Recycling materials


  • Providing recycling facilities
  • Recycling post-use wastes
  • Reprocessing waste products
  • Recycling wastes

Description

Certain resources are non-renewable and some renew very slowly. Other materials are not naturally occurring or may be rare. Some materials are damaging to the environment or health if disposed of as waste. Substances needed regularly must be used again and again over time. The cycles which bring the needed materials back for reuse must either occur naturally, like the cycles of water and carbon, or they must be maintained through mindful recycling programs.

All countries produce large quantities of agricultural and industrial wastes as well as growing quantities of consumer wastes, none of which are adequately utilized. Common recyclable materials include engine and lubricating oils, plastics, paper, clothes and rags and organic rubbish for use as compost. Any precious, expensive, toxic and hazardous materials are also natural candidates for recycling.

Context

For recycling to offer true environmental benefits, whatever the material involved, a number of factors must be taken into account. Most broadly, the resources used to collect, sort and recycle must be less than those used to produce virgin material. In practice this means (1) post-use waste must be easily collected and sorted; (2) the recycling process itself does not required excessive use of resources to produce recyclate.

Recycling replaces virgin materials in the manufacturing process. For example, recycling aluminium is 95% more efficient than using virgin aluminium, recycling plastic is 85% more efficient, paper 50%, and glass 40%. But the recycling process still consumes energy (and other resources), and costs money. And for many materials, particularly plastic and to some extent paper, recycling is also a downgrading process. These materials can only be recycled a certain number of times before they degrade beyond all use, and generally then end up in landfill. At this point, they can’t be recovered for waste to energy.

Implementation

In the last decade, recycling rates of many materials have increased substantially in developed countries. Recycling in many developing countries depends foremost on collection by many scavengers along city streets and at dumps. Thus, for example, whilst less than one percent of officially collected municipal solid waste (MCW) in Brazil is recycled, its industry association figures show that 30% of apparent paper consumption is recycled, 49% of its aluminium cans, 20% of glass containers and 20% of plastic soft drink bottles. 

Examples of successful recycling programs include:

  1. San Francisco, California: San Francisco is widely recognized as one of the most successful recycling programs in the US, diverting up to 80% of its waste from landfill. The city implemented a comprehensive recycling program that includes curbside collection of recyclables and organics, mandatory composting, and stringent enforcement of recycling regulations.

  2. Sweden: Sweden's recycling program is one of the most successful in the world, with over 99% of household waste being recycled or used for energy recovery. The country has implemented a "waste-to-energy" system that uses incineration to convert waste into energy, which is then used to power homes and businesses.

  3. South Korea: South Korea's recycling program has achieved a recycling rate of over 60%, making it one of the most successful in Asia. The country has implemented a comprehensive waste management system that includes curbside collection of recyclables, mandatory recycling for certain materials, and strict penalties for non-compliance.

  4. Germany: Germany has one of the most successful recycling programs in Europe, with a recycling rate of over 60%. The country has implemented a comprehensive system that includes mandatory recycling for certain materials, deposit systems for bottles and cans, and strict regulations on waste disposal.

  5. Japan: Japan has implemented a comprehensive waste management system that includes strict separation of waste, mandatory recycling, and penalties for non-compliance. The country has achieved a recycling rate of over 70%, making it one of the most successful recycling programs in the world.

Claim

  1. Developing countries cannot continue to depend infinitely on many of the raw materials that are currently used. Products from the petrochemical industry used as adhesives and binders in the production of increasing numbers of building materials, for example, are becoming too expensive to be used for low-cost construction in many areas. While these limitations affect developed and developing countries equally, ways have not yet been found to utilize fully the enormous amounts of waste produced as substitutes for the expensive imports.

  2. Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they were designed for – a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" – a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality (William McDonough).

  3. The cost of recycling is going up, in part because of labour costs, but the value of recyclables goes up and down.

Counter claim

  1. Recycling is just another form of materialism. It simply represents an obsession with excretion as opposed to consumption.

  2. Recycling does not always make environmental sense and in developing European packaging waste legislation the European Parliament recognized that some packs are not recyclable if environmental gain is the end goal.

  3. There are many reasons why compulsory recycling is likely to be bad for the environment and for the economy. For example, the extra pollution, congestion and risk created by separate vehicles which collect and deliver sorted domestic waste must outweigh any supposed advantage of recycling. These extra vehicles consumed other resources: clean air, silence and safe roads. If it requires compulsion or subsidy, recycling is not just economically wrong, it is environmentally wrong too because it diverts resources away from their most efficient use.

Facilitated by

  1. Using recycled materials
  2. Training in waste reuse and recycling for urban managers
  3. Teaching benefits and civic duty for waste reuse and recycling at school
  4. Supporting waste reuse in small communities
  5. Supporting investment in waste reuse and recycling
  6. Supporting community waste recycling
  7. Providing incentives for waste reuse and recycling
  8. Providing ideas for recycling household items
  9. Preparing best practice guides for waste recycling
  10. Making destructible containers
  11. Introducing recycling deposit on durable goods
  12. Introducing pollution-based tax system
  13. Integrating waste management
  14. Improving current waste reuse operations
  15. Implementing waste management policies for waste reuse and recycling
  16. Identifying low-cost options for waste management
  17. Giving technical assistance to informal waste reuse and recycling operations
  18. Funding research on waste reuse and recycling
  19. Facilitating transfer of waste reuse and recycling technology
  20. Extending producer responsibility
  21. Evaluating effectiveness of waste recycling techniques
  22. Developing waste monitoring methodology
  23. Developing resource efficient methods and technologies
  24. Developing new recycling technologies
  25. Designing products for recyclability
  26. Creating waste recycling structures
  27. Collecting recyclables
  28. Assisting waste and recycling in the informal sector
  29. Employing energy efficient design


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