Recycling Problem

[edward81]

Recycling involves processing used materials into new products in order to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virgin production.Recycling is a key component of modern waste management and is the third component of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" waste hierarchy.

[DanielEdwards]

Recycling has many benefits, it saves money in production and energy costs, helps save the environment from the impacts of extracting and processing virgin materials, and means that there is less trash that needs to be disposed.

[Jorge1907]

Where do you guys get all these benefits? I realize your likely limited knowledge makes you quite wise, but do you really think indsutry would continue to throw money away if it were all so easy, esp now with such pressing economic problems?

[Aga]

It's interesting remark Jorge1907. I think that industry is focused on making money and in many instances it's just lowering the cost. The fact that you can get some benefits from recycling may still not be profitable enough comparing to the cost needed to introduce recycling technologies etc. So it's just calculation...

[Jorge1907]

Edwards's original comment was telling - included nothing re value added or effective product production.
In many cases it's more expensive to recycle and the product of recycling is often substandard. It's also contributory that some recycled materials have to be discovered as effective replacements for other materials (e.g. PET bottles for carpeting and jacket foam and mixed plastic for parking lot stops).
It;s not for want of trying that recycling has generally failed economically - requiring subsidies for paper etc. There's been thousands of now-dead startup companies that have taken a run at it in one form or another, looking for incremental savings over time to give them a competitive edge. Still some materials are very successfully recycled - aluminum, glass being good examples.

[Aga]

Aluminium and glass are good examples because the resource and production of these substances is comparatively expensive and recycling is therefore profitable.

[CSK001]

Hi,
I would suggest you to navigate about this one, on internet. There is lots of information available on this.

[Jorge1907]

csk - that's the problem - lots of info on the internet and most of it garbage.