Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

1. Uranium control rods have so much unfissionable U-238 in them that by the time they are taken out of service, the U-238 has been transformed into both reactor grade and bomb grade plutonium which is not being recovered in the US over fears of nuclear proliferation, despite the obvious energy potential of that byproduct.

2. Fortunately the most deadly fission byproducts are the ones that decay the quickest and they need to be stored safely on the order of tens and hundreds of years.

NOTE: The way radioactivity and half-lives work, if they are radioactive for “millions of years” then they are not, by definition, that dangerous in typical quantities and concentrations.

The Expert answers:

Diapers can be recycled into fence posts or housing studs.

Rubber tires can be recycled into rubber mats, new ashpalt roads, or even rubber sidewalks.

Glass can be recycled into new glass containers or can be put into asphault roads.

Batteries can be recycled into new batteries.

Paper can be recycled into new paper, corrugated boxes, newspaper, paper towels, paper packaging, toilet paper, etc.

Wood can be recycled into paper, mulch or compost.

Foam can be chopped up and recycled into carpet padding.

Cloth can be recycled and recycled into carpet padding or other products.

Computer components can be recycled and turned into new computer parts.

Car parts can be recycled into new plastic or metal parts.

Metal can be melted down and recycled into new metal parts.

Pottery can be ground up and used as the grit portion of new pottery.

Concrete can be ground up and used for gravel, asphalt roads or foundations or to make new concrete.

Old asphalt can be ground up and used to help make new asphault.

Food wastes and yard wastes can be turned into compost.

The rest can normally be incinerated by electrical plants and turned into electical or heat energy.

There is very little that can’t be recycled or incinerated for energy and those would mainly comprise of hazardous chemicals such as paint.

The Expert answers:

Upon its removal from French reactors, used fuel is packed in containers and safely shipped via train and road to a facility in La Hague. There, the energy producing uranium and plutonium are removed and separated from the other waste and made into new fuel that can be used again. The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.

France meets all of its recycling needs with one facility. Indeed, domestic French reprocessing only takes about half of La Hague’s capacity. The other half is used to recycle other countries’ spent nuclear fuel.

Since beginning operations, France’s La Hague plant has safely processed over 23,000 tones of used fuel—enough to power France for fourteen years.

The Expert answers:

1. Purchase the best data-security tools on the market to reassure customers that files and personal information are completely wiped out. Research hard drive wiping tools that eliminate files containing account numbers, passwords and confidential files. Create a template for a certification of data security that acts as a receipt for your data-wiping services.
2. Obtain certification for e-waste recycling, hazardous waste handling and standard business operations from appropriate agencies. Contact your city’s Public Works Department to learn about disposal methods and zoning requirements that must be met before opening for business.
3. Map out a disassembly line in your recycling facility as the first step in the e-waste handling process. Use a conveyor belt to move PCUs, monitors and TVs from the unloading area to the CRT crusher. Your assembly line will be tasked with removing plastic covers, metal bodies and wood paneling to break down e-waste to its internal elements.
4. Purchase a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) crusher to handle glass and metal inside of computers and TVs. The CRT crusher implodes the tube, filters out broken glass and separates metals from glass into individual containers. Your business will need to find recyclers to take these materials to avoid keeping hazardous waste in your facility.
5. Apply higher fees for recycling e-waste that is oversized or shaped awkwardly. Write out a menu of e-waste products that you will accept from customers. Include a provision in your e-waste recycling pricing that says you reserve the right to charge more based on an onsite inspection.
6. Call local recyclers, computer refurbishers and other companies that may be interested in purchasing processed e-waste materials. Work out weekly and monthly deliveries to your contacts to earn some revenue while moving e-waste out of your facility. Target computer consultants and refurbishers who use PCU covers and cords to rebuild computers.
7. Sell USB cords, power cords, speakers and other accessories attached to e-waste that can be salvaged. Maintain a small space in your facility to handle orders from individuals and businesses in need of inexpensive supplies. Ask permission to resell these accessories from your customers without need for compensation.

The Expert answers:

There appear to be two answers to this one. The first is to change product manufacturing process and purchases of things that generate difficult to store and dispose of waste.

The second is to make it easier and cheaper for companies to get rid of some of their stored waste. It may not be easily or cheaply possible for all types of waste. But, I suspect that for some it is easier and cheaper than what we are led to believe. In the US it seems that we “give” business a number of legislated goodies, tax cuts, and the more. It seems, granted without much investigation, that a number of these goodies benefit individuals/departments within a company as much if not more so than the company as a whole entitiy. In the mean time, we expect the company to pay for their own….you name it… Rather than spend tax payer dollars on their problems. It would seem that spending a little governement money and tax dollars in enabling companies to do a better job of recycling, hazardous waste handling, and faciliating the byproduct of one compay’s processes into the input stream of another would cost us all less in the end. If nothing else, it costs us all a lot of money to clean up a mess; and that’s not talking about the ensuing enviornmental costs including the health and welfare of us humans.

In our area of the US there is very little opportunity for business to recycle. If they do, they must take it upon themselves to collect and transport the materials. All the while, local law requires that no solid waste be held on any property; inside or outside of a building. The generally accepted limit is for the duration of one week. But, it can be interpreted to be less than 24 hours and/or within acceptable containers and/or within acceptable and hidden confines. Since there is nothing in code about recycling bins for businesses, there is nothing in writing covering acceptable containers nor confines. All it takes is one complaint… Just enabling more recycling by commercial businesses would reduce the number of items that end up in the local, or transported to out of state, landfills. In the end, it would save us all money.

Larger businsess make for more waste in less space and a bigger target. They often have recycling programs that are encouraged by local municipalities and even the state. But, in doing so, they often sell some of their waste for at least some recouping of the dollars spent managing it. And, in other cases they do some recycling as a way to reduce their garbage rates.

I know of one community whose elected official said of commercial and industrial recycling – We can’t do that. We don’t have the equipment and facilities to handle that number of recyclables. Meanwhile, they are encouraging avid and manditory residential recycling to reduce the city’s shipping of garbage to an out of state landfill. Ok, I’m just an average bear but….the logic of this is not ringing too true to me.

The Expert answers:

It depends on the material being recycled.

Basically, you take out of the waste everything that is reusable. What’s left over is landfiled.

The Expert answers:

Waste recycling is a prominent indicator of environmental sustainability in the pursuit of sustainable development. Exploring the determinants of waste recycling is therefore of importance to policy makers. Current research in recycling has explored several important factors to assess household participation in recycling. The local community policy towards recycling is regarded as an important factor, as it can assist households in collecting recyclables as well as implementing innovative recycling programmes. In this paper we look again at the role of community in recycling by asking to what extent a region’s degree of social coherence, measured as social capital, would influence its recycling rate. Using Taiwan as a case study we applied the fixed effect model in panel data analysis to estimate the impact of social capital on the regional recycling rate. The estimation shows that the elasticity of social capital to regional recycling rate is about 0.38-0.43 at the 5% significance level. This provides evidence that a region’s social relations are highly correlated with its recycling performance; a region’s degree of social capital appears to increase its recycling rate. This finding implies that a successful recycling programme requires interactions between society and the environment. Enhancing a region’s degree of social capital can also be incorporated as a part of that region’s recycling programme. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

More…http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9H-48V7WJ7-1&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1254675248&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f5b3b04da9447265b70294f760e0d2ab

The Expert answers:

Today, this country recycles 28 percent of its waste, a rate that has almost doubled during the past 15 years. While recycling has grown in general, recycling of specific materials has grown even more drastically: 42 percent of all paper, 40 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 55 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 57 percent of all steel packaging, and 52 percent of all major appliances are now recycled. Twenty years ago, only one curbside recycling program existed in the United States, which collected several materials at the curb.

The Expert answers:

Recycling is a process to change waste materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from land filling) by reducing the need for “conventional” waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to plastic production. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” waste hierarchy. I think during this process the non recyclable materials will go to incinerator