The Necessity of Recycling
Leanna Myers
Introduction
Humanity
will soon be wallowing in its own wastes.
The amount of garbage produced in the United States is the highest rate
in the world, roughly twice as much per person as West Europeans and the Japanese. We are an extremely wasteful society. Currently, Americans produce over 208
millions tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) every year. That’s about
four-and-a-half pounds per day per man, woman, and child. And that number is growing. In just 3 years that number has grown by ten
million tons.
These numbers are staggering. But the biggest problem, of course, is what
we are going to do with all of this trash.
Landfills in the U.S. have been closing at a rapid pace. We currently throw 53.3 percent of our trash
into landfills which is only heightening their rate of closing. Between 1978 and 1988 14,000 (70 percent) of
the United States’ landfills closed.
From 1988 to April of 1999 the total number of landfills dropped from a
little over 8,000 to just 2,314. That
means that about 20,000 landfills have closed in the past twenty years. Very few new landfills have been opened to
take their places, partially because of stricter environmental regulations, and
partially because of the NIMBY syndrome.
This leaves one to ask, where is all of our trash going?
There are a couple of other options
to the MSW disposal problem.
Incineration has been growing in popularity over the past several
years. Currently, the United States
burns about sixteen percent of its garbage.
Another choice we have is shipping it off to another state or country to
dispose of. One may recall the “garbage
barge incident” of 1987 in which a boat left New York City toting 3,000 tons of
trash, sailed for 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump it, and was forced
to return home with its entire load still onboard. Clearly, this disposal option is nearing its end as well.
The best solution to the problem is,
of course, the three R’s: Reduction, Reuse and Recycling. If the United States were to enforce a
mandatory recycling program throughout the nation numerous problems would be
solved. 85 to 90 percent of MSW could
be recycled, ending our flood of waste.
Recycling also is beneficial to the environment in multiple ways, is the
cheapest known method of waste disposal, and is easy to implement. It is clearly the solution, the answer to
our prayers.
The Story of Landfills and
Incineration
Landfills
seem to have become more of a hassle than they’re worth. The state of Georgia has a mere 76 landfills remaining with an expected
capacity of only ten years. Not only
are they rapidly closing, but no one wants to own and operate them anymore
because the job has become so difficult.
In recent years the Environmental Protection Agency has pushed several
new laws through Congress which regulate the operation of these trash
heaps. It has been discovered that
improperly sited, designed and operated landfills leak toxic leachates into our
groundwater, which, if not controlled and prevented, can poison our drinking
water and devastate the local environment.
In 1964 a dump in Memphis, Tennessee contaminated the waters of the
Mississippi River, causing a fish kill that stretched all the way down to New
Orleans. New laws aim to prevent this
type of thing, and landfill operators are now required to maintain their sites
for thirty years after they reach capacity to be certain that these deadly
chemicals do not leak out. This is a
major reason that new landfills are not being formed; no one wants to have to
pay the enormous costs that creating a new, regulation landfill creates.
In addition to the environmental
problem of water pollution, there are also several other problems which
landfills bring to an area. There is a
constant presence of animals; rats, insects, raccoons, birds, and numerous
other kinds of vermin feast on human waste. Because landfills are often
constructed near airports, the birds can be a threat to human life. In October of 1960 a turbo-prop plane
crashed, killing sixty-two passengers, because it flew through a flock of birds
which were flying over the nearby landfill.
Finally, another enormous environmental threat that
landfills create is that of air pollution.
Between the one-and-a-half million gallons of gasoline used every year
by the vehicles used to haul the garbage, and the emissions created from the
decomposing wastes, landfills are among the top five polluters of our air. They created over 2.1 million tons of carbon
monoxide in 1982 (2.9 percent of the total), 1,200 pounds of organic compounds
(3.3 percent), 800 pounds of particulates (5.3 percent), and 200 pounds of
nitrogen oxides (0.5 percent.) These
numbers are likely to have risen since then.
Incinerators are capable of reducing solid waste by as
much as 90 percent. Some simply burn
the garbage, cool the ash, and then haul it to a landfill for final
disposal. Others do this, and also
recover the heat energy to generate steam and electricity. While this may seem like a great deal
economically, any way you look at it incineration is extremely harmful to the
environment.
Incinerators often create massive amounts of air and water
pollution. Among the emissions into the
air are carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, and other acid gases. Waste to energy plants produce less air
pollution, but they have other problems.
Groundwater can become polluted through the ash that remains after
combustion. The ash is highly toxic due
to chemical changes that occur during the burning. Incinerators use water to quickly cool the ash after the fire
dies. The water picks up these toxins
and if it escapes the incineration plant it poses an enormous threat to the
local environment. In addition, once
the cooled ash is moved to a landfill it poses the threat of creating toxic
leachates. As Paul Connett, a
researcher and dioxin expert at St. Lawrence University says, “There’s no such
thing as a ‘safe’ incinerator. . . the better the incinerator is at protecting
the air, the more toxic the ash is going to get.”
Facts About Recycling
In
1997 28 percent (61 million tons) of the nation’s total MSW was recycled. By the end of the year 2000 that number is
expected to rise to 30 percent. The
state of Georgia currently boasts a recycling rate of 33 percent. Recycling is slowly growing as a method of
waste disposal. According to the
website for the EPA:
While recycling has grown in general,
recycling of specific materials has grown even more drastically: 42 percent of
all paper, 35.5 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 59.5 percent of all
aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 61 percent of all steel packaging, 92
percent of all automobiles, and 64.3 percent of all major appliances are now
recycled.
If we were to reach a slightly higher
rate (35 percent) carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 13.2 million
tons. That’s the equivalent of removing
eight million cars from the roads.
The
recycling we are doing has a huge impact on the environment and the waste
disposal problem. For each ton of paper that is recycled, we
save seventeen trees, 6,953 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 587 pounds of
air pollution, 3.06 cubic yards of landfill space, and 4,077 kilowatt hours of
energy. In 1996 Americans recycled 42.3
million tons of paper. One ton of newspaper is worth $77. The business of recycling can be very
lucrative.
Aluminum cans are the most frequently recycled
wastes; almost two-thirds of cans are recycled. In 1993 that meant 59.5 billion cans. Making a new can from an old one uses 95 percent less energy and
creates 95 percent less air pollution than mining bauxite ore and creating
brand new aluminum. The recycled
product can be back on the shelf, refilled in ninety days.
Glass is recycled at a rate of about 38
percent. Unlike some other recyclables,
glass can be reused forever. We save
over a ton of resources for every ton recycled, and glass production air
pollution rates are cut by 14 to 20 percent.
Energy use is also cut by about 25 percent.
Plastic is slightly more difficult to recycle
because of the multiple types. It must
be properly sorted for it to be worth anything after processing. Only about 20 percent of the nation’s
plastics are recycled, leaving almost twenty million tons of plastic in the
MSW. Plastics currently make up about
10 percent of what we throw away by weight, and 20 percent by volume.
Success Stories
Throughout
the country recycling rates have slowly been climbing. In 1990, environmental activists were hoping
for a rate of 25 percent. Now the
nation has passed that mark and currently lies near the 30 percent mark.
According to the EPA’s website:
Twenty years ago, only one curbside
recycling program existed in the United States, which collected several
materials at the curb. By 1997, 9,000 curbside programs and 12,000 recyclable
drop-off centers had sprouted up across the nation. As of 1997, 380 materials
recovery facilities had been established to process the collected materials.
Several states and communities have reached rates
of recycling much higher than the national average. One school system consisting of eighteen schools in northwest
Georgia created a program that placed separate bins by every trashcan for
different recyclables. Within one year
they reduced their waste by 58 percent.
A pilot program in East Hampton, New York achieved a recycling rate of
84 percent. Wisconsin banned nearly 100
percent of recyclable materials from entering its landfills in 1995. In Seattle, the threat of the city’s only
landfill closing caused the government to create a “pay as you throw” program
for waste, charging residents by the weight of their garbage. Partially because of this, and partially
because of increased efforts to recycle, the city reached approximately a 60
percent rate in 1998. It is clearly a
feasible goal for the U.S. to expect more from its people. A 100 percent recycling rate nation wide may
seem crazy now, but it may be easier than one would think.
Finances of Recycling
Under the right circumstances,
not only can recycling be cheaper than other means of waste disposal, it can
also be profitable. It is estimated
that incinerating one ton per day costs between $100,000, and $150,000. Recycling is estimated to cost only $10,000
to $15,000, and composting between $15,000 and $20,000 per ton. The money the government could save by increasing
these more environmentally sound methods is phenomenal. According to John E. Young in his paper,
“Discarding the Throwaway Society”:
Rough calculations using conservative
figures for capital costs reveal that an $8 billion investment in additional
incinerators could allow the United States to burn one-fourth of its projected
solid waste output in the year 2000, whereas the same sum spent on recycling
and composting facilities could provide enough additional capacity to handle
three-fourths of the nation’s garbage that year.
Not only is recycling a cheaper option, it can also
pay for itself and then some. The city
of Portland, Oregon actually makes about $160,000 annually by recycling some of
its wastes. This is achieved by selling
collected, sorted and processed materials to manufacturing companies. Portland is lucky that it has found
consumers for its recycled material.
The biggest problem, the main reason that we have not already switched
to intensive recycling nationally, is the lack of demand for these
materials. The demand is not there
because the price of these reused materials is higher than that of virgin
materials. And the reason for this is
the subsidies provided by the government to producers of virgin materials.
For decades the government has given money to
miners and loggers in order to help keep these industries alive and the prices
of their products down for consumers.
Yet, for whatever reason, the government has neglected to create similar
subsidies for the recycling industry as it has grown. Because of this, prices for recycled materials are higher, and
therefore demand is lower, and sometimes recovered materials have to be sent to
landfills or incinerators to make room for the new materials being
collected. This is a sad cycle, but
until the government creates similar subsidies recycling will not seem
financially attractive to the general public.
Creating a Mandatory Recycling
Program
It makes perfect sense for the
government to create a mandatory program for recycling. If it waits too much longer it’s going to
have to anyway. Before long, all
landfills will be closed, we will not have anywhere else to ship our garbage,
and incinerators will be blackening our air and poisoning our water. Why not get a headstart on something will
have no option on in a few years?
There are four main methods of
recycling: curbside pick-up, drop-off centers, buy-back centers, and deposit
and refund programs. Each of these
methods has been successful in different parts of the country, and each is
fairly simple to implement. All it is
going to take is a little bit of effort by the government and by the people.
The first step is, of course,
funding and subsidizing. The government
needs to shift some of its funds to recycling programs. In 1987 New York’s Newsday found state governments had spent 39 times as much on
incineration as on recycling. These
figures need to be reversed. In
addition, subsidies similar to those provided for virgin materials need to be
implemented for recycled materials in order to make them economically
competitive.
Once
enough facilities, enough demand for the materials, and strict laws requiring
citizens to separate their trash have all been created, and the people have
been educated, the rest will fall into place.
Several communities already have mandatory programs and have reached
recycling rates of 90 percent or more.
The federal government needs to take
immediate action on this matter. Making
recycling mandatory will not only solve the problem of consistently increasing
solid waste, but it will have enormous benefits for the environment, and will
either cost less or maybe even make money for the government. The times are changing, the situation is
growing desperate, and the government needs to do something about it.
Recycling is the perfect solution.