Recycling

Beginning in the mid-1960s and growing alongside the environmental movement, recycling became an important aspect of municipal waste management and symbolic of personal actions to help clean up the environment. In earlier times various kinds of recycling took place; they consisted in diverting products from the waste stream before discard. Boy and Girl Scout troops collected old newspapers to raise funds—as those old enough may still remember. Beer, sodas, and milk moved in returnable glass bottles; and because most of these containers finally broke in centralized facilities like bottling plants, the residues were also collected and sold to glass companies. During World War II the government solicited metals and the public set these aside to help the war effort. Finally, automobiles that had reached their final hour were recycled, as they still are, in scrap yards—by far the most massive consumer products, alongside appliances, thus disposed.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "environment" was first used in its current sense in 1956. It did not become a household word until the 1960s. Long before that time, however, recycling was a major industrial activity carried out for economic reasons but under different names: in metals it was the scrap trade, in paper the waste paper trade in two branches—newsprint gathered by volunteers and cardboard gathered from offices and warehouses; there was also a trade in broken glass ("cullet"), in rags, and in waste oil. Farmers collected restaurant wastes to feed to pigs and recycled the fertilizer value of farm animal wastes as manure. And farm and garden wastes have always been composted. None of these activities has changed and, in fact, are the recipients of wastes today extracted from the municipal waste stream. Certain forms of recycling, however, are relatively new. They include reprocessing of auto tires into rubber, synthetic fuels, or paving materials; the recovery of lead from batteries; plastics recycling; and relatively experimental methods of converting organic wastes to fuel ("bio diesel"). Then, as still today, manufacturing wastes were either immediately recycled if suitable or used for fuel to power production activities—common in wood and fiber-using operations.

MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE RECYCLING

The movement toward municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling was probably sparked by the introduction of steel cans to package soft drinks and beer in 1953. These containers made a contrast with the returnable bottle, at that time still the dominant mode of beverage packaging; cans did not bear a deposit and were soon littering roads. Keep America Beautiful, a business-sponsored organization, began operation in 1953 as well and attempted to persuade the public not to litter. KAB's most memorable ad image was the Indian chief with the tear in his eye—sad over the despoliation of the countryside. The public noticed that packaging was proliferating and turning into a form of marketing—and solid waste tonnage was growing more rapidly than population. The "throw-away" society was born. In 1965, the first federal law on solid waste, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, passed Congress coinciding with the introduction of aluminum beverage containers that year: you could crush them in one hand! Amended versions of the act gave recycling more and more prominence until the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 made recycling of MSW a national policy. But RCRA had no mandatory provisions. With the exception of mandatory deposit bills at the state level and local laws mandating separate collection of recyclables from waste, recycling at the national level continues still as an injunction rather than as a regulatory program.

Economics

MSW recycling has always required subsidy because scrap prices do not cover the expensive separation of commingled wastes by hand or machine. At the same time, disposal of wastes, whether by the relatively expensive method of incineration or the lower-cost use of burial in landfills, is less expensive than waste separation with a portion recycled and a larger portion disposed of—even when scrap revenues were factored in. For these reasons MSW recycling has been essentially funded by the public sector and by the population's contribution of labor in separating wastes.

Even when collection, separation, and concentration costs for material components are subsidized, economic conditions cause demand for waste-derived commodities to cycle up and down. This has led to programs to increase the "recycled content" of goods produced. Companies advertise high recycled content as a way of inducing environmentally aware consumers to select their products. Where technically feasible, and the waste markets sold for a lower price than "virgin" raw materials, producers also realized a cost benefit.

Quantitative Trends

Based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), MSW generation was 236.2 million tons in 2003, of which 176.4 million tons (75 percent) was in the form of potentially recoverable materials. Of this subtotal 31.4 percent was recovered for recycling in 2003, most of it in the form of paper (72 percent). The bulk of recovered paper was in the form of old newspapers from households and corrugated cardboard from businesses. About 48 percent of all paper and board, 36 percent of metals, and 19 percent of glass is recovered; the lowest recovery rate is associated with plastics (5 percent), the highest with nonferrous metals, primarily lead batteries (67 percent). The low rate of plastics recovery is explained both by the many types of plastics on the market, the difficulties in sorting them, and the fact that some cannot be remelted.

Of the 60 million tons of organic and miscellaneous wastes not included in figures above, cities recovered about 17 million tons in 2003, 28.2 percent, the great bulk of it in the form of composted yard trimmings. For context, it is worth noting that MSW represents a mere 3 percent of total waste generation in the United States, which, based on EPA's estimates, stood at around 7.84 billion tons. The overwhelming mass of this waste, however, is the form of mine tailings. Industrial waste generation in the major categories like metals, paper, plastics, and glass is very low because production wastes are immediately recycled.

Recycling rates appear to have increased since the beginning of the recycling movement, but reliable numbers are not available. The reason for this is that waste generation by type of content is not routinely determined; in some surveys (such as the one cited above) commercial wastes are included, in some they are left out. Very substantial paperboard recoveries have always been associated with commercial sources—long before recycling took hold; and in the olden days much newsprint was diverted from MSW when demand for waste paper was high. One source, cited by EPA, Biocycle Magazine, showed recycling increasing from 19 percent in 1992 to 33 percent in 2000, with increases in every year in between. Such data, however, are not based on scientific or census-like measurements and, while no doubt capturing a trend, are more impressionistic.

Energy Recovery

Conversion of MSW to energy, referred to as waste-to-energy, was proposed and demonstrated early in the history of waste recycling—on the model of industrial practice. Waste-to-energy conversion is tracked by the Energy Information Administration. Data provided by EIA indicate steady if somewhat cyclical growth in energy production from solid waste. Generation, expressed in equivalents of British thermal units (BTUs) was 0.354 quadrillion Btu in 1989 and had reached 0.571 quadrillion Btu by 2003. In 2003, the breakdowns of the total were 1) combustion with heat or electric power recovery at 51 percent, 2) capture of methane gases from landfills, 26 percent, and 3) heat recovery from agricultural byproducts, sludges, tires, and other biomass components of waste, 24 percent. In 2003, waste-to-energy represented 9.4 percent of all renewable energy consumption—more than 3 times the amount provided by solar and wind energy combined.

INDUSTRIAL RECYCLING

Commercial recycling, as distinct from industrial recycling, tends to be reported as part MSW which EPA defines as consisting of residential, commercial, and institutional sources. Commercial operations in which bulk packaging is routinely handled have always routinely collected corrugated board for sale to waste paper dealers: it is the highest grade of waste paper available and demand for it tends to be fairly steady. With the rise of environmental consciousness, offices have also participated in occasional programs of collecting waste paper used in business operations. These programs have had a mixed history—intensifying in times of high waste paper prices and slacking off in others. Unlike corrugated collection systems which are strongly institutionalized and integrated into operations, employee programs in which two separate waste cans are used, one for paper, one for all other waste, require constant management attention. Such attention is rarely sustained, with the result that programs fade away until once more reinstituted with a new initiative.

Like cardboard recovery in retail and warehousing operations, industrial recycling is strongly supported by economic motives and is hence both routine and well-managed. In industry recycling takes three basic forms: 1) reuse of production wastes in the course of normal operations, 2) use of scrap as the principal or only raw material input, and 3) the reuse of post-consumption waste products.

In the first case, reusing production wastes, the waste may be trimmings or residues from production runs which are simply collected and reintroduced at the beginning of the process. An example might be a forging operation in which defective forgings are simply remelted. Another distinct instance is an operation which uses a portion of its raw materials, namely a waste product, as a fuel. An example is a saw mill that collects wood bark in debarking operations and uses it, with other wood-wastes, as fuel to power a boiler house which runs the sawing operations.

Electric steel mills that convert scrap metal into new steel products are the best-known example of an industry which runs exclusively on scrap. Waste-oil refineries are another example: they receive spent lubricants, filter out impurities, and blend the results into various low-end products.

The steel, paper, and glass industries are examples of operations which use both "virgin" materials and waste to make new products. Certain paper mills that produce paperboard (used in folding boxes, as backings for writing pads, and in other stiffening applications—some-times coated on one or both sides by virgin sheets) and some mills that make newsprint also rely exclusively on waste paper. Others blend in portions of waste paper with new fiber. In glass, cullet is segregated by color and if clean enough is used in clear glass; if of dark color, cullet is used in dark-colored glass.

By far the largest recycler of post-consumption scrap is the steel industry. Its products are very durable and widely used in products that are readily collected for recycling (like auto wrecks and appliances). According to the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), the industry routinely recovers more than 70 percent of its output again as scrap; the industry reached a 75.7 percent recycling rate in 2005. Rates vary from year-to-year reflecting economic conditions. The lowest apparent recovery rates in steel coincide with the greatest dispersion of the product. Thus recycled can recovery accounted for 63 percent of steel used in cans and reinforcing bar recovery for 65 percent of re-bar production in 2005, but rates were 102 percent for autos, 96 percent for appliances, and 87.5 percent for structural beams and parts. These rates are calculated by expressing scrap collected from a category (e.g., appliances) with total steel consumed by that category; hence, in the case of autos, more steel was recovered from cars in 2005 than used in cars that year.

THE ENERGY LINK

In the energy-intensive industries—like steel, paper, aluminum, and glass—use of waste materials reduces energy costs because the wastes are already at a higher state of purity than incoming raw materials like ores, logs, and sand. To be sure, energy is required for collecting and transporting such "previously owned" raw materials back to production plants again. In many cases shredding or cutting the waste products requires additional energy. Autos are partially disassembled—seats and engine and electronics are removed. Newsprint requires deinking—another energy-consumptive activity. But energy use is almost always less than required in processing virgin raw materials. For this reason easily accessible products, especially those that are bulky and thus already "aggregated" (like junked cars), are the most easily recycled. Those that require a high degree of sorting and consume the most resources at the front end and are least reused. If energy costs rise in the future—as indeed they are very likely to do—recycling will intensify. In such an environment, human labor ("calories") will become less expensive than machine labor ("BTUs"). As we approach an era of very high energy prices, recycling may offer—as it already does—significant opportunities for small business enterprises in mining our wastes for gold.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davis, Mackenzie L., and Susan J. Masten. Principles of Environmental Engineering and Sciences. McGraw Hill, 2004

Green, Jen. Waste and Recycling. Chrysalis Books Group, 2004.

"Set Up an Office Recycling System." Business Journal—Milwaukee. 11 February 2000.

"Steel Recycling in the U.S. Continues its Record Pace in 2005." Press Release. Steel Recycling Institute. 25 April 2006.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Municipal Solid Waste." August 2005. Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/mswaste/msw.html. Retrieved on 16 May 2006.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2003. April 2005.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Recycling." Available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/recycle.htm#Figures. Retrieved on 15 May 2006.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Summary of the EPA Municipal Solid Waste Program." Available from http://www.epa.gov/reg3wcmd/solidwastesummary.htm. Retrieved on 16 May 2006.

                                   Darnay, ECDI

Recycling

Remains of human settlements through the ages are characterized by garbage. Early human encampments are surrounded by discarded bones, shells, and broken tools and weapons. While such material is a boon to archaeologists, the mountains of discarded materials produced by today's society threaten to consume available land near large cities, and they pollute the water supplies of both rural and urban environments. Nearly every object and material discarded by humans can be recycled, reducing the cost and danger of disposal and providing valuable resources for industry and the home. Recycling also restricts many dangerous substances to facilities designed to handle them.

The Emergence of Recycling

Many Americans remember when garbage disposal was as simple as placing the material in a can in the alley or, in the case of rural residents, feeding the pig, or tossing everything into a nearby ditch in the name, at least, of erosion control. Our ancestors lived lives much simpler and were much less encumbered by material possessions. Bottles, buttons, nails, and wood all passed through a progression of steps and were smelted, rewoven, reshaped, or burned. Few people anywhere lived in societies where many materials were simply thrown away. The largest furniture store now operating in the United States was founded by two immigrants who began their careers as rag and bottle pickers during the early 1900s.

Every bottle or jar in early America was recycled, and pieces were used for purposes as varied as arrowheads and grit for chickens. Birds, lacking teeth, must collect small rocks, or grit, in order to grind their food in the craw. Old-time farmers sometimes ground glass when oyster shell or other sources of grit were unavailable. Ground glass was also mixed with glue to make abrasives. The vast numbers of buffalo killed by Native American or European hunters left huge quantities of bones on the prairie, but early scavengers collected them and shipped them to plants where they were ground for fertilizer. Early-day cloth was collected and treated to reclaim fiber, which could be woven into string or rope. Most cities contain parks, and below many of these parks are landfills dating back as far as the 1800s. A lack of landfill space, increasing transportation costs, and tougher government regulations now diminish the use of landfills, and many smaller communities sport signboards denouncing the importation of waste from other cities or states.

Recycling falls into two categories: direct and indirect. Direct recycling is the reuse of components of manufactured materials before sale, often in the case of damaged or unsold products. Indirect recycling is the practice of recycling products or materials that consumers have used and discarded.

Shortages during World War I and World War II prompted scrap iron, fiber, and rubber drives, reclaiming many essential materials. The first items to be recycled through organized programs other than in wartime were milk and other beverage bottles. In days when milkmen placed bottles on doorsteps, the heavy bottles were returned, washed, and refilled dozens of times. During the 1940s and 1950s, families scavenged for soda and beer bottles and cans along highways, and many children supplemented or earned allowances by collecting bottles for the two-cent deposit. Plastic bottles and aluminum cans have largely replaced the reusable bottles of the twentieth century. Many states now mandate five- to ten-cent deposits on the plastic replacements. The scrap material drives of the World Wars brought the public's attention to the fact that many more fabrics, metals, and rubber items could be recycled.

Water

The most commonly recycled material is water. Seldom destroyed in use, water serves as a medium for chemical reactions and as a heat transfer mechanism in steam or hot water systems, car engines, and various industrial processes. Moderately dirty water may be dumped directly into streams, injected into wells, or, in the case of cooling water from power plants, allowed to pass through wetlands to cool.

Water containing sewage is given primary treatment consisting of settling and filtration and secondary aeration treatment to allow oxidative bacteria to reduce the bacterial oxidative demand (BOD). Tertiary treatment with chlorine, chloramines, or ozone is used if the water is needed for consumption. In rural areas, sewage may pass through a cesspool for sedimentation and anaerobic bacterial action, and the effluent may be distributed through a series of pipes into a disposal field. Water that has low BOD is usually purified by bacterial action in soil so that after passing some distance through the ground, biodegradable substances are removed. It is particularly important that detergents be biodegradable and contain minimal amounts of phosphates and nitrates, as these substances, along with high BOD water, contribute to eutrophication, a rapid growth of bacteria. Eutrophication may consume so much available oxygen that fish and other organisms die.

Farms, ranches, and feedlots provide food but often are major sources of pollution. Modern feedlots store sewage in lagoons where solids can be collected. Effluent water from lagoons often contains microorganisms that serve as food in fish farms, and solids from the lagoons can be processed into fertilizer. The effectiveness of these operations is often determined by the size of the operation and the need for cleanup. Larger operations can afford more complex remediation equipment and tend to be more costeffective than small ones. Most large feedlots are located away from population centers whose residents often complain of the odors.

Federal, state, and municipal laws mandate that industries reclaim most pollutants, such as heavy metals or organic chemicals, from wastewater. Prior to this legislation, toxic chemicals often made their way into the water table. Reclaiming toxic substances protects the environment and, in many cases, provides a valuable source of materials needed for synthesis . In many cases, industries are located near other manufacturing plants that pass their waste to another plant, which uses it as a raw material.

Paper, Steel, and Aluminum

Paper, in the form of used newspapers, packing materials, and telephone books, may be burned for energy, but it still makes up 30 percent to 45 percent of the average landfill. Landfilled paper requires decades to decay and may release methane, a greenhouse gas that is twenty times as deleterious as carbon dioxide. Most paper could be reused or converted to materials used for blown insulation. Nearly 40 percent of office paper and newspapers is now recycled. Two problems occur in recycling paper. Each time paper is reprocessed, the fibers break and become shorter. Office copiers work best with long-fiber paper that has higher tensile strength and produces less dust. Fiber from used paper is often blended with new fibers to produce the desired qualities. A second problem in recycling office paper is the demand for white paper. Used paper pulp often contains ink or other colored materials that must be removed. Some inks and adhesives can be removed by flotation, and bleaching then whitens the pulp. Older methods of chlorine bleaching produced toxic dioxin. Oxygen and hydrogen peroxide are now used to whiten paper and are considered less damaging to the environment. Use of colored papers for printing and copying greatly decreases the need for bleaching.

Steel is widely recycled. Soon after steel was first produced, damaged steel items were recycled into new products. Today, 68 percent of used steel is recycled. The basic oxygen process of steel manufacture uses 25 percent scrap as starting material, and nearly 100 percent of the starting material for steel production by the electric arc process is scrap. Many states have "clunker" laws that require that the purchase of a new car be accompanied by turning in a junked car, and most municipalities have programs for collecting and recycling used auto parts and furniture.

Aluminum is one of the most commonly recycled metals. Although many aluminum products are still discarded, 65 percent of aluminum materials are recycled; 95 percent less energy is needed to produce aluminum from recycled cans than from aluminum ore.

Plastics and Oil

Plastics make up only about 8 percent of the volume in the average landfill but represent a huge investment of energy and raw materials. Most plastics produced from petroleum materials by polymerization of monomers such as ethylene or vinyl chloride are thermoplastic materials and can be cleaned, melted, and re-formed. Thermosetting plastics can also be cut into pieces that are mixed with other plastics or used as fillers. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) are the most widely reused plastic materials, but polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene, and polystyrene account for 5 percent of the recycled plastics. In 2001 80 million pounds (36 million kilograms) of plastics were recycled in the United States. Recycled plastic materials are used in the production of bottles, fabrics, flowerpots, furniture, plastic lumber, injection molded crates, and automobile parts.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans discard 120 million gallons (454 million liters) of oil each year as a result of automobile oil changes. Virtually all this oil can be recycled, and most states require recycling. Used motor oil contains particulate matter and some chemical substances that must be removed during re-refining. As much as 80 percent of used motor oil is used with little change as a fuel for ships or industrial heating equipment, but this practice probably poses a greater danger to the environment than burning refined oil.

Batteries, Rubber, and Paint

Used lead-acid automobile batteries represent a major hazard to the environment. Most landfills accept batteries but place them aside for recycling, which includes collecting and neutralizing the acid, removing the cases, and resmelting the lead plates. Fragments of cases can be recycled into new battery cases, and resmelted lead is used to cast new battery plates. In New Zealand alone, 500,000 lead-acid storage batteries are recycled each year.

Rechargeable batteries from power tools, telephones, and most other devices can be recycled. Nonrecyclable batteries often contain mercury or other toxic metals that are harmful to the environment, but in the early twenty-first century, most were still discarded in landfills.

Rubber products pose a special problem in the environment, and their dumping in landfills usually requires a special fee. Discarded in piles or buried, they occasionally catch fire and produce noxious gases. In developing countries, many used or damaged automobile tires are repaired or disassembled to make other products. Granulated rubber produced from

discarded tires can be used to make floor mats and rubber wheels, and it can be used as a component of asphalt-paving materials. Used rubber can be heated to reclaim petroleum products, treated chemically to obtain components used as filler in manufacturing rubber products, or incinerated as a source of energy.

Many recyclable materials consist of mixed materials that pose special problems. Discarded automobile oil filters contain steel, fiber, and contaminated petroleum. Oil filters are crushed and heated to remove oil, and the metal reclaimed. Discarded household appliances contain large amounts of steel but must often be dismantled, with other materials removed. A special fee is charged at recycling centers to discard most appliances. Fluorescent lamps contain small amounts of mercury that can be reclaimed. Used computers and television sets contain usable materials and, often, some toxic materials that can be collected for safe disposal.

The small amounts of paint generated by the average household cannot be recycled economically, but most municipalities sponsor paint exchange programs and collect oil-based paints. Spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants can be recycled to reclaim unused uranium, and some spent uranium is used to produce armor-piercing bullets. Yard waste from households is often recycled and made into mulch for farming and gardening. Discarded Christmas trees are used to form mulch or are immersed in lakes as a habitat for fish.

see also Environmental Pollution; Water; Water Pollution; Water Quality.

Dan M. Sullivan

Bibliography

Ehrig, R. J., ed. (1992). Plastics Recycling: Products and Processes. New York: Hanser Publishers.

Internet Resources

American Plastics Council. Information available from <http://www.plastics.org>.

Environmental News Network. Information available from <http://www.enn.com>.

United States Environmental Protection Agency. Information available from <http://www.epa.gov>.

RECYCLING

RECYCLING. The term "recycling" was virtually unused outside of industry before the late 1960s when voluntary programs were formed by counterculture communities. The emerging culture of hippies reapplied the age-old practice of collecting and reusing materials. For centuries, rag pickers collected worn out cloth and sold it to those who made paper. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did the demand for paper outstrip the quantity of rags. It was then that the method of making paper from wood was invented. Wood soon replaced textile fiber entirely in paper manufacturing, preparing the way for paper to become the most plentiful item in twentieth-century landfills.

The United States evolved from a nation of people who saved pieces of twine and reused nails (as Henry David Thoreau did, when building his cabin at Walden Pond) to a "throwaway society" of people who discarded containers, furniture, appliances, and even automobiles by the mid-twentieth century. The need to conserve and reuse materials, while stressed as a patriotic duty during World War II, was forgotten in the postwar boom.

"Fast food" emerged, sold in plastic and foam containers which, like so much else, was considered "disposable." Then, on the heels of the 1960s movements for civil rights and peace, came "the greening of America," a political movement to save the environment. The size of the environmental movement became apparent on 22 April 1970 when 20 million people turned out to celebrate the first Earth Day. Months later, Congress created the Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA). Soon books like Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome (1972) began making the case that our American way of life was not sustainable.

The Truth about Consequences: Hard Choices

Recycling is the most obvious way individuals can assist in waste management, though source reduction can also be practiced. The "diaper wars" of the late 1980s exemplify the latter, reducing the amount of waste by using cloth diapers. But the makers of disposable diapers argued that washing cloth diapers used energy and water, offsetting any benefit. Making choices that "save the Earth" turned out to be complex.

Another hard choice for consumers was the "paper or plastic" question at the grocery store. This apparently ethical question became moot when it was discovered that neither would decompose in a landfill. Marketers promoted items as good for the environment because they were biodegradable, but consumers later found that the term had little meaning. One researcher dug up ten-year old chicken bones in a landfill, demonstrating that in the absence of light and air, even organic waste does not decompose.

Recycling Goes Mainstream

In the late 1980s, news reports began referring to a "land-fill crisis" and showed images of medical waste washing up on beaches. Support for recycling spread beyond the minority of environmentalists to the general population. By then most of the voluntary programs, unable to accommodate the quantity of recyclables and fluctuating prices, had disappeared. In their stead, large, efficient trash collection companies had begun to offer curbside recycling (often required by municipalities). This combination of widespread concern and the convenience of curbside collection led to increasing quantities of recycled trash.

Recycling is, of course, only one of many interrelated environmental issues, but it is the one to which everyone can contribute directly. Americans began to associate it with groundwater pollution, topsoil erosion, deforestation, and global warming. "Do you recycle?" became an ethical question, and curbside recycling grew rapidly in urban areas. By 1999, curbside recycling was available to over half the population of the United States. It was much more widespread in the urban Northeast (83 percent) than in the more rural South (39 percent), with the West and Midwest averaging 48 percent.

Thus the quantity of household waste which was recycled increased significantly in the United States. In 1980, the average weight of materials recycled per person per day was 0.35 pounds; it increased to 0.70 by 1990 and to 1.30 by 1999. At the same time, the amount of generated waste increased from 3.7 in 1980 to 4.5 in 1990; however, that figure stopped growing as rapidly and was only 4.6 pounds in 1999.

On Earth Day 1990, about 200 million people in 137 countries showed support. Recycling was declared "more popular than democracy" by the editor of Resource Recycling who claimed that more people recycled than voted in the November 1991 elections (September 1992 issue; qtd. in Ackerman, p. 8). Indeed, recycling had become so significant in the American conscience that a Wall Street Journal article connected the act of recycling with religious ritual: "For many, a little trash sorting has become a form of penance to acknowledge that the values of our high-consumption society don't always nurture the soul" (19 January 1995; quoted in Ackerman, pp. 9–10). The

title of the article, "Curbside Recycling Comforts the Soul, But Benefits Are Scant," suggests one of the basic points of contention: should recycling be profitable?

To Recycle or Not: The Argument

Challengers to recycling argue that we should allow the market to determine what is recycled. For the most part, curbside recycling does not pay for itself except for aluminum cans. The environmental advocates, however, list two kinds of benefits. First, in waste management, recy-cling reduces the amount of waste, thereby reducing both pollution from landfills and litter from improper disposal; second, on the production end, recycled materials reduce pollution and energy costs and extend the life of raw materials which cannot be replaced.

The "anti-recyclers" argue that the "landfill crisis" of the 1980s was largely exaggerated and that even with the added cost of containment, landfills are cheaper than recycling. However, many people balk at locating landfills near where they live: the NIMBY response ("Not In My Back Yard"). Further, recycling advocates point out, we must weigh the social value of recycling rather than measure it solely by economics, and if we do use economics, we must consider the hidden costs (such as cleaning up pollution and end-of-life disposal) and not just the immediate ones.

The continuing dialogue about recycling is well illustrated by the February 2002 response of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC)—one of many groups formed around this issue—to the white paper put out by the EPA. The NRC finds much to approve of in the EPA recommendations but returns to the fundamental issue of sustainability: can we go on producing and consuming and disposing of material goods at an ever-increasing rate?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackerman, Frank. Why Do We Recycle: Markets, Values, and Public Policy. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.

Alexander, Judd H. In Defense of Garbage. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993.

Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.

Strong, Debra L. Recycling in America: A Reference Handbook. 2d ed. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1997.

William E.King

See alsoWaste Disposal .

recycling the process of recovering and reusing waste products—from household use, manufacturing, agriculture, and business—and thereby reducing their burden on the environment. During World War I and World War II, shortages of essential materials led to collection drives for silk, rubber, and other commodities. In recent years the environmental benefits of recycling have become a major component of waste management programs.

Waste Disposal and Recycling

For many years direct recycling by producers of surplus and defective materials constituted the main form of recycling. However, indirect recycling, the recycling of materials after their use by consumers, became the focus of activity in the 1990s. For some time, most solid waste has been deposited in landfills or dumps. Landfills are filling up, however, and disposal of wastes in them has led to environmental problems. Also, government (which had little authority over disposal of wastes until the 1970s) now has extensive regulatory powers.

A growing alternative to such disposal is recycling. Industry has found that when it undertakes serious recycling programs, the savings can sometimes be considerable. In addition to reducing manufacturing and materials costs, such programs can insulate the companies from liability for environmental violations. Agriculture, which is the cause of much environmental degradation, can use organic recycling, or the reuse of manure and crop residues (sometimes called "green manure" ).

Water, in one sense, is always recycled, inasmuch as there is a finite amount of it available on earth and it constantly moves through its cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Deliberate programs for recycling water include use of wetlands as areas to filter harmful wastes from the substance, or using partly treated sewage for raising fish. Municipal sewage- and water-treatment plants, of course, are fundamental recycling agents.

The individual consumer plays a large part in recycling. Originally, household containers such as beverage cans and bottles were recycled as a matter of course, with a glass beer container or milk bottle being refilled as many as 30 times; in 1935, brewers began putting their products in nonrefillable, "one-way" cans for the convenience of customers, and soon glass containers were declared disposable as well. With the rise of environmentalism in the early 1970s, recycling regained favor. Several states instituted deposit laws for beverage containers; a 5- or 10-cent deposit was charged the consumer at the time of purchase for each can or bottle, then refunded when the container was returned to a store or recycling center. Newspapers take up much volume in landfills, and some recycling programs seek to collect them (along with other sorted categories of waste, such as organic matter, bones, and plastic).

Use of Recycled Materials

In 1996, 27% of solid waste in the United States was recycled. Products that are recycled in large quantities include paper and paperboard, ferrous metals, aluminum and other nonferrous metals, glass, plastics, and yard wastes. Although many local communities have instituted comprehensive recycling programs, these remain expensive. Because the quality of recycled items is often inferior (often due to the mixture or age of the materials in the items being recycled) and not suitable for their original purpose, the price for many recycled materials remains low and makes recycling economically nonviable in some instances. In an attempt to solve this problem, new uses have been created for recovered waste material. Crushed glass, for instance, can be substituted for gravel or sand in road surfacing and other construction applications; the resulting product is called "glassphalt." Scientists and entrepreneurs are also working on ways to turn the world's growing piles of discarded automobile tires into new products or to use them to generate safe energy.

Bibliography

See R. E. Easterling, Reuse of Disposables (1983); W. U. Chandler, Materials Recycling (1983); C. Polprasert, Organic Waste Recycling (1989).

recycling As the world's resources diminished, a new policy of reusing produce made of primary raw materials was adopted in the Western world in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The policy is now to recycle and reuse waste to the maximum possible extent, to reduce the quantity of unrecoverable waste, and to dispose of as safely as possible any unrecoverable waste. The composition of Western domestic waste is 20–45 per cent paper and board, 15–30 per cent kitchen (animal and vegetable) waste, 6–13 per cent glass, 3–8 per cent plastics, 4–11 per cent metals, 3–5 per cent textiles, and 3–5 per cent dust and ashes. In Europe, the recycling policy is most advanced in countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, which have little disposable land for landfilling. The European Union Directive on Recycling dictates that by 2001 member countries should recover at least 50 per cent of their waste and recycle at least 25 per cent. According to 1995 figures the European glass recycling rate is highest in Switzerland (85 per cent), the Netherlands (80 per cent), and Germany and Norway (both 75 per cent). The UK is at the bottom of the list of EU countries, recycling only 27 per cent of glass. For steel packaging (1995 figures), Germany has the highest recycling rate in the EU (67 per cent), closely followed by the Netherlands (58 per cent). The UK, on the other hand, recycles only 16 per cent, of steel packaging. The end use of recovered materials is very varied. Paper and board are recycled to produce packaging materials, tissue, toilet paper, printing paper, and writing paper. Glass is recycled to make bottles, flooring materials, and materials for road-filling and road-surfacing. Metals are recycled according to their composition. Iron-based tins are taken to steelworks, and aluminium cans and foil are a primary aluminium substitute. Plastics (PVC: polyvinyl chloride) are recycled to make PVC tubes and pipes as well as fleece fabric. Textile waste is used to make wiping cloths and, more recently, fashion clothes. Note that the recycling of glass and aluminium saves energy. More and more countries now have special arrangements for the collection of wastes; consumers then have to sort their waste into kitchen waste, glass, metals, plastics, paper, and textiles. This practice will increase in the future as the Earth's resources continue to diminish. Some EU countries have stringent regulations for the reuse of packaging materials to minimize waste. For example, Denmark has banned all metal-based drinking cans; drinks, from beer to soft drinks, are sold in bottles, which are returned to the factories and reused. Similarly, Germany has a policy for the reuse of glass used for packaging milk, yoghurt, juice, beer, mineral water, and other common commodities.

K. Vala Ragnarsdottir

re·cy·cle / rēˈsīkəl/ • v. [tr.] convert (waste) into reusable material: car hulks were recycled into new steel | [as adj.] (recycled) goods made of recycled materials | [as n.] (recycling) a call for the recycling of all paper. ∎  return (material) to a previous stage in a cyclic process. ∎  use again: he reserves the right to recycle his own text. DERIVATIVES: re·cy·cler / -k(ə)lər/ n.

recycling Natural and manufactured processes by which substances are broken down and reconstituted. In nature, elemental cycles include the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, and hydrological cycle. Natural cyclic chemical processes include the metabolic cycles in the bodies of living organisms. Manufactured recycling includes the use of bacteria to break down organic wastes to harmless, or even beneficial, substances. Large quantities of inorganic waste, such as metal scrap, glass bottles, and building spoil, are recycled.

recycling
1. The recovery and processing of materials after they have been used, which enables them to be reused. For example, used paper, cans, and glass can be broken down into their constituents, which form the raw materials for the manufacture of new products.

2. The continual movement of essential elements between the biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) components of the environment. See carbon cycle; nitrogen cycle; oxygen cycle; phosphorus cycle; sulphur cycle.