Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Recycling of wastes reduces the amount of waste ending up in landfills. If it can be reused why wouldn’t you?

Recycling things for instance metals, reduces the mining of news ores. I e if you mix 50% recycled iron with 50% fresh iron ore you would rely a lot less on digging up fresh iron ore.

This lessens the overall environmental impact of everything that we do.

Another example, film used in photography…
The development process uses a chemical process. The left over mix of chemicals is hazardous waste. Now this waste has a lot of silver. Well using an electical process you can remove the silver from the liquid, and then neutralize the rest. This “reclaimed” silver can then be reused.

There is a way to recycle almost anything, the problem is the cost effectiveness of the process.

The Expert answers:

Recycling has really been around for perhaps thousands of years! For example, ancient cultures that
began making metal products, could melt down old broken items like pots or swords and make new ones.
More recently, during World War I and II, people would have paper drives and metal drives to collect
materials for the war effort. Nothing was wasted! When landfilling became a cheap way dispose of trash
in the 1940’s and 1950’s, recycling was less popular. But modern recycling of glass, paper, cans, etc.
Became more popular again in the 1970’s with drop-off recycling centers, and in the late 1980’s and
1990’s with curbside collection. Mother nature is, of course, the ultimate recycler… Without the natural
decay or composting process, we’d all be covered in leaves and other dead organic matter

The Expert answers:

Please keep this just between us: it is, indeed, possible to recycle wasted time. When you have wasted all the time you humanly can at home, get on a plane for St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Get as much time in as you can sleeping on the beach or under a coconut tree during the day. Then spend all night dancing and singing karaoke in the bars. Your stateside wasted time will be completely re-usable and you will now have TWICE as much time to waste. Oh, yes, if you bring back the maximum amount of Cruzan Rum, you will have THREE times the amount of “wasted” time as before. If you keep going back as often as you can, you will be a wasted time millionaire. Honest.

The Expert answers:

Http://www.recycling.co.uk/food-waste

The Expert answers:

Start by checking with your local waste disposal department. There are places that will take various electronics (computers, PDAs, VCRs, etc.) to recover precious metals like gold, copper, and palladium which can be used to manufacture new electronics.

Your waste disposal or recycling center may have certain days when they accept this type of waste to be recycled. The Environmental Commission for my city has electronics recycling days every few months when they are able to fill multiple tractor trailers FULL of old electronics to be taken to the nearest electronic hardware recovery center.

The Expert answers:

My husband is a waste recycling manager for a local council. I know that he sends a crew out just to pick up paper and card from small businesses and this is done for free. So If I where you I would contact your council, they may also offer this service.

The Expert answers:

Recycling is one method to help achieve zero waste. Zero waste goal is to have nothing going to the landfill, it would have to be an integrated plan that would include composting, recycling and re purposing a variety of materials. Banning some materials would be likely as well. There is a variety of packaging material that can’t be recycled, most of the snack or junk food packaging is a hybrid of multiple materials that can’t be recycled and have limited reuse applications.

Recycling alone can’t achieve zero waste, but you can’t achieve zero waste without recycling.

The Expert answers:

As a nation we have agreed upon the capitalist system of government. I think the same system is also best for recycling. You only achieve a low level of participation when you motivate people that they are good when they recycle. But when you charge people for their soda bottle and you give cash when they recycle, you get much higher level of participation. You also get many people to make that their business so they pick up some of the slack for the real deadheads.
I favor raising recycling charges and refunds to the level that achieves a 90% recycling rate. If that means you pay a $5.00 recycling fee on a $1.00 bottle of pop, so be it. People need to either recycle or stop using. When I go to the dump and see all the recyclable materials being thrown away, I am ready for some real drastic action.

The Expert answers:

* Saves Natural Resources – By making products from recycled materials instead of virgin materials, we conserve land and reduce the need to drill for oil and dig for minerals.

* Saves Energy – It usually takes less energy to make recycled products; recycled aluminum, for example, takes 95% less energy than new aluminum from bauxite ore.

* Saves Clean Air and Water – In most cases, making products from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than making products from virgin materials.

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Saves Landfill Space – When the materials that you recycle go into new products, they don’t go into landfills or incinerators, so landfill space is conserved.
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Saves Money and Creates Jobs – The recycling process creates far more jobs than landfills or incinerators, and recycling can frequently be the least expensive waste management method for cities and towns.