Recycling: It's Worth the Trouble
Recycling: It's Worth the Trouble You see recycling everywhere. But does it work? The basic principle of recycling is sound enough: “If we all recycle,” they say, “we’ll take pressure off the planet, and we’ll save our money, our health and our environment.” But when you get down to the specifics, it’s not always clear if we’re making the savings or not. In fact we even hear that it may all be a waste of time. So what’s the truth? Is recycling worth it? What does it have going for it? Today I’d like to look at three of the areas where we are all likely to have run into the recycling issue. And as we look at each of those areas, I want to answer these questions: What are the problems being tackled through recycling? And secondly: how well is recycling managing to solve those problems? So let’s begin with the recycling that goes on in public places Schools, colleges, offices all have recycling programs. You see them everywhere: the aluminum can recycling boxes, the bottle bins, the paper recycling carts. We all do our part, dropping our waste paper and bottles and cans into the boxes and the bins. But where do all those cans and papers go, and does recycling work? Unfortunately, the economics of recycling
are not as simple or as predictable as we might like them to be. So you will often find that on paper, programs are lucky if they break even on their recycling operations. But there’s a missing part to the total bill. Many of the benefits of recycling don’t get measured in dollar terms. Many of them are hidden. So when you hear people tell you that recycling costs money, in part, they’re right. You have collection, transportation and processing costs. You have the capital investments such as equipment and container costs and labor fees. And you may have processing ...
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are not as simple or as predictable as we might like them to be. So you will often find that on paper, programs are lucky if they break even on their recycling operations. But there’s a missing part to the total bill. Many of the benefits of recycling don’t get measured in dollar terms. Many of them are hidden. So when you hear people tell you that recycling costs money, in part, they’re right. You have collection, transportation and processing costs. You have the capital investments such as equipment and container costs and labor fees. And you may have processing costs. However, whether or not the total cost adds up to a profit, there is always a profit if you factor in these issues: Firstly, there are the lower manufacturing costs for products made from recycled rather than virgin materials. For example, when you manufacture products from recycled materials, you create less air and water pollution, and you generally use less energy. Then there are the savings you get from avoiding landfill or incineration fees. Then there’s the value you get from conserving our natural resources. When you use recycling materials instead of virgin materials, you reduce the need to cut down trees, drill for oil and mine for minerals. And finally, recycling also returns tons of materials to useful life as new products. Instead of being buried forever, plastic, glass, metal and papers are made into new products, sometimes over and over again. On top of that, recycling can mean business. Companies all over the United States and around the world depend on recycled materials for their products. Just take a look at the “Recyclers World” web site, and you’ll see what I mean. Trading in recycled material is big business. So when you do the sums, and I mean the overall sums, you’ll find that dropping your trash off at that bottle bin really does pay off. Another familiar subject to all of us, when we talk about recycling, is plastic. We keep hearing about how bad plastic is. Why is that? Well, the root of the problem is that the stuff just won’t rot. Plastic takes thousands of years to degrade. And that means that every bit of plastic that winds up in a landfill is going to be there for a long time. Now you might hear arguments that the problem isn’t as bad as it once was. And that’s true, as far as it goes. For example, you might hear that most packaging is 20 or 30 percent lighter than it was ten years ago, and that many plastics have gotten so thin, they're not worth a whole lot in terms of recycling. You might also hear that plastic only takes up small part of the landfalls these days. Well all of that is true as far as it goes. But the fact is: it still takes up room in landfills, and landfills are often expensive, and sometimes dangerous. In landfills excavated by the Garbage Project, which is an organization that analyzes tips all over this country, they found the volume of all plastics amounted to between 20 and 24 percent of all garbage, and that it compacted down to about 16 percent. Now, that might be less that it once was, but even so, 16% is still landfill space that causes problems. You might say to the argument that there's no space for landfills, “well, yes but we have space here” But: not all the world does, and if you want to export to those countries, you'd better have something recyclable for them. So why would you put plastic in a landfill, when you can recycle it and achieve all of the savings that come from using renewable materials in your manufacturing? Finally, let’s look at the aspect of recycling that we see most directly - recycling in our home. Can we really make a difference when we recycle, or are we just being good but misguided citizens when we out our trash in the recycling bin? Well, according to the EPA, these are the facts: Firstly, you can do the planet a favor by dropping your CO2 emissions. If you recycle all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal you’ll reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year. Secondly, you can reduce the energy we use in our manufacturing. Recycling an aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television set for three hours. Third, you can look after the planet’s lungs. Every Sunday, the United States wastes nearly 90% of the recyclable newspapers. This wastes about 500,000 trees. One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year. So by recycling your newspaper, you can help keep those trees breathing. And best of all, you can save money, because every time you recycle, you reduce the size of your trash bill. In so many ways around the home, recycling is worth the effort. So it's a fact: recycling creates greater economic value than "throwing it all away." In some cases recycling has proven to be the least-expensive waste management method for cites and towns. Every ton of newspapers recycled and every ton of aluminum saved from dumping creates jobs, expands manufacturing, and reduces operating costs for our businesses and households. There’s no doubt about it: It might not always appear to stack up on paper, but when you do the total sums and factor in all the intangibles, there’s no doubt: Recycling can do a lot to save us money, save our surroundings and make a positive difference to our lives.
