Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Mr. Right And Mr. Left
Mr. Right (Har) and Mr. Left (Stan) of the Wahey Boys are in disagreement, again. “I’m not recycling any more”. “I’m sick of it and it’s a government plot to create jobs for immigrants” Mr. Right says, then adds, “and besides that, it hurts the environment more than helps, and most of what is recycled goes to the landfill anyway.” “Look into it” he challenges Mr. Left.
Now, Mr. Left doesn’t like to take a stand on topics unless he has hard facts, so he takes Mr. Right’s advice and does some homework. The initial fact of the matter is that recycling of waste products is actually only a part of the environmental equation. When people and businesses learn to stop producing certain products that are difficult and expensive to recycle, then it will inevitably help the environment. That is the “REDUCE” part. But more specifically, what Mr. Right is talking about is the government “requiring” us to recycle and to take it further, setting rules, and checking up on us, to make sure we are indeed, properly recycling our waste. On that point, Mr. Left agrees. In the 1980’s when recycling first started, it was a difficult adjustment for many businesses and households to recycle, and educating everyone on the value of recycling back then was important. Nowadays however, people know what is required to recycle, and although some local governments that have curbside pick-up of trash, regulate how it is separated, most people have the capacity to recycle on their own. When people begin to reduce the amount of trash they generate and then manage to recycle what's left on their own, without government guidance, then the benefits to the environment and economy will be undeniable.
But, as usual, Mr. Right goes too far when he states that recycling is a total waste (“huh, huh, funny Mr. Left”). Mr. Right thinks the fumes from the trucks and machines necessary for sorting recyclables cause more harm to the environment than it saves. The specifics of it are complicated, but the bottom line is that it depends on the product or recycled material. Aluminum, for example, requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite (its mined component). All recycled products (glass, paper, plastic) use varying amounts of measurable energy in order to produce other products, but they all still require less energy in production, than if virgin materials were used to make the same products.
Actually, it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu. In other words, even if you doubled the emissions expended during the collection of recycled materials it wouldn’t come close to the cost of mining virgin materials such as bauxite for aluminum and sand for glass making and then manufacture products from those materials.
“What about plastic?” Mr. Right says. Yes, plastic does skew the argument a bit. Because there are so many different types of plastics, it is more complicated and expensive to recycle plastic products. Soft-drink bottles made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), for example, often end up as polyester fibers in clothing or carpets. It is possible to make new PET bottles from recycled stock, but the process is currently more expensive than making them from petroleum (the virgin material). Another example is polystyrene. It’s very hard to sort polystyrene from other plastics, so few cities even try. But new infrared sorting technologies could help make polystyrene recycling viable. So, plastics are a “work in progress”. As technology improves, the cost of recycling plastics, as a whole, will be reduced and recycled end product options will become more varied.
“Ya, but you’re not counting the cost of the fuel required to collect the recyclables and the labor involved with sorting them”, Mr. Right says. “Can’t disagree with you there”, Mr. Left replies. Is it more expensive to recycle that water bottle than to simply toss it in the trash? Of course it is, but the cost difference varies depending on where you live. Here in the Northeast, there aren’t any landfills, so even disposing of regular trash is expensive. The trash to energy plant debate is a separate issue. The bottom line on cost is that cities and towns still have to pay for curbside recycling. The catch is that more people need to do more recycling and then that recycled trash becomes more valuable to the recycling market. As recycling companies’ profits increase, then the cost to local government will be reduced. Weymouth recently switched from separating recyclables (dual stream) to the single stream method of putting all the recyclables in one trash bin. That method makes it easier on the consumer and puts the cost of separating on the trash collector. The thought is that this will provide consumers with the incentive to recycle more products. As this method becomes more popular amongst communities, the recycling rate has increased. In the Midwest, this method has paid off. Some communities are being paid for their recyclables rather than paying to have them taken away.
Sorry, Mr. Right, over-all, Mr. Left thinks you’re wrong again.
POSTED BY STAN at May 5, 2009
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