Recycle or Not? (1 Viewer)

[Artur Meinild]

This of course a difficult discussion with no easy answer, but let me point your attention to the fact that there are many important factors that must be taken into account. Energy consumption is one factor, emissions to air and water another, resource consumption yet another. And still there is no way to be sure what is actually best.

A positive thing to recycling is that you always minimize natural resource consumption. But I'm sure there are compromises, such as recycling consuming more energy. In that case you have to ask the question: What is best, consume more natural resources, or produce more CO2? And the answer to that question is entirely subjective.
(Also remember that one of the reasons some recycling seems to use more energy is because of the energy you "loose" by NOT incinerating paper for instance, at least this is true for many European countries.)

If the material is a limited resource, such as metals, one can find good arguments for recycling. But according to life-cycle assessment methods trees and such are not limited resources. So you could say that it doesn't matter to cut down the trees, because you can always grow new ones. But then the whole ecosystem, become affected, and how do you measure that?

That being said, I'm always FOR recycling, as I believe it is possible to develop processing methods which consume as little energy as possible, and I mean one of the MAJOR problem is in fact natural resource consumption.

 

[Jay Taylor]

My dad lives in East Texas and has had a tree farm since before World War II. Since he was career military it was sort of a side business to his real job. It once was 500 acres but is currently 300 acres. It’s divided into about 50-acre sections.

Each year he will pick one section and have the trees thinned out. At the 5-year old point they remove two trees and leave one and they are sold as paper pulp or fence posts. They are thinned out again at the 10, 15 & 20-year point with the trees providing larger lumber at each harvest.

This process of thinning will continue until you’re left with a 25-year old forest of huge pine trees. Then it’s completely cleared and provides large lumber to be used for things like telephone poles, 2 x 12s, etc.

The entire section is then replanted by machine with literally tens of thousands of seedlings and the process starts all over again.

Frequently he has held off on thinning the trees because the cost of pulpwood was so low that it wasn’t worth harvesting at that time.

That entire area of East Texas is loaded with tree farms that produce pulp & lumber like other farmers produce wheat & corn only in a slower manner.

 

[Elinor]

That's interesting Jay. Thanks for telling us about that aspect.

It's still hard for me to believe that it takes more energy to go to a tree farm, cut down the trees, truck them to a processing plant, make paper; than to collect used paper, boil it down, remove impurities, and make paper again.

I know I too have heard the bleaching is a bad thing, but I believe that step is discretionary not required. Eliminate that step, you have a much more "green" process.

There are lots of Google hits from government bodies about how recycling costs counties/states less than disposal. That too is an important consideration, not just whether it costs more to make virgin product or recycled product.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

But isn't paper made from wood pulp bleached also? I don't see the difference.

 

[MarkHastings]

Just an educated guess, but I would assume it takes a lot less to bleach wood pulp than it does to bleach recycled paper? Is this a possibility?

 

[Jay Taylor]

Both wood pulp & recycled paper normally use bleach in the process. I believe that recycled paper needs the bleach due to all of the ink on the paper.

Wood fibers are bound together by Lignin. It also gives the wood pulp its brown color. I found this on the Internet concerning the need for bleach to remove Lignin from wood pulp:

 

[Chris]

This would be great if all paper were simple ink or pencil, etc. However, look at your sunday newspaper and gauge how many gloss paper inserts and full color spreads are included. If you don't bleach, then you will never get it down to even sustainable.

Now, here's the thing.. while it does take longer in many landfills then we thought to process, many of the ink die within those will eventually break down safely because the bonding agent falls apart. If you hurry that process with a chemical, then you actually end up with a completely toxic slough. If you bleach out raw pulp, you don't end up with this sludge because you aren't dealing with multiple colored inks and surface sheeting applied to glossy prints which creates it.

When those are combined, and sloughed out, it takes a three fold process - far more then then simple 1 fold approach to new trees. Then, in that same process, roughly 31% of the paper itself is destroyed due to the chemical breakdown and you end up with nothing from that..

So, you're now down to ~70% of the bulk volume you started out with, and a volume of 4:1 of mixed ink die and a bleaching agent. Because it's a three time process, you use 3 times the electric energy as using a tree designed for pulp (moreover, as noted above, the desire to use new trees has led us to plant more trees then ever in US history, and we continue to plant as more people go into the business)..

So, here's the example given to us by DFS Kansas Recycling Co-Op. 400 Lbs of non-carboard paper product will be boiled down to 260 pre-processed pounds. (so you've lost 140lbs) It has to be trucked to one of four locations, at an average drive of 74 miles (in western Kansas, more like 250, but we're leaving that for later) in a containment vehicle (average gas mileage: 12MPG) you end up with 1 fifty gallon tub of non-processable slough per 500 lbs of paper (10:1 ration) which must be stored and then re-sifted before it can be released after it settles.

The processed pulp then has to be pushed back through to be re-used.

The cost of trucking the stuff around in gas and carbons released into the environment, the toxic waste you end up with afterwards (which is far different then the waste you get from a new-tree bleach which doesn't require an ink eating agent initially.. the outproduct can be directly released as it is below federal toxic levels) is both more expensive and in most areas of the US, far worse for the environment.

If you live in certain areas of the country, where all the processing can be done near you, then it's one thing.. maybe it could be made to work. But if I lived in Nebraska, would I even think about it? Stupid. By the time you figure in the gas to truck stuff around, it's just a giant government handout to waste gas and put tons of CO2 into the air. Who needs that?

I'm big into recycling aluminum, where it is absolute fact that the recycling process is much cleaner and safer and cheaper then using new boxite. And I agree with those who use some biological waste (leftover food, etc.) as compost as that's smart too. But the process of recycling ink-produced paper is just environmentally poor with the current ink system. And I see more and more glossy ads in every Sunday paper, so I don't see that changing.

 

[Joe Szott]

We recycle as it is easy to do in our area, but I wouldn't go nuts if it wasn't available anymore. I fugure if the world ever does get really low on resources, we can just start digging up landfills and pulling it out of there. After all, those glass bottles and aluminum cans aren't going to bio-degrade anytime in the near future. And if the word never needs to go to that length, then we must have a decent amount of resources left to use.

Anyway, after reading this thread I will stop trying to recycle paper at all and be sure to get aluminum where it needs to be. Thanks folks!

 

[Jay Taylor]

Okay, tomorrow morning I need to put out the recyclable items but I’m still not sure what’s best to recycle.

I’ll recycle the aluminum & tin cans.
I’ll not recycle the paper.

But due to conflicting arguments, I’m still not sure about plastic & glass.


Okay, so I should recycle the clear glass. What about brown beer bottles?

Also, what about plastic milk jugs & 2-liter soda jugs?

 

[Chris]

Much, much trickier. Because it depends on where you live. In some areas, recycling colored glass is an easy (and good) approach. In other areas.. not so much. Same is true of milk jugs & soda bottles. If you are in a fairly metro area, the recycling of large swath plastic in that manner -can- work out, depending on how your metro does it..

Then again, you can't always trust your metro to be honest about that Miami, FL got busted a few years ago for "making" people recycle when it turned out that they were just dumping all the paper & plastic into landfills anyway and keeping only the metal.. so go figure.. but I think that's been corrected.

Anyway, research into how your metro does it. And if you live in a rural area, forget about it. We have -tons- of rural landfill and are using less then 2% of total capacity in them. The efforts to truck your plastic to somewhere were it could be processed will waste more fuel, etc. then is good

 

[Jay Taylor]

Thanks for the info Chris.

Another question: What's heavier purposed glass?

 

[Chris]

Heavier Purposed glass is mostly things like stained glass windows, temperatured glass (like glass cookware) etc.

 

[Jay Taylor]

Thanks Chris. In that case heavier purposed glass is not a problem in our neighborhood. We’re more of a Bitburger beer bottle recycler rather than a stained glass window recycler.

 

[Bill Cowmeadow]

An aspect not touched on in this lively debate:

While re-cycling is important in my opinion, a more pressing problem related to the topic is that of junk mail.

I get between 4 and 5 pounds of useless mail a week. AOL, grocery flyers, refinance crap... The list is endless. I know there are ways to limit some of it through the mail system, but that doesn't stop the amount flowing throughout our country each week which ends up in the waste stream.






I see no way junk mail is going to stop

 

[MarkHastings]

I was just reading an article on a complaint to AOL about the tons of discs they send people every day.

Their response was something like: We are willing to recycle the discs if the consumer send them back to us (at their own cost) :rolleyes

Here's a trick with the credit card applications (and similiar items). They always have a pre-paid envelope included, so just tear up the application, then use the pre-paid envelope to send it back to the company that sent it to you. This way, you don't have to worry about recycling it and you stick it to them at the same time.

 

[Marko Berg]

 

[Gordon Moore]

I actually agree with recycling paper.... I believe in the concept but I won't doubt the possibility that it may spawn more air pollution than it's worth. Not sure if that's been truly measured.

I think it's not so much a matter of someone figured it was a good idea but more to the fact that someone found a way for it to be profitable. No recycling plant will do this out of the kindness of their heart....nor could they survive as a company. Like most businesses....the bigger question is "can we make a buck doing this?..."

 

[Jay Taylor]

Oklahoma City provides a 2 cubic foot plastic bin to each residence for recycling. The residents place paper, plastic, glass & metal into the bin. A recycle truck goes through the neighborhoods, and separates the items into 4 larger bins on the recycle truck on the same day that trash is picked up. This service is paid for by taxing the residents, not by making a profit recycling.

I believe they started this program years ago without knowing how advantageous it would be to recycle each of the four categories of materials. Perhaps they thought that certain items might not be cost effective to recycle now, but may be more effective later as recycling technology improves. I believe they knew it was a good idea in general to recycle and the statistics could come later.

Well, it’s later. It now appears to not be a good idea to recycle paper in most areas but a good idea to recycle metals, especially aluminum. I’m not sure about glass & plastic. It may be time to change our program.

 

[Gordon Moore]

Yes the tax on recycling collection would go into city council coffers but the actual recycling would be done by a plant who tendered the contract with the city (to either do the pickup or purchase the recycled collection or both) and then re-sells the recycled raw material. The recycler would most definitely operate as a for-profit organization...no business survives breaking even. Ideally a city doesn't operate for profit either but they just call those "rainy day funds" and give themselves big raises that go unchallenged

Does your city own the collection trucks and the recycle plant? If yes, then they are most definitely ahead of us because I'm pretty sure Laidlaw Waste Management tenders the contract up here, with their other division doing the collection.

Essentially it's all Laidlaw. BFI is another big materials collection operation.

 

[Jay Taylor]

Gordon, I don't know who owns the trucks or recycle plant and because today's a holiday the OKC offices are closed.

However, perhaps the future of paper recycling lies with China:


from here: Waste Wood and Paper Recycling