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Non-aluminium recycling doesn't make a whole lot of sense in North America. For plastics, you can make some case for PET recycling, but little else is at all p
by microcolonel 6y ago
Non-aluminium recycling doesn't make a whole lot of sense in North America.
For plastics, you can make some case for PET recycling, but little else is at all practical.
Paper recycling is doable, but basically pointless when we have such high volumes of farmed pulp trees, and new pulp is more efficient than ever.
The one thing I could see working well is a subsidized glass reuse program. I know a lot of people who prefer to get things in glass anyhow, and cleaning/sanitizing glass at an industrial scale is an existing capability.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoYour measurement of "efficiency" appears to exclude the cost of the externalities associated with handling paper as waste.
- microcolonel 6y agoWhat are those costs? My general understanding is that it may break down in a gassy way, but is that really so significant that it justifies the energy and opportunity cost involved in sorting and processing it for recycling? How does the cost of paper recycling compare to the cost of scaling up landfill gas recovery (something most operators are looking to do anyhow)? Far as I can tell, some of the most popular recycled paper products, such as paperboard and molded pulp, actually require somewhere around twice as much energy to produce as virgin paperboard and molded pulp products.
- pfdietz 6y agoI'm pretty sure iron/steel recycling makes sense too, since that can be easily separated from the waste stream magnetically. Glass, I don't think makes sense, except for downcycling to aggregate.
- microcolonel 6y ago> I'm pretty sure iron/steel recycling makes sense too Oh, sure, forgot that. Though steel and iron are not that common in household waste where I'm from. I specifically point to glass reuse rather than glass recycling. As soon as you have to process glass, the energy costs are massive.
- User23 6y agoThe recycling rate for gold also asymptotically approaches 100%. There's plenty of money in recycling catalytic converters too. There's probably some clever economic law waiting for someone to name it after himself about recycling of metals and their market value. Also we've all heard stories of, let's call it aggressive proactive copper recycling.