Recycling

[naturefirst]

I recently heard a theory that the only material worth recycling is aluminum. I certainly do not agree with this theory, but they say that recycling and melting plastic emits worse fumes for the environment than making new plastic. Also, they argue that bleaching used paper hurts the environment more than cutting down more trees.

Thoughts?

[charlieb]

Recycled aluminium has exactly the same properties as "new" aluminium and is much cheaper to produce - no ore mining or extraction - it just needs to be melted and reformed.

Cutting down a tree and pulping it is easy when compared to mining and extraction, as is converting hydrocarbons to plastics.

Other materials tend to loose a lot of quality when recycled, paper and cardboard fibres can become too short, ink needs to be removed and the paper then bleached. Plastics need to be sorted, and also contain lots of additives that need to be removed such as colourings. The very nature of plastics (long lasting, resistant) also mean that reforming them takes a lot of energy.

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by charlieb

Recycled aluminium has exactly the same properties as "new" aluminium and is much cheaper to produce - no ore mining or extraction - it just needs to be melted and reformed.

I think that's true of all metals. Some need higher energy levels to melt them than aluminium does but it's still cheaper and more energy efficient to recycle than to start again from scratch.

I'd be interested to know what the situation is with glass. Does that take more or less energy to recycle than to create from scratch. I heard recently that a lot of glass collected for recycling ends up being used in road surfacing. Which is better than sending it to landfill but probably not what most diligent recyclers were expecting.

I'm told it requires less energy to pulp waste paper and cardborad than it does to pulp timber. And a certain amount of bleaching is required even of fresh wood pulp although probably not as much. The problem is that the quality quickly degrades each time it goes round the recycling loop and there is a limit to the number fo times it can go around before it's unusable. Fortunately very few paper and cardboard products need to be high quality. There is a lot of paper being made from animal waste these days - bet that takes a lot of bleaching!

Dave P.

[Dae]

I wish there were a clear-cut solution to the whole thing. Our neighborhood here in wales has recently being trialed with mandatory recycling, being provided with full-size brown bins etc. Soon we'll be recycling food wastes, and then our rubbish will only be picked up fortnightly. All of this seems good, less goes to landfills. The reduction of waste going into our rubbish bin is astonishing. But bad because it's high energy to recycle and can be polluting. What's the answer? Certainly in modern society the possibility of actually creating less waste that needs to be binned/recycled is unlikely, what else is there to do?

[aland]

Dare I enter this subject one month late, plastics were my occupation for twenty five years and every day i would spend at least seven or eight hours preparing or recycling plastic, there is no melting involved in recycling the old product, It is placed in large hammer type grinders and forced through set sized grids maybe two or three millimeter holes, this material is often mixed with virgin plastic, the energy that is used is always electricity and of course the saving is the fact that the original scrap is not put in the ground, to produce the new product of course power is again used to produce a melt, If you notice the large black ribbed pipes used for land drainage and road work these are nine times out of ten made totally from recycled beer crates and plant pots etc, but the energy wasted here is they are fetched in from the guinness factory in ireland all the way to warwick shire, and so i do not think that we can really win, sorry if i have gone on i just happened to spot this subject and i thought a explanation could help people to under stand, aland.

[Paul mabbott]

Who is 'they' and why is it a 'theory' and not supported by evidence?
With regard to the bleaching (treating with chlorine compounds or similar) then that also applies in the making of white paper from virgin trees!
It's easy to find drawbacks for any process; we should certianly take heed of these and go for the less damaging process but the slapdash 'theories' put about by some companies and their friends in the papers really need a few facts and a bit of science before we take any note of them!

Originally Posted by naturefirst

I recently heard a theory that the only material worth recycling is aluminum. I certainly do not agree with this theory, but they say that recycling and melting plastic emits worse fumes for the environment than making new plastic. Also, they argue that bleaching used paper hurts the environment more than cutting down more trees.

Thoughts?

[Paul mabbott]

Aluminium takes massive amounts of energy to extract from bauxite (the major ore) which is why there has been a tendency to build aluminium production factories close to sources of cheap energy - mainly hydroelectric. We seldom talk about hydroelectric generation - it is seriously cheap (economically - once you've built the dams) but has biological implications.

I think aluminium is the most expensive of commonly used metals to produce (but much cheaper/less damaging to recycle) unless you get into metals like tungsten, .... or uranium ....

Originally Posted by pressld2

I think that's true of all metals. Some need higher energy levels to melt them than aluminium does but it's still cheaper and more energy efficient to recycle than to start again from scratch.
..............Dave P.

[Paul mabbott]

Protests by concerned ratepayers and the Daily Mail led to cancellation of the trials of charging by weight for the amount of waste sent to landfill or incineration. Sad - it means that we still have no evidence to discuss on this idea ....

To make things worse, one council (Weybridge or that sort of area?) is doing its own trial whereby it will repay people who put things into their bins for recycling. Doesn't seem too bad an idea but in effect this will be a tax on people (1) who live in places (e.g. tower blocks) who don't have the opportunity to separate their rubbish individually and (2) people who are already recycling most of their waste.

Can't find a reference to this - does it effect anyone here?

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by naturefirst

I recently heard a theory that the only material worth recycling is aluminum. I certainly do not agree with this theory, but they say that recycling and melting plastic emits worse fumes for the environment than making new plastic. Also, they argue that bleaching used paper hurts the environment more than cutting down more trees. Thoughts?

Recycling of Steel uses significantly less energy than the production of virgin material - http://www.worldsteel.org/pictures/p...eet_Energy.pdf suggests between only a half and third of the energy use is required to reprocess compared with new production.

Plastic is more problematic because 'recycling' has been largely geared to the creation of novel products, rather than a simple recycling into the same usage - say as with glass jars going to cullet, and coming out of the furnace and molding process as - more glass jars. Working out the energy value of a replacement for natural timber for instance, is no simple exercise.

However, the alternatives to recycling - land fill or incineration, are not neutral choices. Britain long ago ceased to have enough existing holes in the ground (quarries) to take the volumes of waste it produces. Increasingly landfill has included 'surface fill' sites, where the topsoil is skimmed and waste tens of metres high is heaped up and disguised with a skin of topsoil. Not only does this destroy countryside in the tip site itself, it works to change greenfield to brownfield bringing road building and development in its wake.

Incineration has all the pollution problems of reprocessing but offers a relatively meagre return in energy benefit. Some level of energy recovery from waste through incineration is probably required but it certainly is not an effective wholesale alternative to recycling.

CM