Recycling is a way to conserve natural resources by salvaging metals, paper, plastic, glass, and other materials used in packaging and industry, and turning them into new and usable products. Successful recycling involves a three-step process: collecting the material; processing it, which can include sorting, compacting, and transporting it to the buyer; and finally, remanufacturing the material into new items. One of recycling's many benefits is its conservation of energy and resources; its popularity is increasing with public awareness of environmental issues. Also, as disposal costs grow and landfill space shrinks, recycling becomes a way to recover materials from these landfills, decreasing the amount of new raw materials used, and reserving land for purposes other than dumping. The energy-saving benefits of recycling were first recognized by the glass and aluminum industries, which require tremendous amounts of energy to produce containers from raw materials. There, it was discovered that far less energy was needed to produce aluminum cans and glass bottles when recycled materials were used. For example, recycling aluminum requires 95% less energy than mining and processing aluminum ore to make new soft drink cans. The total energy saved per can is enough to keep a 100-watt light bulb burning for 100 hours. In addition, recycling aluminum produces 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution than processing raw materials to make new cans. Because of these benefits, the recycling industry was willing to pay for collected cans. Thus, the recycling rate for aluminum in the United States, at about 55% in 1989, was higher than that of all other recyclable materials. (By 1995, however the recycling rate for aluminum had fallen to about 50%, slightly behind the rates for paper and steel.)
Communities that recycle use one of two collection methods. With low-tech or manual services, residents separate such recyclable materials as cans, bottles, and paper, which are put into a specially designed collection truck with different compartments for each material. Automated collection services can vary, but typically involve a truck that will pick up loads of mixed recyclables. After the truck delivers the comingled materials to a processing center, they are sorted manually as they move along a conveyor belt. Studies have shown that when recycling is made convenient, people are more apt to participate. Sorting by residents is valuable because it helps educate people about recycling, but programs with comingled collection show higher participation and recovery rates. The sorting issue will continue to be an important determinant in any recycling program, especially as communities seek to recycle additional materials. In many cities, junk mail, phone books, cardboard, and certain plastics are being included in collection programs.
By the end of 1995, approximately 50% of all aluminum, steel, and paper packaging in the U.S. was being recycled, compared to about 28% of the glass and 10% of the plastics packaging.
A 1997 report published by the Environmental Defense Fund concluded that from 1990 to 1996, over 13 times more virgin plastic packaging was produced than was recycled. As suggested by these statistics, plastics, which make up about 20 volume percent of current landfill input, pose particular difficulty in spite of the fact that research on the recycling of plastics has been underway since about 1970. This slow progress is due in part because not all plastics can be recycled together, and because there are at least eight different types of popular plastics. Success in recycling depends very much on the chemistry of the plastic involved and on the purity of the scrap, and reprocessing of comingled waste leads to poor physical poperties. Considerable effort, therefore, has been devoted to developing automated processes for segregation according to plastic type. One bright spot is the case of polyethylene terephthalate, where recycling can be achieved by chemical depolymerization to polyethylene terephthalate and other products. Such processes are used for products that come in contact with food.
Until materials like plastics are made easier to recycle, some communities are considering advanced disposal fees, or small surcharges that the consumer would pay to finance the disposal cost of these items.
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