2kg/person/day 0.5 Mtonne/dayLecture XVIII
The amount of waste material thrown
away in the US is staggering:
2kg/person/day 0.5 Mtonne/dayThe is about the same volume as 500 houses - and it must be added to landfills each day!
|
Material |
1960 |
1965 |
1970 |
1975 |
1980 |
1985 |
1990 |
|
Paper, paperboard |
27.2 |
34.5 |
40.2 |
39.1 |
49.7 |
55.9 |
65.3 |
|
Ferrous metals |
9.0 |
9.2 |
11.5 |
11.2 |
10.5 |
9.9 |
10.5 |
|
Aluminum |
0.4 |
0.5 |
0.7 |
1.0 |
1.6 |
2.1 |
2.3 |
|
Other metals |
0.2 |
0.5 |
0.6 |
0.8 |
1.0 |
0.9 |
1.0 |
|
Glass |
6.1 |
7.9 |
11.5 |
12.3 |
13.6 |
12.0 |
11.4 |
|
Plastics |
0.4 |
1.3 |
2.8 |
4.1 |
7.1 |
10.5 |
13.1 |
|
Yard waste |
18.2 |
19.6 |
21.1 |
22.9 |
25.0 |
27.3 |
28.7 |
|
Other waste |
18.5 |
20.5 |
22.4 |
25.1 |
27.4 |
28.3 |
31.0 |
|
Total |
80.0 |
94.0 |
110.8 |
116.5 |
135.9 |
146.9 |
163.3 |
The message: reduce, reuse,
recycle before disposal. Reduction: Packaging constitutes
30% of the waste stream in developed countries. Most paper products,
other than newspapers, end up in landfills as original packaging!
Industry does NOT pay the costs of disposal. Should industry pay the cost of disposal? In Germany they do! This
has had the following effect:
Reuse: what does this mean? Examples?
Recycling: is the breaking down of material into its components so that it can be reused as raw material again. Examples:
Why recycle? Consider aluminum. At one time it was
a compound (bauxite) in the ground. It had to be
dug up
transported to a smelter
refined
sent to a mill
formed into sheets
sent to a manufacturer.
If aluminum is recycled it has to be
collected transported to a foundry melted sent to a mill formed into sheets sent to a manufacturer
So is this worth it? Is it easier to collect or dig up?
Most of our bauxite comes from Jamaica,
Canada and Australia. In bauxite, the aluminum is about 20%
(Al2O3). Thus each tonne of aluminum produces 4
tonnes of waste. Refinement of aluminum uses quite a bit
of electricity.
The cost of refining aluminum is about 300MJ/kg while the cost from scrap
is about 7 MJ/kg. Plus there are transportation savings, as well as disposal
savings.
| Facet of Production | Energy Used (MJ/kg finished aluminum) |
| Ore Extraction (mine, dry, ship) | |
| Caribbean bauxite | 6 |
| South American bauxite | 9 |
| Average | 7 |
| Production of alumina from ore | |
| Caribbean bauxite | 42-57 |
| South American bauxite | 40-56 |
| Average | 49 |
| Production of aluminum from alumina | |
| Electrode Prebaked | 208-272 |
| Soderberg | 246-277 |
| Cost of fluorine compounds and calcining | 4-10 |
| Average | 258 |
| Overall energy cost from ore | 314 |
| Overall energy cost from scrap | |
| Pure | 6 |
| 30-40% contaminated | 25 |
Why not just get the cans out of land
fills? The least expensive way is to separate at the point of use...this
means you. About 60% of the aluminum cans in the U.S. (600 kilotonnes)
are recycled each year. Steel is another good example: Energy Costs in making Steel (MJ/kg)
Ore |
Scrap |
|
| Coke (0.4 kg) | 11.5 |
|
| Coal (0.02 kg) | 0.7 |
|
| Electricity (46 kWh) | 5.6 |
|
| Fuel Oil (4 litre) | 2.5 |
|
| Tar, pitch (0.3 litre) | 0.2 |
|
| Natural gas (0.13 m3) | 5.0 |
|
| Coke gas (0.16 m3) | 3.0 |
|
| Total from Ore | 28.5 |
|
| Total from Scrap | 1.26 |
It is interesting to note that you get about 1 cent per pound of steel and about 25 cents per pound of aluminum.....why is that?
What about glass? It takes almost as much energy to melt glass as to melt the
silicon-dioxide/soda ash mixture at 1400°C. Thus recycling is
not so cost effective...but it has other advantages.....
and it is not as good as reuse. Paper About half of the weight and volume in landfills is from
paper. Recycling paper allows this volume to be used more
effectively...and saves some trees. Each tonne of newsprint
saves 2.3m3 of landfill space. It is interesting to
note that in the US there were 9 paper mills that used recycled
paper in 1989, there were 26 in 1996 ... also the value of newsprint
went from $100/ton to $10/ton....as recycling was expanded. Moreover
some states have now put a tax on NON-recycled newsprint!
Plastic
Only #1 and #2 plastic are recycled. It costs about $1500/ton to collect and process plastic worth $100/ton. Some of the reasons include the large labor costs to handle the plastic and that the various plastics are incompatible i.e. PVC burns where PET melts. The actual recycling of plastic in 1992 was 2.9%.
So should we use paper bags or plastic bags when we shop?
Curbside recycling has picked up
recently. Now 5000 communities serving 85 million people recycle. This helps the landfill problem - landfills close because of
inadequate pollution control or because they are full (a city of 500,000
generates about 78,000 m3 of glass waste volume each year).
In 1979 there were 20,000 landfills in the US; in 1991 there were 5,800.
As a result disposal costs have risen by factors of 2-5! Do landfills degrade what is in them? the answer is not so clear....see
Energy. The bottom line (in the Northeast US):
burning trash costs about
$65-110/tonne
landfills cost $40-140/tonne
recycling costs $20-30/tonne
Reusable bottles can also make a
difference. The energy cost associated with a throwaway container is
6-9X the energy of the beverage! The dollar costs associated with
the container are 50% of the cost of the beverage. And we make an
incredible number of containers:
The counter arguments are:
What do you think?
Ohio's Greatest Home Newspaper |
Sunday, November 5, 2006 Page C1 |
TRASH SURVEY Sunday, November 5, 2006 Dean Narcisco
Columbus, OH -- On Friday, Dave May wrestled one ton of refrigerators, microwaves and a dehumidifier out of an Upper Arlington storage area and onto his truck. The 15 once-useful items will soon become parts for refurbished appliances or scrap that will earn May, a service manager at Columbus Appliance and Parts, a modest day's pay. It's one reason that Upper Arlington produces less trash than any other suburb in Franklin County. Rumpke Recycling, the largest of several local waste haulers, recently compared eight Columbus suburbs it serves by measuring their output of trash and recyclables per household. The Dispatch surveyed Franklin County communities not served by Rumpke to compare the rest. Demographics, economic incentives and affluence all may determine which way the environmental scales tip, officials say. Typically, communities that produce the most trash do the least recycling. The average Whitehall household, for example, sends almost 57 pounds of waste to the landfill each week - more than in any other suburb. At the same time, the average Whitehall household recycles 6 pounds of material, the second-lowest behind Grove City. At the other extreme, Upper Arlington homes produce 20 pounds of trash per week while recycling 16 pounds, the county's highest rate of diverting trash. Upper Arlington's output might be caused by a higher number of elderly and empty-nesters who typically produce less trash. In addition, "snowbirds," with winter homes in warm climates, produce no trash locally for several months. Upper Arlington also charges residents for trash collection - $2.50 per 33-gallon container - a rate that consistently rises to keep up with the city's costs. The so-called "Pay as you Throw" program, in its 14 th year, produces an incentive to recycle, which is free. Rumpke sees the results. One day last week, workers at the company's Fields Avenue sorting facility fished out coat hangers, a large planter, a cat-litter box and a wool scarf, all of which Rumpke can't recycle. The nonrecyclable refuse is sorted out and taken to the landfill, said Tom Burke, Rumpke's operations manager. The company wants people to lean toward recycling, even if it means a little extra work for its employees. "The key is keeping things simple," Burke said. "You don't want to give them so many don'ts that they won't." Whitehall, meanwhile, is largely a community of renters, a transient population, which might be contributing to lower recycling rates. Fifty-four percent of residents rent their homes, said Ray Ogden, the city's service director. When renters move in and out, he said, they tend to throw out what they don't want to take, leaving behind mattresses, bed frames and boxes of garbage that end up in the landfill. This year, Rumpke began billing residents directly for trash and recycling. Some in the community were upset at the extra paperwork. "There was a resistance in having to pay," Ogden said. "Some people were trying to get around this by taking it to a private Dumpster or taking it to work or doubling up with a neighbor." Ogden said he wrote 11 misdemeanor tickets against residents one day last week after they repeatedly failed to pay their bills. Some communities have found novel ways to bypass the landfill and cut costs. Upper Arlington has a contract with Columbus Appliance that saves the city $2,000 to $3,000 a year, said Rodney Parker, solid waste superintendent. The company picks up discarded appliances collected by the city. It fixes and resells some of the items and sells the rest for scrap. The city pays nothing for the service, and none of the appliances end up in a landfill. "It ain't that we get rich off of it," said May, who hauls the stuff away. "But I take care of Arlington, the community. Maybe what I'm doing is going to keep the world around another 200 years." Still, the city's solid-waste program is struggling to break even. Last year, it had to borrow $120,000 from the general fund. Encouraging the public to recycle through education is a key to Rumpke's success, said Burke, noting that even cardboard can sell for $120 a ton. In Worthington, second only to Upper Arlington in diverting trash from the landfill, residents such as Jim Immelt methodically sort their plastic, metal and cardboard. A retired biology teacher, he reads Rumpke recycling handouts and carefully checks the bottoms of containers to make sure they're recyclable. ``It has more to do with limited Earth resources'' Immelt explains. ``And it is more energy-efficient to reuse materials instead of having to manufacture them.'' Copyright © 2006, The Columbus Dispatch |
Comparison of Columbus area Trash and Recyclables