I make no secret about my love for recycling. When it comes to the measures necessary to achieve a more sustainable society, the recycling industry represents not only one of the greatest opportunities for positive change but also one of the most feasible to implement. Despite this, even in our cities, we lag far behind the opportunities that are possible, resulting in vastly more waste than is necessary. Having the access to a recycling program is still a factor, but moreover the populace may need an updated and more detailed refresher course on why recycling is so important.
GOOD Magazine recently released an infographic about recycling that tries to depict efforts in figuring out what is holding us back in being more diligent in dealing with our trash appropriately. One diagram of excuses highlights a series of the lackluster results that we would come to expect: 25% say recycling is not easily accessible, 10% say it is too time consuming (um… what?) and 10% blame forgetfulness (read: negligence). A different series of images portrays a list of benefits that supposedly already register with people. I found this list far more revealing.
81% of respondents know that recycling diverts waste from landfills. 69% know that it “saves trees” and 62% admit to knowing that it saves energy. A better question is: how many people know why any of those things are actually important? Yes, recycling does reduce the amount of waste in landfills, but aside from the 1990’s dictum that Landfills=BAD do people realize why landfills can pose a danger to the environment, let alone our drinking water? Saving energy is undoubtedly important, but not just for efficiency’s sake. For Americans, less energy consumption is less coal use, which means less sulfur dioxide in the air; less asthma cases in our cities; less coal effluent flushed into our water supply from power plants and fewer mountain and river ecosystems compromised.
While I commend the effort for the gathering and organizing of the data into something that is clear and palatable, I found the results to be incomplete and representative of the incomplete perspective that too many Americans have on any number of issues, including sustainability. Our quest to condense information for quick delivery ultimately compromises our ability to present all aspects of a given problem. Who’s fault is this? Maybe no one’s and everyone’s at the same time. Either way, ignorance could be much more damaging than apathy.
I have gone as far as suggesting that a federal mandate on recycling could give us the push we need towards the right direction (the right direction being jobs, public health and a more ecological sound economy). Would more people recycle if they had a better handle on all that it provides? I’d like to think so. We will not know until we are more confident that the level of common knowledge has raised the bar on the components of the repercussions of our own daily actions. If regional recycling efforts can gain a level of stability and critical mass then more resource streams can solidify our path towards transitioning to an economy of reuse where we can effectively price trash out of existence.
June 12, 2012 at 10:14 am
I have been an advocate of recycling since my teens, 50 years ago. At that time metal, glass and paper were the principle items in trash other than kitchen waste. Synthetic rubber tires were also around but these seemed to disappear like magic although you could see them piled high in many rural specialized dump sites.
Since that time plastic has emerged as a major component in waste and plastic is turning out to be tougher to deal with because it doesn’t break down in landfill, and because many types of plastic are not easily recycled. Undifferentiated plastic and coloured plastic are seldom repurposed and end up in landfill.
I recently attended a presentation for a company that converts tires and undifferentiated plastic into diesel and gasoline with carbon black powder as the byproduct. 30 tons of raw plastic and tires in 8-10 hours turns into tens of thousands of liters of fuel and up to 1.5 tons of carbon black (which can be used in ink, asphalt and other products). The technology requires 40 minutes of initial energy input to get the reactor (a slow cooker) humming and after that any gas emissions get captured and refed into the reactor. Sulphides are captured using catalysis. So it is effectively a zero emission technology.
If we can only repurpose a limited amount of what we recycle then we need to find technologies that can reduce landfill and reuse the recyclable raw materials effectively. The example above is one way to proceed. You could put one of these slow cooker reactors at every dump site that collects 30 tons of plastics and tires per day. There are lots of sites like this.
June 12, 2012 at 10:44 am
Great points. You’re absolutely right that plastic is, in many ways, the most difficult and most important material in a municipal waste stream that needs attention and a better lifecycle solution.
The problem with plastic is multifaceted. As you pointed out, colored plastics can be difficult to repurpose. Any plastics that have held chemical substances often face strict recycling criteria, excluding the possibility of being new containers that hold anything potable due to the fear of chemicals being absorbed by the plastic.
The technology you reference sounds very interesting–a great first step from keeping things from going in the ground. Eventually, I would hope we could take another step and learn how to either reuse more of our waste products or eliminate materials from production that are too hard upcycle. Maybe it is a larger migration to Biopolymers to replace petroleum-based plastics? We should be designing products to come apart; designing them for reuse; even designing them to last longer.
June 13, 2012 at 11:03 am
People might recycle more if they felt it was directly helping other people. It could become a MISSION, for example, to recycle plastics to create tornado shelters. See Project JOMO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EPQQEac4Wo
June 13, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Heck, tornado shelters is nothing. Plastic recyclables can be used for so many other purposes. Check out this blog I wrote on cities and using plastic bottles as building materials: http://www.21stcentech.com/urban-landscapes-in-the-21st-century-part-2-the-evolution-of-cities/. Also check out this blog using plastic water bottles in grey water collection systems: http://www.21stcentech.com/urban-landscapes-in-the-21st-century-part-3-the-evolution-of-cities/. If the content of these articles is of interest to you then I invite you to subscribe to my blog at http://www.21stcentech.com and leave your questions and observations.
You are absolutely right about getting people to see recycling as a mission. Unfortunately governments and the people are seldom in synch in sharing the cause and delivering the results.
June 13, 2012 at 2:19 pm
I actually have a fellow architect and former classmate (who also follows this blog) that is currently in Africa working on low-income building projects. We have talked about the growing frequency of using empty plastic bottles as the basis for wall construction given that it is ultimately cheaper than making bricks and serves as a resource stream that is there anyway. For these kinds of societal conditions (where a recycling/upcycling infrastructure isn’t going to pop up any time soon) it’s a great use of a waste product.