What Is Recycling?

An average American has over 1300 pounds of trash per year! Up until the late

1800’s, Europe and the United States took care of the solid waste problem by dumping, slopping and scavenging. It was not exactly sanitary to have animals eating at food dumps in the streets, and humans scavenging for items to sell among the trash of others.

Today there are four ways to handle our solid waste (garbage): 1. Dump it, 2. Burn it, 3. Convert it into something that can be used again, and 4. Minimize the volume of material goods produced in the first place (source reduction).

Ten years ago we had 6000 operating landfills but many are to capacity levels.

We have an acute shortage of sanitary landfills at this time. New Jersey has to truck onehalf of its household waste to out-of-state landfills up to 500 miles away. Older landfills do not have environmental safe liners of plastic and clay to prevent contamination of ground water supplies. They do not have safe release of methane gas which is created in the decay as waste decomposes. Modern landfills are constructed to include:

1. Clay liners, 2. Polymer liners, 3. Each day’s deposit has a layer of soil on top, and 4. Vents for methane gas are installed.

Our national landfill problem has brought plastics to the forefront as an enigma in

the packaging world. Plastics deteriorate but never decompose completely, but neither

does glass, paper or aluminum. Plastics make up about nine percent of our trash by

weight compared to paper which constitutes about thirty-six percent.

Rubber, textiles, and leather add an additional five percent by weight. Every year Americans produce 156 million tons of trash. (Derived from "In Defense of Garbage", Judd H. Alexander, Praeger Publishers, c. 1993) Recycling is one alternative so all four of these materials do not end up in a landfill. Currently, legislation is focusing on this alternative and various forms of material collection are being used. Curb side collection has proved most successful over localized drop off sites. Industry is feeling the pressure legislatively as well as economically to use recycled material.

Voluntarily, the industry provides recycling codes which appear on the bottom of packaged materials. PETE, poly(ethylene terephthalate), is commonly used in two liter pop bottles, HDPE, high density polyethylene, in milk jugs, PVC, poly(vinyl chloride), for vegetable oil bottles, LDPE, low density polyethylene, in coffee can lids, PP, polypropylene, in yogurt containers, and PS, polystyrene, in foamed egg cartons or clear bakery trays.

(The clear lids will react to heat just as Shrinky Dinks. Decorate with permanent markers and bake to desired size.) Presently, there are difficulties with recycling plastics after collection regarding separation into various types, soiled materials, and inability to use in food applications. Applications for recycled plastics are growing everyday.

Plastics can be blended into virgin plastic (plastic that has not be processed before) to reduce cost without sacrificing properties. Recycled plastics are used to make polymeric timbers for use in picnic tables, fences, and outdoor toys, thus saving natural lumber. Plastic from two liter bottles is even being spun into fiber for the production of carpet and fiberfill for jackets.

Recycling is a sociological problem too. People who study garbage or solid waste

have discovered these truths: 1. People don’t recycle as much as they say do (but they

recycle just as much as they say their neighbors do), 2. Household patterns of recycling vary over time, and recycling is not yet a consistent habit, 3. High income and education and even a measure of environmental concern do not predict household recycling rates.

They have discovered that the price paid for the product will determine how much is

recycled. When the prices rise, then the curbside product declines.

A solution for plastics that are not recycled, especially those that are soiled: used

microwave food wrap or diapers, can be a Waste to Energy system (WTE). When twentyeight percent of our trash is packaging material and thirteen percent of that is plastic packaging, an alternative to landfilling needs to be considered for this six million tons of plastic each year.

(Derived from "In Defense of Garbage", Judd H. Alexander, Praeger Publishers, c. 1993) Incineration of polymers produces tremendous amounts of heat energy, more than it took to make the plastic originally. The heat energy produced by the burning plastics not only can be converted to electrical energy but helps burn the wet trash that is present.

Paper does produce heat when burning but not proportionately as much as polymers. On the other hand, glass and aluminum do not produce any energy when burned. Utmost concern is directed to the incineration process because the byproduct carbon dioxide can contribute to the green house effect. There is much debate as to how significant of a concern this is viewing the overall picture compared to the energy produced and the natural resources saved.

The greater concern towards burning plastics is the open burning of the material. To better understand the incineration process, consider the smoke coming off a burning object and then ignite the smoke with a Bunsen burner. Observe that the smoke disappears. This is not an illusion, but illustrates the byproducts of incomplete burning are still flammable. Incineration burns the material and then the by-products of the initial burning.

A final consideration of the non-degradability of plastics is our country's litter

problem. Billions of dollars are spent each year to clean up refuse that is improperly

discarded. Wildlife protection groups have challenging arguments against plastics

resulting from individuals littering such items as fishing line, and six-pack can holders.

The plastic industry remains powerless in regards to preventing people from

inappropriately disposing of trash, so they approached the issue from another direction.

Plastics are now being made that are degradable due to corn starch additives, or photo

degradable additives. Both solutions are assisting in solving the litter problem in spite of the unfortunate actions of the littering population. A basic experiment can be done by exposing samples of food wrap, diaper liners, and trash bags to outdoor light and

weather.

Squares of plastic wrap can be stretched in small embroidery hoops and then be exposed. Document daily information regarding temperature, precipitation, humidity, the time of sunrise and sunset. Then analyze the materials over a period of a month. It has not been that long since trash bags could be exposed to the elements for years and never decompose.