Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials. The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management is also carried out to recover resources from it. Waste management can involve solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances, with different methods and fields of expertise for each.

Waste management practices differ for developed and developing nations, for urban and rural areas, and for residential and industrial, producers. Management for non-hazardous residential and institutional waste in metropolitan areas is usually the responsibility of local government authorities, while management for non-hazardous commercial and industrial waste is usually the responsibility of the generator.

The Expert answers:

Trash collection and recycling services.

The Expert answers:

Waste and recycling
Productivity Commission inquiry into waste managementIn late 2005 the Productivity Commission launched an inquiry into waste generation and resource efficiency. They called for submissions and undertook a series of public inquiries. ALGA participated in both processes. The ALGA submission covered some broad areas for concern, while the State Associations provided more detailed submissions.

In May 2006, the Productivity Commission released their draft report Waste Management which invites further comment and will be followed up with another series of public hearings. ALGA will continue to input into this inquiry.

DrumMUSTERThe drumMUSTER program has been operating since 1 February 1999 and is a joint initiative between the National Association for Crop Production and Animal Health (Avcare), together with the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) and the Veterinary Manufacturers and Distributors Association (VMDA). As at 1 June 2002, 378 Councils across Australia are participating in the program. Of these, 88 have been identified as high priority councils (because of the high number of drum sales in the LGA). Ninety-eight per cent of high priority councils have signed up to drumMUSTER and are regularly running collections. ALGA continues to be involved in the drumMUSTER Advisory Committee which meets 4 times per year.

National Packaging CovenantAustralian and state governments have extended the National Packaging Covenant for a further five years following a meeting of the Environment Protection and Heritage Council in July 2005. The National Environment Protection Measure for Used Packaging Materials has been streamlined to support the Covenant and to ensure voluntary action is backed by legislation and obligations are met. Changes to the NPC affecting local government and industry signatories include:

Increase in the national packaging recycling rate from 48 per cent to 65 per cent by 2010.
No further increase in packaging waste disposal to landfill by the end of 2010.
The local governments who were signatories to the last Covenant have not yet had time to determine if they will sign the updated Covenant.

The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) opposes the National Packaging Covenant (the Covenant) in its current form. This opposition arises from the failure of the Covenant to require the packaging industry to take enough downstream responsibility for packaging waste.

Notwithstanding the specific concern over the Covenant as it stands, it should be noted that ALGA supports any waste minimisation initiative that involves all three spheres of Government, together with a voluntary approach by industry.

The concerns with the Covenant, as determined and resolved by the Australian Local Government Association early in 1999 and subsequently reaffirmed, are as follows:

The Covenant definition of product stewardship is based on a principle of “shared responsibility” which is directly at odds with Local Government’s view that the packaging industry should take responsibility for the waste it produces
The Covenant does not commit industry to paying a fair price (ie. At least a cost recovery price) for recyclables, requiring only payment of market prices
The Covenant is totally reliant on kerbside collection as the means of recycling, and fails to explore other proven initiatives such as industry run collections/drop-offs and container deposit legislation
In March 1999, the Australian Local Government Association resolved, on behalf of member State and Territory Associations, to refuse to sign the Covenant until the covenant is amended in terms acceptable to Local Government. On 14 May 1999, this position was reaffirmed and the required changes to the NPC were itemised. It was resolved (in part) as follows:

The ALGA reaffirms its position that the Covenant in draft form is unacceptable to Local Government and as such will not be signed
That ALGA believes there must be an included statement that industry must accept responsibility for the materials created throughout the lifecycle of the product
The packaging industry must commit to the waste hierarchy as set out below:
Most preferred:
Avoid
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle
Recover (eg energy)
Least preferred:
Treat
Dispose
The principle of waste minimisation must be explicitly included in the Covenant as a fundamental goal
The Covenant must accept that Local Government is not part of the packaging chain but may use its infrastructure for the recovery of materials
That the Covenant term “shared responsibilities” must be replaced by “industry lifecycle responsibility”
That the Covenant should provide for the development of a variety of collection systems rather than just kerbside collection, including collection depots, surcharges and Container Deposit Legislation
The packaging industry must agree to meet the real cost of recyclable material collection
The majority position not to sign or support the National Packaging Covenant has been reaffirmed by ALGA, noting however that the Municipal Association of Victoria and the Local Government Association of Queensland have signed the National Packaging Covenant.

Link to the National Packaging Covenant homepage.

Meinhardt Report (393 kb PDF): A Report on the covenant’s operation from a council perspective by Meinhardt Infrastructure and Environment Pty Ltd

The Expert answers:

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal, and monitoring of waste materials.The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics.

Waste management is also carried out to recover resources from it. Waste management can involve solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances, with different methods and fields of expertise for each.

1.Landfill-Disposing of waste in a landfill involves burying the waste, and this remains a common practice in most countries.
2.Incineration-Incineration is a disposal method that involves combustion of waste material. Incineration and other high temperature waste treatment systems are sometimes described as “thermal treatment”. Incinerators convert waste materials into heat, gas, steam, and ash.
3.Biological reprocessing-Waste materials that are organic in nature, such as plant material, food scraps, and paper products, can be recycled using biological composting and digestion processes to decompose the organic matter. The resulting organic material is then recycled as mulch or compost for agricultural or landscaping purposes. In addition, waste gas from the process (such as methane) can be captured and used for generating electricity. The intention of biological processing in waste management is to control and accelerate the natural process of decomposition of organic matter.
4.Energy recovery-The energy content of waste products can be harnessed directly by using them as a direct combustion fuel, or indirectly by processing them into another type of fuel. Recycling through thermal treatment ranges from using waste as a fuel source for cooking or heating, to fuel for boilers to generate steam and electricity in a turbine. Pyrolysis and gasification are two related forms of thermal treatment where waste materials are heated to high temperatures with limited oxygen availability. The process typically occurs in a sealed vessel under high pressure. Pyrolysis of solid waste converts the material into solid, liquid and gas products. The liquid and gas can be burnt to produce energy or refined into other products. The solid residue (char) can be further refined into products such as activated carbon. Gasification and advanced Plasma arc gasification are used to convert organic materials directly into a synthetic gas (syngas) composed of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is then burnt to produce electricity and steam.
5.Waste handling and transport-aste collection methods vary widely between different countries and regions. Domestic waste collection services are often provided by local government authorities, or by private industry.

Hope this helps…

The Expert answers:

RECYCLING AND COMPOSTING
but the public MUST clasify trash otherwise it becomes an impossible and expensive task

organic wastes mixed in with trash is responsible for 70% of soil and fround water contamination

the municipalities should have different trucks collecting different types of wastes iniciating the clasification at the source ,the homes

the truck for plastic only taking plastic and going to its recycling destination

the organic truck going to a worm culture or compost operation ,

and the metal to its recycling destination ,

in this way the whole process becomes viable and can be controlled

the crew of the individual trucks policing the types of trash they collect

The Expert answers:

In the manufacturing industry, not all the “ingredients” that go into making something are consumed. By definition, if they cannot be recycled, they are waste. Environmental waste management means managing wastes, be they chemical, biological, or material, in a responsible manner so they don’t become pollutants.

Chemical waste is easy to envision. When something is burnt in a manufacturing process, there are gases that go up the smokestack. If they are not captured somehow, or reduced, they become pollutants. Think about what comes out of your car’s tailpipe.

For an example of biological waste, a byproduct of beer fermentation is yeast that has been used, but settles out of the tank into a sludge. What do you do do with this? Or when you harvest corn, you have all these stalks and cobs left over. You need to manage them.

Raw materials can also be waste. Scrap aluminum used in stamping plants may be recovered. Sawdust and wood chips from lumbering processes may be made into plywood.

We want to minimize waste to keep costs down, keep pollutants out of the environments, and use our natural resources in the most conservative manner.

I hope this helps.

The Expert answers:

Recycling is the reprocessing of materials into new products. Recycling prevents useful material resources being wasted, reduces the consumption of raw materials and reduces energy usage, and hence greenhouse gas emissions, compared to virgin production. Recycling is a key concept of modern waste management and is the third component of the waste hierarchy.

Paper is a thin material produced by the amalgamation of plant fibres, which are subsequently held together without extra binder, largely by hydrogen bonds and to a large degree by fiber entanglement. The fibres used are usually natural and composed of cellulose. The most common source of these kinds of fibres is wood pulp from pulpwood trees, largely softwoods such as spruce. However, other vegetable fibre materials including cotton, hemp, linen, and rice may be used.

Recycled paper is made from waste paper, usually mixed with fresh wood pulp. If the paper contains ink, the paper must be deinked. Deinking also removes fillers, clays, and fiber fragments.

Almost all paper can be recycled today, but some types are harder to recycle than others. Papers that are waxed, pasted, or gummed (or papers that are coated with plastic or aluminum foil) are usually not recycled because the process is too expensive. Even papers that are recycled are not usually recycled together. Waste papers should be sorted. You shouldn’t mix newspapers and cardboard boxes together for recycling.

Different grades of paper are recycled into different types of new products. Old newspapers are usually made into new newsprint, egg cartons, or paperboard. Old corrugated boxes are made into new corrugated boxes or paperboard. High-grade white office paper can be made into almost any new paper product: stationery, newsprint, or paper for magazines and books.

Sometimes recyclers ask you to remove the glossy inserts that come with newspapers. The newsprint and glossy inserts are different types of paper.

Glossy inserts have a heavy clay coating that some paper mills cannot accept. Besides, a paper mill gets more recyclable fibers from a ton of pure newsprint than it does from a ton of mixed newsprint that is weighed down with heavy clay-coated papers.

Unlike most other recyclables, paper cannot be recycled over and over again. Eventually the fibers become too weak and short to be used again. That is why virgin paper fiber is usually mixed with recycled paper when new paper products are made. Most cardboard boxes are a mixture of 50 percent new and 50 percent recycled fibers.

The Expert answers:

Take a look at the track record of the existing government and back… They all blame the “other” guy… One thing we could do as citizens, stop eating so much – control our own waste!- Seriously – we need the public to co-operate – recycle-reuse and REFUSE to buy products that are harmful to our enviorment and cannot be recycled! We have a very long way to go and need to begin teaching at the public school level and especially new immigrants, for many come from cultures were sanitation was unheard of, e.g. Running water and a flush toilet would have been luxury in their country…. But then your trying to work with two levels of government, and that rarely works! Just look at the mess were in here in Ontario…Good Question, you should get bonus points for this.

The Expert answers:

I don’t know where you live, but check with your county or city Waste Management office to find out if there really is no place locally. Plastic is very hard to recycle due to the economics of moving the product around. So first – try never to buy it. Buy aluminum or glass. There are many Do It Yourself (DIY) sites that share projects on re-using just about everything and tons of them feature plastic bottles for the very reason that it is hard to recycle. Look around at sites like: ReadyMade, TreeHugger, Etsy, or just google ‘uses for plastic bottles’ and see what shows up. Most importantly – don’t reuse them for drinking beverages – the jury is still out on how stable plastic is chemically. And definitely don’t melt them. That releases toxic chemicals into the air.