Recycling: Nothing More Than Feelings

[schmosef]

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24391&only&rss

I'm watching it now.

Warning: nsfw!

[Brian Ellis]

Gave up after 9 minutes. Perhaps those two idiots need recycling with their disinformation! See http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files/waste.htm

[Mehen]

Great vid, kind of makes me want to drive around and steal people's recycling bins.

[Mehen]

Gave up after 9 minutes. Perhaps those two idiots need recycling with their disinformation! See http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files/waste.htm

Nothing like burning stuff to save the environment.

Gov't should take the recycling money and use it to up the quality of landfill sites.

[Dr Mordrid]

Gave up after 9 minutes. Perhaps those two idiots need recycling with their disinformation! See http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files/waste.htm

Apples & oranges; their info is correct as regards recycling in the US. Switzerland is another thing entirely. Penn & Teller's show "Bullsh**!!" is crude and funny, but usually painfully accurate.

You should have seen their episode on PETA

[TransformX]

Gave up after 9 minutes. Perhaps those two idiots need recycling with their disinformation! See http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files/waste.htm

Maybe be more patient and see how much does it cost to recycle some of the things, see that trees for paper are like cows for burgers and some other kinds of information.
You speak so much about CO2 emissions, yet call those two idiots because they prove that recycling of many things take up more resources and more energy than simply getting new?

[schmosef]

super interesting, thanks a lot schmo!!
u got anymore where that came from???

Here's a link to the same video at Google Videos: link

If you look on the right side of that page there will be a list of other episodes from the series.

In each episode they take on an issue, organization, or commonly believed theory, and proceed to dismantle it piece by piece.

[Brian Ellis]

We are looking at three issues here:

1. Energy
2. Resources
3. Economy

Let's look, as an example, at three types of recyclable product with these in mind, aluminium, paper and drinks bottles.

ALUMINIUM
1. Energy: recycling aluminium into ingots takes ~1/20th of the energy required to make virgin aluminium from bauxite. Even kids can understand this:

That is why recycling aluminum makes sense. It saves energy—a lot of energy. Today, aluminum can recycling saves about 11.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh)—enough electricity to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years.

As you probably know, energy is expensive! Just take a look at your parents’ electric bill, or note the price of a gallon of gasoline the next time you see a gas station. Making a pound of aluminum from bauxite ore (a pound is about how much 34 aluminum beverage cans weigh) takes 7.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Making aluminum from recycled aluminum scrap, on the other hand, takes only four percent of the energy—just one-third kWh. Recycling four aluminum cans saves as much energy as the energy in one cup of gasoline.

2. Resources: there are no shortages of aluminium ores, mainly bauxite. There is a shortage of energy, which is 90% of the cost of aluminium, in many countries.

3. Economy: if it were not economical to recycle aluminium, then the LME would not trade in scrap aluminium. In fact, it is very profitable to collect aluminium scrap.

The same applies to other non-ferrous metals. Even iron and steel is recycled, although the economic profitability is more marginal, albeit still profitable.

PAPER
1. Energy: Consider this:

For every tonne of paper used for recycling the savings are:

* at least 30000litres of water
* 3000 - 4000 KWh electricity (enough for an average 3 bedroom house for one year)
* 95% of air pollution.

2. Resources: there is no shortage of cellulose fibre in the world. However, there is a shortage of long-staple fibre used for making quality paper and such paper is valuable for recycling. There is an opposition to devastating forests for low-quality newsprint and packaging papers and cardboards.

3. Economy: even in the USA, 51.5% of paper is recycled (Europe 74%). This would not be done if it were uneconomical.

PLASTIC BOTTLES
1. Energy: According to the EPA, recycling a pound of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) saves approximately 12,000 BTU's (whatever that means!)

2, Resources: plastic bottles are made from oil, which is a very limited resource. It requires about 9 barrels of oil to make 1 tonne of PET (not counting the oil converted into energy to heat the chemical processes). Not recycling PET means that more of this increasingly valuable commodity is simply wasted because more virgin plastics would be required to make ropes, carpets, garments, insulation etc.

3. Economy: there is an enormous demand for waste PET (and other plastics), especially from China. Currently, the USA simply throws away 80.4% of its used bottles, instead of selling them for an extra $931,450,408 (EPA figures). Most European PET is a very profitable commodity, much of it converted to fibres within Europe, the rest being sold to China, Philippines and elsewhere.

So, we can see that recycling these products is a win-win situation on all three counts. This is widely and profitably practised in Europe and, even more so, in Japan, so why isn't it done in the USA? Why are "feel-good" sorted items sent to landfills instead of to recyclers? I can't understand this entirely in view of the high value. It is like throwing dollar bills onto the landfills. I can only suppose that the problem is a combination of mindset and the lack of both will and infrastructure.

I strongly urge reading what Fort Collins are saying about the subject:

Well-run recycling programs cost less to operate than waste collection, landfilling, and incinerations. Loveland has discovered that the municipal garbage utility's costs to recycle are almost $40 per ton less than the cost to landfill trash, while Denver's recycling programs saved about $200,000 in landfill costs in 2004 and brought in nearly $1 million from the sale of recyclables. Unlike many public services, recycling does function within the market economy, and quite successfully.

So it would seem that progressive cities, like Fort Collins, are discovering what has been common knowledge in Europe and Japan for 20 years. There is a Yorkshire saying, "whar thar's moock, thar's munny!"

[schmosef]

Um, Brian, did you watch more than 9 minutes yet?

They admit that aluminum recycling works.

What they say about paper recycling and plastic recycling is that it costs more and uses more energy than using new paper and plastic.

And specifically about the cost saving issue, they say that much of that comes from government subsidies.

Just watch the video all the way through.

[Brian Ellis]

No, I've no intention to waste another 20 minutes on claptrap. It is simply untrue that paper and plastic recycling is energy-negative. Did you read what I wrote? Have you researched it?

A lot of people make statements like you pretend because a) they have vested interests (cf. the petroleum industry) b) they do not look at the holistic viewpoint (e.g., they say that shipping used bottles to China requires energy, but they forget that not doing so means that the Chinese will have to ship 9 barrels of oil/tonne of virgin polyester and thereby lose not only the energy of shipping from the Gulf, but the energy in those 9 barrels and the heat energy required for the chemical processes.) If it works in Europe and Japan, it can work in the USA. As I said, it is probably also a question of mindset. If enough people say it cannot work, it won't work. Elsewhere, it does work.

[Gurm]

Well I don't recycle. Why? Because I live in Southeast Massachusetts. Everything that goes into the recycling bin here... gets burnt. I worked for the DPW for a summer, and I keep in touch. The minute that they actually start shipping our recycling out to be recycled? I'll participate. In the meantime, I'm not going to go through the effort if they're just going to incinerate it.

[Brian Ellis]

Well I don't recycle. Why? Because I live in Southeast Massachusetts. Everything that goes into the recycling bin here... gets burnt. I worked for the DPW for a summer, and I keep in touch. The minute that they actually start shipping our recycling out to be recycled? I'll participate. In the meantime, I'm not going to go through the effort if they're just going to incinerate it.

OK, I understand that, but why con the public into pretending they are recycling? I think I may know two possible answers:
a) they are waiting until there is sufficient recycling stuff being collected to provide the economy of scale for profitability OR
b) they are incinerating pre-sorted stuff, like paper and PET bottles, to use the heat for generating electricity. By using "clean" waste, in an oldish plant, they may avoid the need to have flue gas scrubbers. Baltimore, for example, has a large waste-burning plant with scrubbers, generating nearly 10% of the electricity for the catchment area, burning household garbage. This is an excellent form of renewable electricity and is practised increasingly in Europe, recycling nondescript waste into energy and reducing landfill needs by up to 90% at the same time.

[TransformX]

Watch the video Brian. Any argument you might have right now suffers from a certain degree of ignorance, at least because most were mentioned and answered in the video and you're insulting people when you force them to quote from a source that is more than available to you.

[Jammrock]

Well I don't recycle. Why? Because I live in Southeast Massachusetts. Everything that goes into the recycling bin here... gets burnt. I worked for the DPW for a summer, and I keep in touch. The minute that they actually start shipping our recycling out to be recycled? I'll participate. In the meantime, I'm not going to go through the effort if they're just going to incinerate it.

In many European countries they burn some of the recycle material, but they use the heat for city wide hot water. They have hundreds to thousands of heavily insulated pipes that carry the water to most homes and buildings. Works very well I might add, and doesn't cost too much.

[Gurm]

SEAMASS produces quite a bit of electricity, it is true. However, given how LITTLE of the post-consumer recyclables in the USA actually make it to a processing plant to be RECYCLED... I find it disingenuous - upsettingly so - to make people THINK that their hard work presorting things goes to actual recycling.