The advantages of waste recycling

Orlando Branco

Introduction
Recycling is the collection, separation, cleanup and processing of waste material to produce a marketable material or product; Recycling can take place within the manufacturing process, eg. Paper industry; Recycling can take place at the post-consumer stage; Recycling employs about one million people worldwide and is responsible for capital investment totalling around 7 billion.
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 To demonstrate the types of waste recycling systems; To explain the types of waste recycling; To analyse and compare recycled and virgin material life cycles; To compare energy consumption and emissions of recycled paper with virgin paper production; To compare energy emissions savings of recycling with virgin production; To examine three successful case studies.
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Aims

Types of recycling systems

Bring system involves the segregation of recyclable materials from household waste by the public and delivery to a collection site, eg. Bottle and paper banks; Collect system involves house-to-house kerbside collection of recyclable materials; Centralised materials recycling facility The household waste is brought to a central plant for reclamation and recycling.
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Recycling systems
Bring system has the advantage of being low in capital costs, easily accessible and can provide an easy method of segregating clean readily marketable materials; Collect system provides convenience for the householder and as a result higher recovery rates of recyclable materials. For example, glass collection rates can be up to 71% and paper 67%;
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Recycling systems
Centralised materials recycling facilities segregate material streams and process between three and eight components of particular materials which may be separated or mixed; Such facilities handle clean waste and consequently contamination levels are low and recovery rates are high. For example, general commercial office waste may contain levels of paper over 80% by weight.
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Types of waste recycling

Paper
Recycling paper can reduce water use by almost 60%; Recycling can reduce energy consumption by 40%; Recycling can decrease air pollution by 74% and water pollution by 35%; For countries without significant domestic sources of pulpwood, the main advantage of recycling paper is to reduce the need for imported pulp. For example, recycled material currently provides a high proportion of fibre used to make paper and board in Netherlands 69%, Denmark 66%, Spain 55% and UK 53%.
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Types of waste recycling

Glass
Glass recycling reduces the requirement for raw materials (each tonne of cullet saves 1.2 tonnes of raw materials such as sand, soda ash and limestone); Cullet (waste glass) is cheaper than the equivalent amount of raw materials and also saves energy in glass manufacture since recycled glass melts at a lower temperature than the raw material;
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Types of waste recycling

Glass
Increasing the amount of cullet can result in a 15% saving in energy. When using raw materials, 15% of the weight of input is lost as waste gases out, while using cullet, there are no gases. Water used in this process is reduced by up to 50%; Up to 80% of glass cullet can be accepted into the glass making and there is no limit to the number of times that glass can be recycled.
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Types of waste recycling

Plastics
Pos-industrial plastic waste is well established and economically viable, since such material is normally single polymer and is clean, therefore the reprocessing is a straightforward operation; Recycled plastics can be used either to replace virgin polymers or can be reprocessed as mixed plastics to produce wood substitute materials; Recycled plastics can be used in cases which aesthetics are unimportant. For example, pipes or ducting can be made from polyethylene or PVC and are likely to be buried or hidden.
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Types of waste recycling Metals

Making iron and steel from suitable scrap metal saves about 75% of energy, enormous amounts of left over mine spoil and huge quantities of water used to make the steel; Recycling one tonne of steel saves 900 kg of raw material;
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 Aluminium can be recycled almost 100%. This saves more than 90% of energy costs. It also saves tropical rainforests areas where most of this resource comes from. The forest is cleared and a highly red mud is left behind after mining bauxite (the ore which aluminium is made); Aluminium can be continuously recycled since there is no loss of quality during the recycling or re-melting process; The recycling rates for aluminium are high. For example, drink cans 41%, building and construction 85%, and automotive industry 95%.
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Types of waste recycling Metals

Types of waste recycling

Textiles
Textiles that cannot be reused can be recycled. Some fibres wool, cotton and acrylic can be respun to make new textiles for coats and blankets; Other textiles are recycled into products like roofing felt, wiping cloths and stuffing for upholstery; The use of recycled fibres can save energy in the region of 50% compared with the use of virgin fibre.
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Types of waste recycling Tyres

Scrap tyres are used by the crumbing sector. For example, after removal of the steel wire the remaining material is granulated and then used in brake linings, car bumpers, carpet backing and underlay, sports and playground surfaces; The retreading of tyres is another way of recycling. One of the largest users of remoulded tyres is the aircraft industry that remounds aircraft tyres two or three times; Approximately 24% of all scrap tyres are now remoulded.
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Recycled x virgin material Life cycle

Figure 1 Life-cycle assesment for recycled and virgin materials (Williams, 2005)

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Recycled x virgin material

Energy consumption and emissions

Table 1 Recycled and virgin paper Energy consumption and emissions (Williams, 2005)

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Recycled x virgin material

Energy and emissions savings

Table 2 Energy and emissions of recycling and virgin production (Williams, 2005)

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Case Study 1 - Denmark

Aarhus in Denmark has a population of 282,000 people; The overall recycling rates achieves 64%; Garden waste recycling rates: ~100%; Industrial and commercial waste recycling rates: 56%; Construction and demolition waste recycling rates: 93%; Collection system: based on a network of street containers (1container x 430 people); Civic amenity sites where householders can dispose of waste.
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Case Study 2 - Germany

Wiesbaden in Germany has a population of 267,000 people; Of the 91,000 tonnes of waste produced each year, 43,500 tonnes are recycled; Waste recycling rates: 48%; Recycling scheme: based on collection, a network of containers at recycling points and recycling centres.
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Case Study 3 - UK
Project Integra in the county of Hampshire; Total population: 1.6 million; Around 850,000 tonnes per year of waste generated; Recycling rate: 24%; Recycling scheme: Kerbside collection (90% coverage of households), the remaining is recycled through waste recycling centres.
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Conclusions
Commercial recycling schemes save vast amounts of waste from industrial enterprises; Reduce the amount of land required for landfilling thereby reducing the risk of pollution; Save energy in comparison with production from virgin raw materials. Saving energy helps to reduce all the problems associated with energy generation: acid rain, smog, radioactive pollution from nuclear accidents, flooding of valleys for huge hydro-electric power schemes; Minimise pollution and reduce environmental damage caused by extraction (e.g. mining) and supply of raw materials;
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Conclusions
Conserve resources and raw materials. This has two benefits in that many raw material reserves are finite and the extraction of such resources can be destructive to the environment; Potential energy savings from using scrap materials instead of virgin ones: Glass 22%, paper 70%, aluminium 96%, steel 74% and polyethylene 97%; Glass, plastic and metals can be melted and reshaped. Paper can be pulped and made into new paper. Organic waste can be composted. Textiles can be unwoven and into new cloth.
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References
Finch, S., 1992. Dont through it all away! Friends of the Earths guide to waste reduction and recycling. London : Earth Trust. Parker, S., 1997. Waste, recycling and re-use. Suffolk : Wayland. Reidy, R., 1996. Solid waste recycling Municipal solid waste recycling in western Europe to 1996. Oxford : Elsevier. Smosarski, G., 1995. Material recycling Turning waste into valuable raw materials Financial Times management reports. London : Pearson. Waite, R., 1995. Household waste recycling. London : Earthscan. Williams, P.T., 2005. Waste treatment and disposal. 2nd ed. Chichester : Wiley.
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