Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

The way I see it, there are a number of ways and methods to convert garbage and waste products into oil and energy fuels which could be used in poor countries to make better use of garbage/ waste products to become more self sufficient and raise economic standards. As Markey points out, some countries like Egypt, India, Nigeria, etc… Have whole communities that recycle old products into resellable items or earn a living on waste products but they could be even better and cleaner if they had technologies to convert garbage and waste into valuable oil and electrical energy or fuels.
Parts of Lagos Nigeria, China, etc.. Are full of imported plastic or electronic waste products and others which contain harmful toxins and chemicals since their laws are lax on health issues and they have become a dumping ground for illegal toxic wastes or E-wastes from other areas or countries.

Garbage/waste issues….
Http://www.wastelandmovie.com/


http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/5674706/disposable-communities-living-and-working-the-worlds-largest-trash-dumps

Biggest garbage dumps in the world…
Http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/08/0805_biggest_garbage_dumps/1.htm

Plasma gasification process to convert wastes into energy…including toxic wastes

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/science/plasma-gasification-raises-hopes-of-clean-energy-from-garbage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/ff_trashblaster/

The Expert answers:

Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down soft drink bottles and then casting them as plastic chairs and tables. Typically a plastic is not recycled into the same type of plastic, and products made from recycled plastics are often not recyclable.

When compared to other materials like glass and metal materials, plastic polymers require greater processing to be recycled.[citation needed] Plastics have a low entropy of mixing, which is due to the high molecular weight of their large polymer chains. A macromolecule interacts with its environment along its entire length, so its enthalpy of mixing is large compared to that of an organic molecule with a similar structure. Heating alone is not enough to dissolve such a large molecule; because of this, plastics must often be of nearly identical composition in order to mix efficiently.
When different types of plastics are melted together they tend to phase-separate, like oil and water, and set in these layers. The phase boundaries cause structural weakness in the resulting material, meaning that polymer blends are only useful in limited applications.
Another barrier to recycling is the widespread use of dyes, fillers, and other additives in plastics. The polymer is generally too viscous to economically remove fillers, and would be damaged by many of the processes that could cheaply remove the added dyes. Additives are less widely used in beverage containers and plastic bags, allowing them to be recycled more frequently.
The use of biodegradable plastics is increasing. If some of these get mixed in the other plastics for recycling, the reclaimed plastic is not recyclable because the variance in properties and melt temperatures.

The Expert answers:

Motor oil and oil filter recycle program

Used automobile oil and oil filters can be recycled if dropped off at bulk tanks available at the Waterloo landfill (Gate 2 – Household Hazardous Waste Depot), the Cambridge waste managment site and at all of the rural transfer stations.

Motor oil:

A maximum of 25 litres of used motor oil per household per month is accepted. Bulk tanks are available for residents to empty their oil into. Please, no five gallon pails. Not accepted in the tanks: anti-freeze, transmission fluid or brake fluid. These items should be dropped off at the household hazardous waste depot.

Oil Filters: a maximum of five used oil filters per household per month can be accepted.

This is a residential program only. Businesses are NOT permitted to use this program.

The Expert answers:

By recycling, you are using old products e.g. Paper, to make new paper, and hence eliminating the need to cut down new natural resource i.e. Tree to make the paper…recycling plastic therefore means you are eliminating the need to extract oil from the earth.

The situation is similar with saving energy…a lot of electricity is generated from burning non-renewable resources e.g. Coal…by using less energy, we need to produce less electricity, so less coal is extracted from the earth.

Not sure if you are in the uk or not, have a look at the following site – www.communityecochallenge.com (uk based info and stats) it is for a project i used to work on, which helped people reduce their ecological footprint…it has info on recycling and how it helps the environment, as well as energy saving and the environment.

Hope this helps. It is maybe too simple an explanation for what you require, but i teach this stuff to community groups and children, and usually the straightforward approach is best!

The Expert answers:

Preventing waste accumulation means waste reduction and finding alternate methods of waste recycling and disposition,

You cannot do do a total prevention, otherwise it would not be called waste anymore. Some examples are:

Recycling used oil – waste product from cars and trucks oil changes etc.
Recycling wood chips from wood saw mills,
Recycling sugar cane waste from sugar mills
Recycling agricultural crop waste into animal feed or composting for fertilizers
Recycling building materials or broken asphalt etc. Into new roadbeds or earth filling materials for new buildings or grounds etc.
Recycling waste water from cities or villages after proper treatment and filtration to irrigation canals,

The Expert answers:

Glass & metal food & beverage containers
Newspaper
White office paper
Corrugated cardboard
Scrap metal
Waste oil
Lead acid storage batteries
Ni-Cd rechargeable batteries
Leaves (must be composted)

The Expert answers:

I think people have to retrain their minds to make the extra effort it takes to dispose of properly. I don’t think one can quickly do this at home-should be taken to an autoparts store that recycles.

The Expert answers:

Used oil is a great source of fuel and can be recycled. Take it to a local business that burns that used oil onsite as fuel for a furnace or boiler.

One of the fascinating things about used oil is that it has the same amount of energy content as it did before it was used, which makes it a great—and cheap!—fuel. Businesses that generate this oil can safely recycle it onsite in the most environmentally friendly manner available with a waste oil furnace or boiler. These complete heating systems provide safe fuel management, EPA-approved used oil disposal and free heat. Emissions are incredibly low and the byproduct is a fine ash that can be thrown away. As if eliminating a heating bill weren’t enough.

For more than 25 years, waste oil heating systems have provided onsite recycling of used oil for companies such as garages, lube shops, car dealerships and heavy equipment dealers. Any other method of disposal requires transportation and processing with mean unnecessary risk to these businesses producing the used oil onsite, exposing them to what could be very high costs if that used oil is spilled or otherwise improperly disposed of in transit. Burning waste oil as fuel for heat, on the other hand, allows these businesses to turn this liability into an asset and is a simple, yet far-reaching, way to “go green.” And, recycling onsite is the cleanest, most efficient manner of disposal for our environment.

Find out more at www.energylogic.com

The Expert answers:

Recycling should not be an after thought, it should come to us as naturally as the rising of the sun or the brilliance of an Autumn day. Recycling reduces the stress on our planet. Paper recycling saves our forests and helps reduce the pollution released into the air by our factories. Recycling of our plastics and other solid wastes saves our land and water sources. We can no longer afford to keep dumping materials into our dumps knowing that nature cannot possibly break them down. Chemicals leeching from these solids pollute our soils and water supply leading to a backlash of human health problems. We need to recycle our waste oils, converting them into reusable fuels as Mother Nature does not have an inexhaustible supply to continue feeding our habit.