recycled paper.
Plastic
- Main article: Plastic recycling
Textiles
Highly skilled workers sort collected textiles to separate them into good quality clothing and shoes which can be reused, worn or damaged textiles which can be sorted into grades to make industrial wiping cloths and for use in paper manufacture, and material which is suitable for fibre reclamation and filling products. Fibre reclamation mills sort textiles according to fibre type and colour. Colour sorting eliminates the need to re-dye the recycled textiles. The textiles are shredded into 'shoddy' (fibres) and blended with other selected fibres, depending on the intended end use of the recycled yarn. The blended mixture is carded to clean and mix the fibres, and spun ready for weaving or knitting. The fibres can also be compressed for mattress production. Textiles sent to the flocking industry are shredded to make filling material for car insulation, roofing felts, loudspeaker cones, panel linings and furniture padding.
US issues
A number of U.S. states, such as California, Hawaii, Oregon, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Iowa, Michigan and New York have passed laws that establish deposits or refund values on beverage containers in order to promote recycling. Most are five cents per can or bottle. Michigan's deposit is 10 cents. Some cities, such as New York City and Seattle, have created laws that enforce fines upon citizens who throw away certain recyclable materials.
State support for recycling may be more expensive than alternatives such as landfill; recycling efforts in New York City in the USA cost $57 million per year.1 Environmentalists argue that the benefits to society from recycling compensate for any difference in cost.
Public awareness
In 1987, a barge called the Mobro 4000, containing a little over 3,000 tons of garbage departed from Islip, New York to deposit its load of garbage in Morehead City, North Carolina. However, before it reached its destination, rumors that it contained medical waste caused officials at Morehead City to deny the barge permission to unload its garbage. As a result, the barge traveled down the East Coast of the United States searching for a place to unload, eventually being denied in Mexico and Belize. The barge finally returned to Islip, where the trash was incinerated after a brief legal battle. The barge's journey became a small media event. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston [1], Kelly Ferguson (editor of a pulp and paper industry newsletter) [2], and conservative columnist John Tierney [3], media coverage of the Mobro 4000 led to the false public perception that American landfills were nearly out of space. They say that this perception led to increased public interest in programs to recycle household goods.
See also
- Types of recycling
- General topics
References
- Logomasini, Angela. 2002. Forced Recycling Is a Waste The Wall Street Journal. March 19 2002.
External links
- Recycle-more UK based recycling information site
- Video archive of BBC footage - an investigation into 3rd world dumps for western rubbish
- Ill effects of RFID Tags on recycling
- A Recycling Revolution - recycling information
- Earth 911 - USA recycling information
- About.com - 10 Ideas for Waste Recycling and Reduction
- New York Times Magazine: Recycling is Garbage (registration required)
- ReReRe Guide Guide to Recycling, reducing and reusing products
- Scenarios and Strategies for Extended Producer Responsibility (PDF) From the Swedish Morphological Society
- Eight Great Myths of Recycling A paper by Daniel K. Benjamin of the Property, Environment, and Research Center detailing the reasons why some recycling programs have proved costly and ineffective
- Is Recycling Good For The Environment? Allan L. Griff, Consulting Engineer, Plastic Extrusion Consultant and Educator
- Swedes trash myth of refuse recycling
- University of Massachusetts, Amherst - Environmental benefits of recycling
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