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Where Do We Stand With Recycling: Recycling Statistics
Where Do We Stand With Recycling: Recycling Statistics
By recycling, we are changing the world and environment around us in a good way. There is so much that is going on with the environment today, it seems like total chaos. Pretty soon, it will start to feel like it. You can recycle paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum, Styrofoam, and water.
Where Do We Stand With Recycling: Recycling Statistics
As everyone is well aware, tress and forests are cut down to be made into many things that we use on a daily basis. A product that is known to come from trees is paper. Did you know that just about 100 acres of a land’s worth of trees are being cut down about every minute? This is becoming a big problem because it takes at least 15 to 20 years for a fully developed tree to grow. On the other hand, it takes less than 10 minutes for a tree to be destroyed. Get the picture?
Just by recycling and saving one tree, you are saving at least 700 paper grocery bags. Still think it’s not possible? Well, let’s look at a few facts and statistics. One ton of paper is a lot. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 15-17 trees, over 100 pounds of sulfur, about 350 pounds of limestone, and way over 2,000 pounds of steam.
Because you recycle, you are reducing air pollutants by somewhere close to 160,000 tons. More than 40% of materials that can be recycled are dumped into landfills. It takes a plastic bottle 700 years to finish the decomposing process. Plastic takes up more landfill space that we don’t have. What happens when space runs out? This is some of the same plastic that kills over 1,000,000 sea creatures a year when it is dumped into the sea. Not only are we killing ourselves, we are hurting wildlife all around us.
Styrofoam Recycling
Styrofoam Recycling
Styrofoam is just the trade name of a commonly found substance that is used very often by almost all of us. This trademark is owned by the Dow Chemical Corporation which manufactures it. The packing material or insulating material that is used almost everywhere is Styrofoam or to say exactly polystyrene the chemical name of that product. It is normally manufactured in 3 configurations namely extruded polystyrene, expanded polystyrene foam, extruded polystyrene foam of which extruded polystyrene can be utilized as one of the ingredients which are used in the manufacturing of explosives.
Styrofoam occupies lot of space in landfills and takes some 500 – 1000 years of long time to degrade naturally in the environment. Also animals consume it accidentally or unknowingly and this blocks their digestive track leading to their death by starvation. Styrofoam requires benzene and petroleum which are depleting non-renewable resources. So we can save our planet by decreasing the production of new Styrofoam to the highest extent possible and this can be done by recycling it properly. The problem is that the collection of this vastly used product is very difficult and there are only few recycling centers established till date. Transporting the used Styrofoam which occupies huge volume being light weight, from nearly all corners of the world to these few recycling centers is almost impossible. A new center cannot be established unless there is bulk material. Expanded polystyrene scrap (EPS) is recycled by feeding collected EPS foam via conveyor belts to a shredding machine and transferring the shreds to plastic extruder where exposure to pressure and heat melt it which later solidifies into a continuous configuration. It can also be changed into clothes hanger, park benches, toys, rulers, seedling containers, flower pots etc. Recycled EPS is also put to utilization in various metal casting procedures. Recycled EPS is used as insulation sheets and construction material. Therefore we can use this excess polystyrene individually in various forms.
Catalytic Converter Recycling
Catalytic Converter Recycling
When they first appeared on cars in 1970s, catalytic converters helped reduce the emission of pollution significantly. Most of the modern cars have so-called three way converters, meaning that they reduce or convert to less toxic materials Carbon Monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides molecules emission. This is done by a chemical reaction inside the catalyst. However that left another problem, what do to with used converters. After expanding their life span, catalytic converters were posing a major environmental threat. But it was not until 1990s that several companies started major catalytic converter recycling business. Incentive for recycling of converters was not environment concern, but rather the profit that could be made from the process.
Catalytic converters contain various precious or highly expensive metals, like platinum, rhodium, palladium, nickel, manganese, cerium and copper which are used as active material inside the catalyst. Each of these has advantages and disadvantages when it comes to catalytic converter usage. Some of them are also illegal in some countries, like copper in the United States, since it produces dioxin when used in catalytic converter. All these materials are very valuable and can be sold at high prices, making catalytic converter recycling very lucrative venture. One of the problems these companies were facing is determining the value of each converter unit. Depending on the mileage, two same type nits, used in the same car model can have drastic difference in the amount of precious metals that can be recycled. That is why a process called gradation has been developed, in which specializes laboratories determine the approximate amount of valuable materials in each convertor, making it easy to determine the price of individual unit. From there, converter is being cut up to pieces, precious metals extracted and the rest is melted as a scrap metal. Not only the profit is being made, but a valuable service to the environment is also performed.
Recycling Business 2010
Recycling Business 2010
Recycling in some form or another has been practiced throughout the history. Scraping old warships fro scrap wood and later metal has been one of the earliest forms of recycling. However, in the last 50 years, when environment consciousness has evolved and appropriate legal actions taken, recycling business has been booming. Today, it’s an industry worth billions of dollars world wide. Legal acts are constantly changing, demanding larger percentages of materials to be recycled. In the light of diminishing resources on the planet, this is a very prudent course of actions. It also provides for plenty of business opportunities for entrepreneurs. Even though the latest financial crises has affected this market as well, soon enough it will bounce back, since law makers are making regulations tighter every year. For instance, in England, boroughs that exceed their annual quota of waste they send to the landfill face severe fines. Considering that amount of waste is increasing at alarming rates, this can be a major problem, unless they can sort and recycle excess waste. Whether we are talking about paper, metal, wood, glass or plastic, there are still large enough demand for recycled materials to keep the market afloat.
Once the effects of the crises had ceased, the price of raw materials will start rising again, which will in turn lead to the higher prices for recycled materials. Considering in how many areas recyclables can be used, it seems a waste of money to buy a truck load of timber, if you can produce paper from recycles one far cheaper, not to mention the impact on the environment. As the pollution starts affecting our lives more and more every year, public demand for more recycling will increase. Right now, only small fraction of the worlds waste is recycled, but the percentages are steadily increasing.
