Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

I envision prevention in terms of preventing waste from being generated in the first place. This can be done by engineering your production process such that you don’t generate waste, or generate far less waste than done previously. In practice, this might be done by using feedstocks that are not inherently hazardous or are less hazardous than what has been conventionally used, or it could also involve more efficient production processes.

Prevention approaches are built in at the front end of your process, rather than the middle to back back ends, where minimization/reduction enter the fray.

Here is an excellent excerpt from a federal web site:

“Waste prevention, also known as source reduction, means using less material to get a job done. Waste prevention methods help create less waste in the first place—before recycling. If organizations take a good look at their recycling collection data, they are likely to see ways to reduce waste first through waste prevention, thereby decreasing purchasing costs and the amount of material that must be managed for recycling.”

The Expert answers:

Most cities hire companies to deal with the waste, they all make profits. In my area, the recycling companies sort the curbside recycling and pay the cities by the ton for the materials then they sell it at a much higher rate to cover operating costs and keep the profits. Now that recycling has lost up to 90% of it’s value some companies are asking cities to allow them to keep the material for free and to give them space to store it. Many companies are loosing lots of money.

With the economy down people aren’t buying things so manufacturers aren’t making things and they don’t need paper, metals, glass and plastics to make them.

The Expert answers:

Reducing (that is, reducing wastage and over-exploitation of available resources.)

The Expert answers:

Just google it… #1: number of thermal and steel power plants…

The Expert answers:

Contact your local government and wm.could be just an oversight. If not, sooner or later you got to pay the piper.

The Expert answers:

Sure. They recycle anything that shows a profit. Or loses just a little. Even if they lose a little money it is worth it so they can advertise they are “green.” And it works. You would be amazed at the number of idiots who will pay a higher price for an inferior product just because it says green, eco friendly, recycled, or no polar bears harmed on the package.

Go to your local Office Depot, Staples, etc and look at the reams of copy paper. The 100% new paper is the cheapest. Then there is various grades of recycled paper. 10-15-20- as much as 30% recycled paper. The higher the amount of recycled paper it contains the poorer the quality and the MORE it cost. That’s right. They save money by using old paper and then charge you more money for that which cost them less. What is even worse is the eco freaks in Washington DC give them tax breaks and subsidies to sell us this crap at an inflated price.

The same is true for recycled glass. Look at some glass blocks. The ones made from new glass have fewer impurities and are lighter, stronger, and clearer than those made from recycled glass. Yet the poorer quality recycled glass blocks cost more.

And it is worth mentioning that our government spends 10’s of millions of dollars of our tax money every year to cut down and burn trees to reduce the surplus. 100’s of millions of board feet of lumber burned every year to reduce the surplus and keep the cost of lumber and paper products higher.

There is one guy who invented a device he calls a “tornado recycler.” It uses cyclonic winds in a tunnel to separate different types of plastics. It is low cost, very efficient and portable (it fits in the back of a pick up truck) and would allow him to go to salvage yards and recycle all the plastics used in cars. Every year thousands of tons of car plastics gets thrown into landfills because there is no easy and efficient way to separate it. Now that he has invented one the government refuses to license him to use it.

Yep, recycling is wonderful. Especially when the government is involved.

The Expert answers:

A combination of all of the above; but light on the incineration, imho…

The Expert answers:

At present, recycling isn’t going to have much effect on global warming one way or the other. We haven’t yet developed methods to make recycling any more energy efficient than throwing your crap away. (Despite what you’ve been told, recycling is never =less= efficient than throwing stuff away.)

But that’s not the point. The idea of recycling is one of conservation. Anything you throw away will likely remain sitting in the ground for many thousands of years, where it’s of no use to anyone. By recycling it you allow it to be reused many times over. So the point is not being wasteful.

And the more you recycle the faster waste management companies can develop ways to make it more efficient. So it’s a good thing all round.

The Expert answers:

You need to learn to do web searches. Just consider search terms such as “waste management economics”, “recycling economics”, “land fill economics”, “waste processing economics”, etc.