Are landfills the best solution for rubbish

[wolram]

Nyet!
I've done many an experiment, but I will not do that.
My friends' house burned down a couple of weeks ago, and upon arriving at my convenience store about an hour ago, something burst into a 4 firetruck fire, less than a mile from my house.
It's a sign!

ps. Champagne glassware that Om was told to throw away after the fire, but instead, meticulously cleaned, and yesterday broke in the dishwasher, goes in the garbage. It is not municipally recyclable.

Our broken glass on non recyclable glass goes to hardcore.

 

[OmCheeto]

Our broken glass on non recyclable glass goes to hardcore.

I am not googling that...

 

[edward]

Garbage (trash) companies here pick up recyclables once a week as they do in many places I assume. The one material that they will not take is glass of any kind. As a kid I made a fortune returning glass soft drink bottles to the store. The pay was 2 cents for small bottles and 5 cents, a whole nickel, for the large ones. Now, at least in Tucson AZ, they go to the landfill.

There is some hope. There are companies making countertops out of recycled glass, cement, and a few other ingredients.

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Recycled_Glass_Countertops

 

[OmCheeto]

Garbage (trash) companies here pick up recyclables once a week as they do in many places I assume. The one material that they will not take is glass of any kind. As a kid I made a fortune returning glass soft drink bottles to the store. The pay was 2 cents for small bottles and 5 cents, a whole nickel, for the large ones. Now, at least in Tucson AZ, they go to the landfill.

There is some hope. There are companies making countertops out of recycled glass, cement, and a few other ingredients.

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Recycled_Glass_Countertops

That's quite interesting about the bottles. Knowing approximately how old you are, that does sounds like a fortune!
A very successful business owner friend of mine started out almost the same way.
He would collect dead old lead acid batteries, and via some kind of voo-doo scientific magic, restore them, and re-sell them.
I'm guessing he's about 75 by now, and from my recollection, he was 15 at the time he started. So he was recycling, profitably, before I was born.

So, I guess the problem has 4 "-ate" avenues of solution:

1. Innovate
2. Legislate
3. Litigate
4. Ignore it until it's too late​

I'm going to throw out #4, as I'm a believer in the "7th Generation" philosophy, and #4 leads to #3; "let the problem happen, and then sue them". Great idea, if you can afford a lawyer. And pray that the statute of limitations hasn't run out when you find out about it.

I guess my stance is a combination of #1 & #2, as neither one is really an ideal solution.

 

[Czcibor]

Due to claims made in the snopes thread, that it takes more energy to convert plastic to oil than you can get from the oil produced, the Agilyx claims are suspect in my mind. Regardless, using solar or wind to convert it, would still take care of the landfill problem and produce stored energy in the form of the oil produced.

Maybe it is just simpler, cheaper and comparably ecological to just leave it in landfill?

we have not found a way to recycle this yet, bubble wrap is a pain in the ass, people should not use this or Styrofoam for packaging

Really? I recycle both of it from time to time, when I have to send someone a package and I am unwilling to spend any money on protection. ;)

 

[OmCheeto]

Maybe it is just simpler, cheaper and comparably ecological to just leave it in landfill?
...

Could be.

I spent about an hour yesterday trying to figure out what "plastic" was.
I just spent another 3 hours today, doing the same.

I don't really know much more than I did yesterday: Melting points, the difference between a monomer and a polymer, why the boiling points are irrelevant, formulas, names, ranks by production.

Too much for my brain to process.

One neat site I found, listed a whole bunch of fascinating statistics:

http://www.plasticsindustry.org/economicstats [plasticsindustry.org]

Plastics play an indispensable role in a wide variety of markets, ranging from packaging and building/construction to transportation, consumer and institutional products, furniture and furnishings, electronics and more.

A Few Facts on the Plastics Industry

The plastics industry is the third largest manufacturing industry in the United States
...

I did not know that.

hmmm...

 

[rootone]

Plastics industry:
Is that just manufacturing of plastics as such, or does it also include manufacturing of items using plastics? - a vast range.
Probably the latter is a bigger industry in cash value terms.

 

[mheslep]

I suspect the low price of oil and natural gas and therefore the low price of ethylene is pushing down the value of recycled plastics, especially in developing world countries where oil and gas imports were very expensive just a few years ago (e.g. China ).

 

[edward]

What happens to rubbish in the landfills?? Sometimes not much. I remembered an article in the local newspaper about a group in Tucson from back in the late eighties. They dug up, among other things a copy of the Tucson newspaper that was dated 1950 something. The newspaper was in good condition. I couldn't find that article, but the article below from 1992 was most likely that same group.

After 20 years of sorting through garbage cans and landfills, the archaeologist William L. Rathje has accumulated precious memories. There are the 40-year-old hot dogs, perfectly preserved beneath dozens of strata of waste, and the head of lettuce still in pristine condition after 25 years. But the hands-down winner, the one that still makes him shake his head in disbelief, is an order of guacamole he recently unearthed. Almost as good as new, it sat next to a newspaper apparently thrown out the same day. The date was 1967.[QUOTE/]

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/13/nyregion/seeking-the-truth-in-refuse.html?pagewanted=all

 

[zoobyshoe]

What happens to rubbish in the landfills?? Sometimes not much. I remembered an article in the local newspaper about a group in Tucson from back in the late eighties. They dug up, among other things a copy of the Tucson newspaper that was dated 1950 something. The newspaper was in good condition. I couldn't find that article, but the article below from 1992 was most likely that same group.

That's mind-blowing, Edward.

The article continues:

The garbage dumped in landfills tends not to biodegrade. It becomes mummified.

That's not all. "Rubbish!" pulls the rug from under a number of popular misconceptions about what experts call the "solid-waste stream." It reports that disposable diapers, plastic and foam account, by volume, for perhaps 3 percent of the nation's landfill waste. "If you could wave a magic wand and make all the plastic and the disposable diapers disappear overnight, landfill operators wouldn't even notice," said Mr. Rathje, who has sorted through parts of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island and was interviewed recently in Manhattan with Mr. Murphy. Not a Crisis, but a Task

Paper, on the other hand, counts for more than 40 percent of landfill volume, and like the guacamole, it stubbornly resists biodegradation.

So, plastic is not the main offender by any means, it is actually paper.

The fact all this stuff is "mummified" means it could eventually be mined, for whatever that's worth.

 

[OmCheeto]

That's mind-blowing, Edward.

That was interesting.

So, plastic is not the main offender by any means, it is actually paper.

The fact all this stuff is "mummified" means it could eventually be mined, for whatever that's worth.

You might want to double check the date on that article. It's 23 years old.
Plastic production has almost tripled since then [ref: plasticfreetuesday.com, Aug 2014]
In spite of their name implying that they might be a group of hippie do-gooders, they do seem to use some good references.
Check out Pretty Photo #6.
On the right hand graphic, they have a red bar marking 9 countries which purportedly: "Countries with landfill ban [on plastic]".
Now there's a radical solution.
From the orange bars on the graph, it appears that they simply burn most of their garbage for energy.

Another article about how Sweden is dealing with it

Förbränning for All!
Slate, July 2014
...
The country is so efficient and smart that, as one Swedish person casually acknowledged to me, “We only put 1 percent of our garbage in landfills.”

That is true.
...
Waste-to-energy, or WTE, is responsible for about 8.5 percent of the country’s electricity.
...

That seems pretty significant.

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]
This is probably why my garbage production is so small. I have an in-house incinerator. Some people call them wood stoves.

[edit] From the same paper; "As a percentage of MSW generation, plastics were less than one percent in 1960, increasing to 12.7 percent in 2011." [page 50]
So you are still correct, in that paper is a bigger problem, volume-wise.​

Another interesting article is by The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC):
PlasticsEurope's interview about "Zero Plastics to Landfill by 2020: A clear target"

It appears to be that the plastic industry itself that is doing something about it.
Probably a good thing, as if you let a problem go on too long, people start banning the problem.
And that would probably be bad for business, in the end.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

It's better than just throwing it wherever, concentrating our garbage in one location does solve some problems. The issue is how we chose those locations. Free market is the worst way to do that, they'll just pick whatever's cheapest, and that's usually just dumping it into a river or the ocean. Intelligent, altruistic people deciding where the garbage would have the minimal impact on the rest of the biosphere is the best. How we come up with those intelligent people and how we get everyone to listen to them, we haven't figured that out yet, government is full of smart people, the problem is that we tied our money up in our government so much, it tends to attract more sociopaths than not.

Our technology is also helping with the situation of where a paper from the 50s is still readable. Modern landfills are anything than just piles of garbage, they are high tech. They're constantly turned over, they are covered in bacteria, we filter out recyclable materials, and we capture the leftover methane of everything rotting. Some countries are starting to get really really good at this.

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Unregulated free markets are a poor solution to problems like this. Costs tend to be handed to third parties (like our grandchildren). But a well regulated free market should solve the problem.

Instead of everyone recycling, make manufacturers pay a consumption tax on packaging (as well as products of course) to offset the cost of large scale robotic recycling plants. These would provide jobs for robot wranglers who help robots sort rubbish for recycling. Pay these a bonus per ton based on the consumption tax. This would provide useful, economic stimulus while passing on the true cost of use to consumers.

The incremental time cost for our current recycling is expensive, and even so it costs almost twice the landfill cost. Time taken from other activities costs the economy even when it doesn't show up in any budgets.

Free markets work when properly regulated. The regulations just need to be made to be market neutral.

(A free market is one where participants are free to enter or leave the market, not simply unregulated chaos.)

Or just bury it until it becomes valuable enough for our grandchildren to dig it up like rats scurrying over old garbage heaps. [Perhaps there's a value judgement in there somewhere? ]

 

[zoobyshoe]

You might want to double check the date on that article. It's 23 years old.
Plastic production has almost tripled since then [ref: plasticfreetuesday.com, Aug 2014]

The next question would be: how has paper production changed since that article? Did it also triple? Stay the same? Drop? Need to know that.

In spite of their name implying that they might be a group of hippie do-gooders, they do seem to use some good references.
Check out Pretty Photo #6.
On the right hand graphic, they have a red bar marking 9 countries which purportedly: "Countries with landfill ban [on plastic]".
Now there's a radical solution.
From the orange bars on the graph, it appears that they simply burn most of their garbage for energy.

Another article about how Sweden is dealing with itThat seems pretty significant.

Burning it to generate electricity is a 'not bad' (meh) solution, particularly if it replaces coal. I wonder, though, if burning garbage in the US could amount to that very good 8.5%. I also wonder how the emissions compare, coal vs garbage.

[Ruminating a little off topic:] Coal mining, the way it's now done in the US east, is an abominable polluter. That is: the mining process, itself, destroys the land and water in it's wake. (It ["it" being the mining process called "mountain top removal"] also, incidentally, cut mining jobs from 12 to 1.) So, if we look at the plastics industry as a sort of indirect fuel industry, we have to look into how much pollution the creation of plastics produces in the first place, just as coal has to be considered in light of how much pollution it causes just to get the coal. Google tells me most plastics are derived from fossil oil, so it's at least some percentage of the pollution created by the oil industry. However, this site says:

Today, most plastics are produced from petrochemicals which are widely available and tend to be cheaper than other raw materials. However, the global supply of oil is exhaustible, so researchers are investigating other sources of raw materials, such as coal gasification.

http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/qlink.queensu.ca/~6jrt/chem210/Page4.html
So, there's the looming danger of plastics becoming part of the coal problem. (Indeed, if they're going to be gasifying coal to make plastic, we might as well gasify the plastic we have accumulated to make more plastic.) Paper production also causes a lot of pollution, so, looking at garbage as fuel, we have to take into account how much damage was done in the initial creation of what becomes garbage/fuel. Recycled paper pollutes worse than paper directly from the tree, due to the added ink chemicals. [/end rumination]

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]

So, I guess the information needed is how much landfills have accelerated. Even though paper is now only about 28%, if landfills are booming (I'm assuming a larger population is creating more garbage), then the amount of paper put in them per annum might have increased by billions of tons. (On the other hand, that might not be the case since newspapers and letter writing, and paper records are slowly dying. More dead than not, actually.)

 

[OmCheeto]

The next question would be: how has paper production changed since that article? Did it also triple? Stay the same? Drop? Need to know that.

This is getting a bit confusing.
Actual global production of paper and plastic appear to have increased at vastly different rates.

              mtonne/yr
year    plastic      paper
1960     10[ref 3]   100[ref 1]       
2011    280[ref 3]   363[ref 2]

note: 1 ton = .9 tonne

[ref 1] thepaperlifecycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Global-paper-and-paperboard-production_FAO_SOWF-2009.jpg
[ref 2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_and_paper_industry#List_of_main_countries_by_production_quantity
[ref 3] plasticfreetuesday.com/2014/08/05/3-reasons-to-have-a-plastic-free-tuesday-every-week/The production I quoted is earlier was "waste production".

Anyways, paper (curbside) production also tripled, kind of.
It had tripled from 1960 rates, with a peak around 2000, but has declined since then. (mtons/yr)
from the http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf on page 38

year  generated   recycled
1960  30           5
2000  88          38
2011  70          46

It's a bit more complicated than this, as I'm discovering all of this is very complicated.
For instance, when industry recycles paper, the leftover sludge(5-35% of the original paper) is no longer considered "Municipal Solid Waste"(MSW), but are classified as "Industrial Process Waste", so it is not included in the numbers. (page 39)
Ugh!

Burning it to generate electricity is a 'not bad' (meh) solution, particularly if it replaces coal. I wonder, though, if burning garbage in the US could amount to that very good 8.5%. I also wonder how the emissions compare, coal vs garbage.

I'm currently looking into this:

Where's the worst air pollution in Europe and how much does it cost us? [theguardian.com, 2011.11.24]
Spreadsheet data saved to PF hw, under: European Polluters
See Attero BV in Moerdijk, Netherlands

Our waste to energy plants, Attero, Moerdijk [attero.nl]​

I'm hoping I can extrapolate from the CO2 production, the energy outputs of a few examples from "The Guardian" data, comparing the different types of plants.

Facility                         Town        Country      CO2    Nox    Sox    Cost(Damage)
PPC S.A. Ses Kerateas-Layrioy    Keratea     Greece       2700   2.27   4.25   119
Attero BV                        Moerdijk    Netherlands  3050   .442   N.R.   110

This may take some time, as the data is scattered in different places.
I also don't know what "N.R." stands for: "Not Recorded"?, "No Relevant Level"?, etc.

[Ruminating a little off topic:] Coal mining, the way it's now done in the US east, is an abominable polluter. That is: the mining process, itself, destroys the land and water in it's wake. (It ["it" being the mining process called "mountain top removal"] also, incidentally, cut mining jobs from 12 to 1.) So, if we look at the plastics industry as a sort of indirect fuel industry, we have to look into how much pollution the creation of plastics produces in the first place, just as coal has to be considered in light of how much pollution it causes just to get the coal. Google tells me most plastics are derived from fossil oil, so it's at least some percentage of the pollution created by the oil industry. However, this site says:

http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/qlink.queensu.ca/~6jrt/chem210/Page4.html
So, there's the looming danger of plastics becoming part of the coal problem. (Indeed, if they're going to be gasifying coal to make plastic, we might as well gasify the plastic we have accumulated to make more plastic.) Paper production also causes a lot of pollution, so, looking at garbage as fuel, we have to take into account how much damage was done in the initial creation of what becomes garbage/fuel. Recycled paper pollutes worse than paper directly from the tree, due to the added ink chemicals. [/end rumination]

Quite relevant rumination, IMHO.

So, I guess the information needed is how much landfills have accelerated. Even though paper is now only about 28%, if landfills are booming (I'm assuming a larger population is creating more garbage), then the amount of paper put in them per annum might have increased by billions of tons. (On the other hand, that might not be the case since newspapers and letter writing, and paper records are slowly dying. More dead than not, actually.)

I must apologize for my not having a PhD in garbology, but I've mis-represented the numbers. (As I said above, this is all very complicated.)

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]
This is probably why my garbage production is so small. I have an in-house incinerator. Some people call them wood stoves.
[edit] From the same paper; "As a percentage of MSW generation, plastics were less than one percent in 1960, increasing to 12.7 percent in 2011." [page 50]
So you are still correct, in that paper is a bigger problem, volume-wise.

WRONG!
Those are curbside numbers, and NOT what is going to landfills.

Rather than make a fool of myself again, have a look at this graph:

page 147, epa again​

It looks as though 140 mtons has been steadily going to the landfills since about 1980. Recycling and combustion appear to have kept it that way.

More later.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's a bit more complicated than this, as I'm discovering all of this is very complicated.

This is the normal finding whenever a person starts to research anything. Turns out it's an hellacious job just to collect and sort statistics. Then those statistics start to shift under your feet as they're challenged by other statistics and information from different sources. The whole thing turns out to be vastly more complicated than you ever expected. This particular arena is probably worse than most.

Regardless, I'm impressed with your research talents. You're quite the ferret. It is interesting to see so many "thermal power stations" listed as big polluters in Europe, and the cleanliness claims of the Moerdiik garbage plant are intriguing. The last section of your post with the info on how landfills have leveled off due to recycling and combustion, etc. was also pretty informative.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

 

[wolram]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

I think this piece just about kills the discussion, darn you Zooby for finding it

 

[OmCheeto]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

I mentioned that page in post #3.
It was depressing. Mostly because I disagreed with nearly everything the author said.

This was interesting, so I looked it up.
The very first site listed 10 things that were bad about recycling.
Unfortunately for the author, his reference to "lead" in paint, being recycled into new products struck me as odd, as I thought "lead" in paint had been banned.
It was banned, 37 years ago.
So right off, I knew he'd be grasping for straws.
I wasn't disappointed.
My take-away lesson from his list, which is more of a question really; "If it's so horrible to recycle things because of all the horrible toxic things in them, why are we putting horrible toxic things in the things we buy in the first place? Aren't we just going to send these horrible toxic things to the landfill otherwise?"

That article should be recycled. What a waste of electrons.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I mentioned that page in post #3.
It was depressing. Mostly because I disagreed with nearly everything the author said.

Sorry, I never clicked on your link due to your condemnation of it and accidentally discovered it in a separate search. But:

Unfortunately for the author, his reference to "lead" in paint, being recycled into new products struck me as odd, as I thought "lead" in paint had been banned.
It was banned, 37 years ago.
So right off, I knew he'd be grasping for straws.

Regardless of where the lead contamination comes from, it appears to be a real problem:

Even if a processing plant is careful to only recycle products that consist entirely of aluminum, there is still the potential for contamination. According to Dulley, some of the most common culprits are iron, tin and lead. The problem with having even slight amounts of impurities in the aluminum is that these impurities can vary the aluminum's properties. In some instances, they can weaken the aluminum. This potential for contamination also makes it hard for plants to develop long-term contracts with clients, such as municipalities, that may be wary of the low-value material.

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_6972061_problems-recycling-aluminum.html

And:

About half of all the aluminum used in the United States is being recycled these days, which is great news – but there’s a catch. Although a lot of energy is saved in the recycling process — since it avoids the need to make new aluminum from raw ore — it turns out that the recycling process, when repeated, creates serious impurities in the end product. Researchers at MIT found that unless specific processes are introduced into the aluminum recycling market now, those impurities will continue to add up, resulting in a glut of impure recycled aluminum which has extremely limited uses.

The author of 10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment does indeed make it sound like people may be getting lead poisoning from soda cans, which is highly doubtful, but the impurities in recycled aluminum, including lead, make it less and less usable.

Additionally, recycling aluminum, just like recycling paper, produces an unusable and toxic "dross" that has to be dealt with some how:

Recycling aluminum requires only five percent of the energy required to manufacture new aluminum from bauxite. However, recycling aluminum produces many toxic chemicals that are released into the air. Furthermore, recycling aluminum produces a waste product called "dross" that is highly toxic and has to be buried in landfills. This dross must be tightly sealed in containers so that it doesn’t leak out and enter groundwater.

In order to be recycled, aluminum must be melted to separate the pure metal from the impurities. This process produces a waste product that is known as salt cake. For every tonne of aluminum that is melted, 200 to 500 kilograms of salt cake are produced. This “cake” is not something that you would want to eat -- it contains aluminium oxides, metallic aluminum, carbides, nitrides, sulphides and phosphides. Salt cake is highly toxic to living organisms.

http://education.seattlepi.com/environmental-problems-associated-recycling-aluminum-5736.html

So, as you pointed out earlier, the whole thing is much more complicated than people generally realize.

 

[edward]

It is definitely more complicated. My small hometown gave a company incredible incentives to a company that opened a metal recycling facility just on the edge of town. They have a shredder/separator like the one in the video. The company ended up only hiring 17 local people.





The companies also get some great tax breaks from the government. Which translates into more jobs for tax attorneys.

1.RISE provides a purchaser of "qualified reuse and recycling property," (which is just a fancy term for eligible recycling machinery or equipment) with the option to depreciate 50% of the cost of that machinery or equipment in the first year.

http://www.isri.org/policy-regulations/tax#.Vi1Xzv-FOpo

 

[zoobyshoe]

That's bad news, Edward. The process is complicated enough without the IRS bureaucracy adding it's special touch.

 

[rootone]

It is definitely more complicated. My small hometown gave a company incredible incentives to a company that opened a metal recycling facility just on the edge of town. They have a shredder/separator like the one in the video. The company ended up only hiring 17 local people.

Sure, and even then it's probably not able to make much of a profit
Digging up fresh metal ores and processing is cheaper for most metals.
I'd better stop there.

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Sure, and even then it's probably not able to make much of a profit
Digging up fresh metal ores and processing is cheaper for most metals.
I'd better stop there.

Is it cheaper overall, or is it cheaper because mining is given a pass on environmental damage that recycling isn't given?

Mining law is old. Mine owners are largely not responsible for the damage they cause. Hundreds or thousands of acres of what would be called toxic waste in other industries is left. Entire communities have their drinking water contaminated. In any other industry the owners would be sued out of business.

I'm not arguing that this is right or wrong. I'm pointing out true macro costs to the community and micro costs to businesses are often wildly different. Public policy decisions should keep this in mind.

 

[OmCheeto]

Sorry, I never clicked on your link due to your condemnation of it and accidentally discovered it in a separate search.

That's ok. I don't have time to read through all billion reference papers that pop up on threads either.

But:

Regardless of where the lead contamination comes from, it appears to be a real problem:

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_6972061_problems-recycling-aluminum.html

I think I'm going to add "ehow.com" to my list of "questionable" sources. It's like wiki. Good for scavenging keywords, but rife with tomfoolery.
Of the 4 references pointed to by the above article, two of the links are dead, a third link only provides that recycling aluminum costs 5 cents on the dollar, compared to aluminum from bauxite. [the PSU article]
The 4th reference may be a bit old. There is no date on the article, but you can interpolate it from the content;

...
About 90 percent of all garbage in the United States is hauled and buried in landfills. If this continues, the landfills for half of all cities will be filled to capacity by 2000,...

So we know it's at least 15 years old.
And from the EPA report again;

As a percentage of total MSW generation, discards to landfills or other disposal has consistently decreased–from 88.6 percent of generation in 1980 to 53.6 percent in 2011.
[page 147]

Very close to the 90% stated by Mr. Dulley. So I'm going to say the article is 35 years old!
I would imagine things have gotten better since then.

And:

About half of all the aluminum used in the United States is being recycled these days, which is great news – but there’s a catch. Although a lot of energy is saved in the recycling process — since it avoids the need to make new aluminum from raw ore — it turns out that the recycling process, when repeated, creates serious impurities in the end product. Researchers at MIT found that unless specific processes are introduced into the aluminum recycling market now, those impurities will continue to add up, resulting in a glut of impure recycled aluminum which has extremely limited uses.

The author of 10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment does indeed make it sound like people may be getting lead poisoning from soda cans, which is highly doubtful, but the impurities in recycled aluminum, including lead, make it less and less usable.

Just something to work on. I ran across a paper yesterday that covered why this is such a difficult problem. Way over my head.

Additionally, recycling aluminum, just like recycling paper, produces an unusable and toxic "dross" that has to be dealt with some how:

http://education.seattlepi.com/environmental-problems-associated-recycling-aluminum-5736.html

So, as you pointed out earlier, the whole thing is much more complicated than people generally realize.

I think it's funny that they say; "This “cake” is not something that you would want to eat..."
That's like saying; "A car is not something you would want to eat..."

The main problem I have with the "seattlepi.com" article is that is doesn't compare recycling vs mining generated pollution.
Yes, I know I shouldn't eat a recycled toxic cake, but how big is the other toxic cake? And who's going to have to eat it, and when?

...
Digging up fresh metal ores and processing is cheaper for most metals.
...

In all my searches, I don't think I've seen a single reference that says this. Can you provide a reference for at least one metal. Thanks!

I think I'll not respond any more to "recycling is bad" posts, as I'm now in the middle of working on the energy balance of "plastic to fuel" problem.

 

[rootone]

In all my searches, I don't think I've seen a single reference that says this. Can you provide a reference for at least one metal. Thanks!.

I think there has been miscommunication here, I am strongly in favour of increasing the effort to recover metals from recycling.
I am in favour of it even if it is not particularly profitable, my earlier post in this thread should make that clear.
My last post was in no way supporting a 'recycling is bad' position, it was an attempt (failed attempt), to express cynicism concerning the economic argument.
I believe that the usual economic argument does not take account of the long term benefits to society, only immediate potential profit and vested interests.
While I am not a raving communist, my view is essentially socialistic, but unfortunately the way world is going lately such views are often deemed as irrelevant or undesirable.

 

[OmCheeto]

I think there has been miscommunication here, I am strongly in favour of increasing the effort to recover metals from recycling.
I am in favour of it even if it is not particularly profitable, my earlier post in this thread should make that clear.
My last post was in no way supporting a 'recycling is bad' position, it was an attempt (failed attempt), to express cynicism concerning the economic argument.
I believe that the usual economic argument does not take account of the long term benefits to society, only immediate potential profit and vested interests.
While I am not a raving communist, my view is essentially socialistic, but unfortunately the way world is going lately such views are often deemed as irrelevant or undesirable.

Economics rules! I should start a thread. But it's quite religious in nature, so I'm sure I'd get banned.

[edit] In spite of our "apparent" differences, I think we are on the same page.

 

[Czcibor]

Unregulated free markets are a poor solution to problems like this. Costs tend to be handed to third parties (like our grandchildren). But a well regulated free market should solve the problem.

Instead of everyone recycling, make manufacturers pay a consumption tax on packaging (as well as products of course) to offset the cost of large scale robotic recycling plants. These would provide jobs for robot wranglers who help robots sort rubbish for recycling. Pay these a bonus per ton based on the consumption tax. This would provide useful, economic stimulus while passing on the true cost of use to consumers.

The incremental time cost for our current recycling is expensive, and even so it costs almost twice the landfill cost. Time taken from other activities costs the economy even when it doesn't show up in any budgets.

Free markets work when properly regulated. The regulations just need to be made to be market neutral.

(A free market is one where participants are free to enter or leave the market, not simply unregulated chaos.)

Or just bury it until it becomes valuable enough for our grandchildren to dig it up like rats scurrying over old garbage heaps. [Perhaps there's a value judgement in there somewhere? ]

The part concerning "consumption tax" is in accordance with economic theories. You may also add - start with low tax, and slowly increase, so it would not devastate the economy, but would be included in long term capital investment / R&D projects.

Nevertheless, I have the annoying feeling of doing big part (in my country paper and metal were recycled before any gov incentives were introduced) of recycling not because of any cost-benefit analysis but because of ideology. Yes, I know I'm a devil advocate here, but what's wrong with burring tones of mixed up plastics on a landfill? And at the end covering everything with layer of soil? What exactly would be improper if after a century (it's a plastic, they don't decompose, so no hurry) someone get a good technology (or price level changes) and decide its profitable to strip mine an early XXIst century landfill?

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think it's funny that they say; "This “cake” is not something that you would want to eat..."
That's like saying; "A car is not something you would want to eat..."

The main problem I have with the "seattlepi.com" article is that is doesn't compare recycling vs mining generated pollution.
Yes, I know I shouldn't eat a recycled toxic cake, but how big is the other toxic cake? And who's going to have to eat it, and when?

The other toxic cake is very much bigger, but the point of bringing up the not-inconsiderable down side of recycling aluminum is to put a damper on people who think recycling it (or anything) solves just about everything. Witness this author's final claim:

By recycling already-manufactured aluminum materials, precious space can be conserved in landfills and no new waste materials are produced!

http://recyclenation.com/2010/11/aluminum-extraction-recycling-environment
She concentrates on the evils of bauxite mining and very erroneously exonerates aluminum recycling. Completely exonerates it. The fact is, though, it has it's own particular pollution problems which have to be dealt with.

Fortunately, there are people at work on this:

Abstract
Aluminium salt slag (also known as aluminium salt cake), which is produced by the secondary aluminium industry, is formed during aluminium scrap/dross melting and contains 15-30% aluminium oxide, 30-55% sodium chloride, 15-30% potassium chloride, 5-7% metallic aluminium and impurities (carbides, nitrides, sulphides and phosphides). Depending on the raw mix the amount of salt slag produced per tonne of secondary aluminium ranges from 200 to 500 kg. As salt slag has been classified as toxic and hazardous waste, it should be managed in compliance with the current legislation. Its landfill disposal is forbidden in most of the European countries and it should be recycled and processed in a proper way by taking the environmental impact into consideration. This paper presents a review of the aluminium salt slag chemical and mineralogical characteristics, as well as various processes for metal recovery, recycling of sodium and potassium chlorides content back to the smelting process and preparation of value added products from the final non metallic residue.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22480708

I think I'll not respond any more to "recycling is bad" posts, as I'm now in the middle of working on the energy balance of "plastic to fuel" problem.

Thank you. I hope you get some solid results to report because I'm curious about the reality of the claims.

 

[OmCheeto]

...

Thank you. I hope you get some solid results to report because I'm curious about the reality of the claims.

From my rough calculations, burning 1 kg of plastic creates enough energy to pyrolysis 59 kg of plastic into liquid fuel. [ref: PF]
Though, if you know anything about that jerk Carnot, you know it's not going to be quite that.

 

[zoobyshoe]

From my rough calculations, burning 1 kg of plastic creates enough energy to pyrolysis 59 kg of plastic into liquid fuel. [ref: PF]
Though, if you know anything about that jerk Carnot, you know it's not going to be quite that.

Wow, that makes me want to try it at home. Figuring a home apparatus would be the least efficient possible, I'd like to see if I could get more oil than I use to produce it.

Doubt I'll get around to it, but the temptation has become real.

 

[OmCheeto]

Oddest coincidence.
Yesterday, I got a Facebook notification about a metro "garbage" meeting next month.
I think I'll go.

Let's Talk Trash: What Our Trash Says When We’re Gone

There was a very interesting survey that went along with it. It was filled with facts and figures that went right along with this thread.

Wow, that makes me want to try it at home. Figuring a home apparatus would be the least efficient possible, I'd like to see if I could get more oil than I use to produce it.

Doubt I'll get around to it, but the temptation has become real.

I would help, but I think it would border on PF's policy against telling people how to make explosives.
If you want to know how difficult it would be, try creating a device that simply heats up a cup of water with a tea-light.
hmmmm... google google google
Eureka!

https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-heat-does-one-standard-tea-light-candle-produce
Chris Agerton
19.3k Views • Upvoted by Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, engineer at an oil company
Looking at Amazon, I see that tea candles are a wax cylinder about 1.5 inches in diameter and * 0.5 inches tall. Volume of a cylinder is pi * r**2 * h = 0.883 cubic inches or 14.45 cm**3. The density of paraffin wax is 0.9 g/cm**3, so we're looking at 13.03 grams of wax. The energy content of paraffin is about 42 kJ/g, so we're looking at 547kJ. There are 0.277 watt-hours per kJ, so we've got about 152 watt hours.

1 cup water = 236 grams
specific heat of water 4.186 joule/(gram °C)
3600 joules/watt hour

1 tea-light should change the temperature of 1 cup of water by:
(grams water °C / 4.186 joules) * (3600 joules / watt hour) * (152 watt hours) / (236 grams water) = ΔT of 554°C, or 1029°F.

ummm...

by my further calculations, 8 cups of water would be better. ΔT = 69°C. And start with cold water.

Once you've mastered that, I'll help you design a cement building to house the plastic to fuel machine.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's the plastics recycling code chart. For the past two days I've been checking out all the plastic containers I encounter, and it's been interesting to see what's what.

Something I found out on YouTube is that numbers 2 and 4 (polyethylene) are easily melted down at home in the oven and can be made into blocks or slabs that can then be easily worked with conventional woodworking tools.

 

[OmCheeto]

Here's the plastics recycling code chart. For the past two days I've been checking out all the plastic containers I encounter, and it's been interesting to see what's what.
...

Something I found out on YouTube is that numbers 2 and 4 (polyethylene) are easily melted down at home in the oven and can be made into blocks or slabs that can then be easily worked with conventional woodworking tools.

Did you see the article where someone made a wash machine bearing out of plastic bags?

Plastic Smithing: How To Make your own HDPE Plastic Anything (DIY plastic lumber)
...
I first heard about stewing plastic bags to make new things from Dave Huebsch's book " Village Assignment " about interesting adventures had while running a charity/NGO (" Common Hope ") in Guatemala. He, amazingly, repaired the bottom weight-carrying main bearing of a washing machine with a big plastic disc made of stewed plastic bags, which actually was such a good stand-in replacement that it held up for several years. (and here are some more Guatemalan Handy Tricks)
...

Cool, or what.

I think I may start making things, as my neighborhood is rife with plastic trash stuck in the hedgerows. I've been trying to find a trash picker upper stick thingy, as I'm a bit old, and bending over to collect it, is going to be a problem.

 

[wolram]

Here you go Om Cheeto
http://www.thamesvalleycatering.co....ntico+Mechanical+Gripper+-+Long+Arm+Picker+80

 

[OmCheeto]

Here you go Om Cheeto
http://www.thamesvalleycatering.co.uk/catering_equipment/Cleaning+&+Hygiene/Janitorial+Equipment/Contico+Mechanical+Gripper+-+Long+Arm+Picker+80

Thank you, Woolie!
But I've just contacted "SOLVE", and have asked them where I can get one for cheap.
They've apparently a $2,140,000 budget ($1.56M/0.73), and hopefully I get one for free, in exchange for me offering to do lots of cleanup.

ps. The lady running the email answering machine is out sick today, and will get back to me asap.

 

[wolram]

I have just found this site for small scale plastic recycling plant


Yours for 20 Lakhs.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Did you see the article where someone made a wash machine bearing out of plastic bags?

I saw that method in a different video. I think I prefer the oven melting method. Here's a video of that:


Personally, I don't like handling hot oil. The toaster oven is neater, more convenient. The real secret, though, is squeezing the soft plastic into some sort of mold. Makes the end product more uniform. That oil donut thing was too irregular for my taste.

I also don't suppose this process is very green. Sure, you're saving a little landfill space, but you're also using fossil fuels to shred and melt the plastic. It mostly interests me as a way of making plastic stock for whatever purpose you might want.

I think I may start making things, as my neighborhood is rife with plastic trash stuck in the hedgerows. I've been trying to find a trash picker upper stick thingy, as I'm a bit old, and bending over to collect it, is going to be a problem.

I also find that bending over is not as easy as it used to be. However, I try to pick things up by bending at the knees as much as possible. The older I get it becomes necessary to actively do things to maintain normal muscle tone.

 

[GarrettConnelly]

Scientists need to learn to think about society. Where is there a free market? Name a real one. Where is there a market undistorted by backroom deals, subsidies and normal business profits not perverted by endless war?

Economists talk of free markets in an abstract way that has nothing at all to do with life on Earth.

There is a very slight hint in this article about how a free market might work yet it stops before looking at problems open to solution by scientific thought. The best way to deal with trash is not to make it in the first place. Many scientists already know that eating, say, salad dressing packaged in a hot bubble of plastic is unhealthy and creates trash. What would happen if people decided to become healthy and quit eating processed foods injected into plastic containers blown from hot plastic a few seconds before being filled with yummy food? How would this happen?

Let us imagine that all products must bear the cost of their externalized costs. This would be a market with prices that actually measure. Plastic food containers would be saddled with all the costs of cleanup plus a portion of cancer expenses and perhaps the price of decomposed plastic micro particles that are pollution collecting quasi plankton eaten at the bottom of the food chain. One may dig into this at http://zerowastenews.org

I look forward to the day when most scientists know that economics is a religion based on funny math.

 

[OmCheeto]

I have just found this site for small scale plastic recycling plant


Yours for 20 Lakhs.

Out of my price range. If only I had a million dollars...

I saw that method in a different video. I think I prefer the oven melting method. Here's a video of that:


Personally, I don't like handling hot oil. The toaster oven is neater, more convenient. The real secret, though, is squeezing the soft plastic into some sort of mold. Makes the end product more uniform. That oil donut thing was too irregular for my taste.

I also don't suppose this process is very green. Sure, you're saving a little landfill space, but you're also using fossil fuels to shred and melt the plastic. It mostly interests me as a way of making plastic stock for whatever purpose you might want.

I was thinking about you and me, and being green, and doing this type stuff yesterday.
If you notice from an earlier post, Scandinavian countries can't get enough of this stuff. Not only for electricity, but they use otherwise wasted thermal energy to heat homes.
I think you kids down in southern Cal should compact all your waste plastic, put it on a train, and ship it up here.
We can recycle it, and heat our homes at the same time!
We'll send back smooshed bricks so you can whittle on them.

I just dug out my mother's old electric skillet. I think it may be ideal for this project.

I also find that bending over is not as easy as it used to be. However, I try to pick things up by bending at the knees as much as possible. The older I get it becomes necessary to actively do things to maintain normal muscle tone.

Well, the trash around here has probably been collecting for years, so hopefully once it's all cleaned up, I won't have to bend over every 6 inches. It would probably take me 8 hours to harvest all the trash, on the 3/4 mile round-trip walk to the store.

...
I look forward to the day when most scientists know that economics is a religion
...

Interesting analogy. You should start a thread about that. It's been my experience that economics and religion, are about as pretentious, as politics.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Out of my price range. If only I had a million dollars...

I was thinking about you and me, and being green, and doing this type stuff yesterday.
If you notice from an earlier post, Scandinavian countries can't get enough of this stuff. Not only for electricity, but they use otherwise wasted thermal energy to heat homes.
I think you kids down in southern Cal should compact all your waste plastic, put it on a train, and ship it up here.
We can recycle it, and heat our homes at the same time!

If you're interested in cheap home heating consider a waste oil burner. It burns the oil people drain out of their cars when they change the oil. The oil is mixed with forced air so there is extremely little soot. You get all the bad gasses, but they're invisible.

I have a cousin back east who owns an auto repair shop. He gets all the free oil he can burn and installed one of these waste oil heaters. It keeps the shop pretty warm even in winter. You could put an add in Craigslist saying you'll take people's old oil or something. Make a deal with an oil change place. After the unit is paid for there's no additional expense (well, a bit on the electric bill to run the air blower). There's a few people on youtube who made their own (not that these home made ones look too great).

I just dug out my mother's old electric skillet. I think it may be ideal for this project.

Notice the guy in your video had no luck with the electric skillet. He had to switch to the toaster oven.

Well, the trash around here has probably been collecting for years, so hopefully once it's all cleaned up, I won't have to bend over every 6 inches. It would probably take me 8 hours to harvest all the trash, on the 3/4 mile round-trip walk to the store.

Yeah, that could get tiresome even for a kid.

 

[OmCheeto]

If you're interested in cheap home heating consider a waste oil burner...

Nope. I have plenty of wood.

Notice the guy in your video had no luck with the electric skillet. He had to switch to the toaster oven.
...

Lots of good ideas, but he appears to have more money than science background.

I've got lots of sciencey stuff in my head, but no money.

Time for my nap now. Hasta mañana!

 

[mheslep]

Unregulated free markets are a poor solution to problems like this.

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/
http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

 

[wolram]

Here is how the Britts do it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16812103

In what critics see as yet another example of Britain "gold-plating" European regulations, the UK government has operated an escalator, raising fines on landfill every year since 1998; from £7 per tonne then, to £64 now.

What this means in practice is that councils are forfeiting millions in fines at a time when local services are already under unprecedented pressure.

Over the past year, Worcestershire County Council has been fined £6 million. That's the same as their budget for their libraries and four times what they have to spend on subsidies for local bus services.

But surely the onus should be on councils to replace this most environmentally-unfriendly method of waste disposal?

According to the Local Government Association, councils support the overall objective, but struggle to meet the increasingly demanding targets set by the UK government: to reduce the amount they send to landfill to 50% of their 1995 levels by 2013, and to 35% by 2020.

 

[edward]

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/
http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

I agree that there is heavy regulation in the free market. The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't. As far as waste and landfills go my area has one company , Waste Management, that does 90% of the collection and they also own the only landfill.

We do need to come up with some innovation. When Waste Management opened their huge land fill, they bought the other two out and closed them down. I now have to drive 40 miles one way to dump a load of tree limbs and yard waste. A lot of what goes into that landfill could be crushed and shredded first, but it is more profitable to just dump an old couch, for instance, into that massive hole in the ground.

 

[OmCheeto]

Where do these (unregulated free markets) exist? Public facing businesses are required by law to provide recycling containers, as just one example.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/

Well that's an interesting statistic they mention there:

"... the commercial sector generates nearly three fourths of the solid waste in California. Furthermore, much of the commercial sector waste disposed in landfills is readily recyclable."​

Pigs!

http://recycling.arlingtonva.us/business/

Well, if they're anything like the California businesses, they should be forced to recycle.
I see that the residential rate does NOT promote recycling. Bad move Arlington!

Refuse Rate (residential accounts only): $271.08 annually...​

Over the past year, Worcestershire County Council has been fined £6 million.

Well, with a population of 566,500, that comes to only £0.88/per person per month.
I'm currently paying £16.18 (24.75 usd) per month for this service!

I probably should have checked my rate structure YEARS ago, as I see I can reduce it down to £7.09 (10.85 usd) per month.
I didn't realize until just now that I'm paying for yard debris recycling. £6.31 (9.65 usd) per month. I'd been recycling this myself for 15 years!
Now I'll have to build a new compost bin. My old one was 80 ft³. I have lots of trees. I took it apart about 3 years ago, and have repurposed the wood for quite a few new projects.

But anyways, I think the system here works the best, as it provides financial incentive to recycle as much as possible.

Annual fees
City           garbage   garbage
               only      + recycle
Portland OR    $342.60   $130.20      based on my production rates
Arlington VA   $271.08   $271.08

I don't like the idea of "fines" (except when people are caught putting trash in the recycle bins. Cheaters!), as this strikes me as adversarial (This is ********* govt intrusion! 'Murka!), vs a rate structure that reflects true costs, and makes people "think" they are gaming the system to their own financial benefit. Is it any wonder that Portland is listed consistently among the top 5 US recycling cities? [ref] [another ref] [ignore the other lists, as they are stupid] And this is, once again, WITHOUT mandatory recycling.

 

[mheslep]

The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't.

I observe it is generally the other way around, that large companies encourage more regulation and often author the regulation because it gives them an advantage over smaller competition as the small don't have the resources to accommodate overhead like compliance paperwork staff. A recent example in the news would be new financial regulations, which pushe up the cost of lending. One might naively think business would oppose such regulation, but the large still have access to cheap subsidized loans via means such as the thoroughly corrupt Export Import bank, which Congress just reauthorized with some Republican votes and all of the Democrats (186 yea, 1 nay) The corner baker doesn't get ExIm loans. Yes this is a lengthy description of crony capitalism.

The real threat to large companies has always been the small and nimble which change the nature of the market. The cost of regulation on the other hand can be passed on to the buyer, and is.

 

[mheslep]

Pigs!

Who? Business, or people that buy every bit of the product they make, like the computer you used to make that post.

 

[OmCheeto]

I agree that there is heavy regulation in the free market.

Does your daughter still live here in Portland? I'd be curious of her thoughts, on the change of environment.

The really large companies can send lawyers and lobbyists to DC to fight the regulations, the small companies can't. As far as waste and landfills go my area has one company , Waste Management, that does 90% of the collection and they also own the only landfill.

I think "Waste Management" is the "master" of our collection services also. More a "general contractor" type deal, as I believe we have about 40 different companies hauling our "stuff" away.

We do need to come up with some innovation. When Waste Management opened their huge land fill, they bought the other two out and closed them down. I now have to drive 40 miles one way to dump a load of tree limbs and yard waste. A lot of what goes into that landfill could be crushed and shredded first, but it is more profitable to just dump an old couch, for instance, into that massive hole in the ground.

I think our posts point out a good point: One man's trash, is another man's treasure.
I've never composted a tree branch, as I can heat my home with them!
It gets cold up here.

hmmm... google google google

Ah ha!

This would explain why I disassembled and burned the wood from my mother's broken old swivel-rocker one year, and why my dad moved to Arizona 4 decades ago.
Do you know how many times it's simply gotten up to 65°F in January up here?
Once!
In my lifetime anyways.
I ran naked around the back yard.

 

[OmCheeto]

"... the commercial sector generates nearly three fourths of the solid waste in California. Furthermore, much of the commercial sector waste disposed in landfills is readily recyclable."

Pigs!

Who? Business, or people

Business. 3/4 of the solid waste in California is generated by business.

that buy every bit of the product they make, like the computer you used to make that post.

Non sequitur, in my case, as I've never thrown away a computer, nor peripheral.
I have though, taken stuff to e-tronic recycling places.
My friends and I made a grand day of disassembling a Tektronix printer, as I recall.
hmmm...
pfoogle pfoogle pfoogle

Eureka!

My friends were over the other day and we removed, from my spare bedroom, and disassembled a Tektronix Phaser 540 in the back of my truck. Mostly because we wanted to know how a printer could weigh what I estimated to be about 100 lbs. A grand time was had by all.

[ref: PF!]

I absconded with a myriad of tiny screws, a multi-sided spinning mirror, and "a laser".

​