Throughout history, recycling has been around in one form or another. Even as long ago as 400 BC indications of early recycling are known to have taken place. Archaeological reports show that ancient waste dumps contained less of what’s known today as household waste, like pots, utensils and ash, which demonstrates that individuals were, even back then, keen to reuse products during a period when natural resources weren’t so freely available.
Indeed it could be argued how the old ‘rag-and-bone’ man was just an early recycler collecting unwanted goods on his horse and cart, before reusing or turning the accumulated items into new stuff.
During periods like the World War Years, recycling and re-use were crucial as natural resources became considerably more difficult to find. As well as food being rationed, certain materials such as metal and fibre were largely permitted just for use by the government to support military operations, in order to meet manufacturing requirements often in the production of weaponry.
Thanks to rising power costs, the requirement to recycle aluminium increased during the 1970’s.. As a material aluminium utilises a reduced amount of energy in the production process than alternative materials. Also it was much sought after owing to its non rusting qualities. The demand for aluminium saw the emergence of scrap metal merchants who were prepared to pay good money in return for good quality metal. In addition, in the seventies in areas of the USA, the first trucks were seen to be collecting waste with a separate trailer for recovery of recyclable items being towed behind the vehicle. This was mainly for large bulky things such as bedsteads and old carpets.
Towards the late eighties, early 1990’s and as the awareness of handling the intercontinental environmental state accelerated amongst worldwide governing bodies, the focus upon recycling really began to collect energy. In the UK, the authorities imposed recycling targets upon Local Authorities and with the introduction of fresh new legislation upon the waste products market, recycling initiatives really began to take off. The once commonly knownwaste disposal companies, began to call themselves waste management businesses and demonstrated through the offer of waste collection and recyclable material collection that waste needed to be managed more efficiently.
Currently, many hundreds of materials and resources tend to be recycled, which range from paper, card, glass and plastics, to mobile phone handsets, electrical items, printer cartridges, textiles, clothing and concrete.
What is Recycling?
The word recycling identifies the process of reprocessing used items into new or nearly new products and avoid the need for potentially valuable materials or products to be dumped. Essentially it is diverting waste materials away from landfill.
Recycling performs an important role in a world where climate change is high on the green agenda. It removes the need to unnecessarily send waste material and products to landfill or other waste disposal options. Consequently this lessens the need or the reliance upon consuming fresh or new raw materials, cuts back energy use and air and water pollution, all of which contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Significant contributions to improving the environment.
Recycling is probably most evident through the recycling facilities now provided by local authorities for household refuse and recycling collections and also modern waste management organisations who commonly provide a full range of waste and recycling collection services. Some companies, who have traditionally concentrated primarily on the collection of recyclable materials, are now extending their service offering to collect general waste at the same time.
In recent years the recovery of energy from waste is becoming an essential green process for the benefit of all.
In the waste market, the common advertising activity surrounds the waste materials hierarchy - ‘reduce, reuse, recycle and recover’. This 4 R slogan is a basic message made for a far reaching crowd. Consider ways to lessen your waste material. Could the waste materials products or materials be reused? Can the waste product or material be recycled or retrieved?
The waste materials hierarchy is often a strategy that a lot of waste material management companies and local authorities look at when producing new waste management procedures. The strategy is meant to concentrate the thought process around preventing waste being produced to start with. Think about the options for reuse and recycling but ultimately minimise the amount of waste produced at the end of the cycle. The slogan has been adopted particularly well in the public sector.
So the focus is very much on the entire production process. The waste hierarchy extends much wider than to waste materials management companies and local authorities. Working groups have already been established to bring many industries together to consider the entire waste cycle. By way of example, the producer of a product must consider how a product is to be constructed. Can components be used which could eventually be recycled or reused? Could the amount of packaging that surrounds the product be cut down? Once the item gets to the retailer, is it necessary for the product to be located within an outer package? Once the retailer sells the merchandise, what will the buyer do with the excess elements of the purchase, i.e. the packaging? How will the packaging be handled and where will it go? Can it return to a recycling plant, for onward shipment to a reprocessing facility, where the cycle begins once again?
How are Materials Collected for Recycling?
Legislation now dictates that most waste needs to be processed to divert the amount of recyclables and unnecessary waste material going direct to landfill. Since 1996, the United Kingdom government has enforced a landfill levy on all waste material discarded within landfill. The rate of duty has increased considerably recently rising from the original level of £8 per ton, to today’s rate of £40 per ton. The UK government has recently declared that this will increase further to £48 per ton from the end of 2010/11. This charge applies to all general waste material streams, although there’s a lesser rate for inert products. Dispatching waste materials directly to landfill is an expensive course of action and locating suitable methods to divert waste out of landfill is now a priority.
Therefore, the message to everybody is obvious, segregate your waste materials to cut back the amount of waste materials going to landfill. Traditionally, at home or at work, the instant you place waste into the container , it is forgotten about. Someone else will collect it and take it away. Today, in the home and at work, recycling is being encouraged via the supply of bins in which to place specific recyclable materials.
Some common materials to be seen being collected for recycling are paper, card, glass, metals and plastics. Even so the possiblity to recycle many materials or products keeps growing. Although technically not seen as recycling, food waste and garden waste collections are increasing, where the food or garden waste material is taken back to a facility for processing into a reusable or saleable compost product.
Practise of anaerobic digestion introduces micro- organisms in to biodegradable matter, that works in the absence of oxygen and reduces the emissions of landfill gas.
The methods of collecting items or waste to be recycled is also growing and becoming more visible within local communities. Dedicated collection sites, often referred to as bring bank sites, are springing up in superstore car parks to motivate customers of the superstore to return such objects as bottles, newspapers or cardboard to the containers on their way into the store.
Local Authority waste material collection crews or their appointed contractors will collect refuse and recyclables from the kerbside usually in front of your house. Collection from household premises usually continues to be the duty of the local authorities and several have now employed the supply of bins in which to collect specific recyclable materials or products. The services do vary from council to council.
In the industrial and commercial sector, waste materials management companies offer different storage containers in which the customer deposits the correct waste material stream or recyclable materials ready for collection. The particular containers will usually be plainly tagged as to which recyclable product ought to be placed inside that container or bin. Alternatively, the bins will be colour coded to distinguish which recyclable materials should be placed within which bins. Waste management companies also may have to deal with special requests from the customer.
The key to a successful recycling initiative is homeowners about what can be recycled and how. In the commercial world getting the co-operation of factory employees is crucial. The introduction of any recycling scheme must ensure that in asking employees to separate waste for recycling, it does not become time consuming and affect the productivity of what employees should be doing in their work. The introduction of any recycling scheme should be kept simple.
The Recycling Process
Several collection systems exist for the collection of the recyclable products . Regardless of what collection system is utilised , the materials are taken to a recycling centre where they will be segregated from other waste materials.
To start the recycling process from a collection point of view, the more recyclable materials which can be segregated at source, i.e. at home or in the work place, the more efficient it will be for the waste collector. For this reason individual containers are supplied to the waste producer to inspire separation at source. If card could be collected using a truck, that will collect no other waste material, the card will be kept uncontaminated and as a consequence could have an improved value when it gets to the processing plant. Likewise, specialist glass collection vehicles are widely-used to collect only glass. Apart from the obvious health and safety reasons and the weight of collected glass, it’ll have a much higher value if the collected glass load is not mixed with other waste materials. Uncontaminated recyclables will present a much higher value than contaminated products.
Once collected, the recyclable resources can be taken direct to the reprocessing plant, if the load contains only that specific type of material. So a dedicated glass collection truck could take the load straight to a glass processing plant.
If compounded recyclables are collected like paper and card within the same container, it might be necessary for the collector to take the load to a drop off point to unload and allow the load to be segregated into separate paper and card bundles for onward transfer to a paper or card processing plant. Whichever technique is used, the recyclable material collected will often be segregated or washed before proceeding through to a reprocessing facility to be converted to a new resource and ultimately used as a new product or in manufacturing. Inert materials can be a useful by product at landfill, such as shredded car tyres to aid grip on access roads.
There will be many ways to generate green energy within the home and now there are government schemes in the form of subsidies to encourage these initiatives.
The Increasing Value of Recycling
In the UK close to 35% of waste materials collected from households is recycled or composted. Although in the business and industrial sector, the quantity of waste materials delivered to landfill has dropped substantially recently plus the amount of waste material now being diverted for recycling or reuse by this sector has risen above the amounts going to landfill.
Landfill continues to play a vital role in the control of waste across the UK as not all waste items are able to be recycled and several are more suited to landfill disposal than by some other means. Nonetheless, it’s not just the increasing expense of getting rid of waste directly in landfill which is making recycling a far more attractive option for businesses. Landfill has started to become scarce, with certain specialists indicating that the quantity of void available across all UK landfill sites, has under 10 years existence remaining before all sites are considered to be filled. Such countries as Dubai have filled parts of the coastline with their waste and created useful land area to extend the boundaries of their kingdom.
In the past few years, waste material management companies have had to change their focus, and start to take into consideration and put money into new technologies, such as energy from waste facilities, anaerobic digestion plants and mechanised biological treatment plants, as alternate options to landfill. Local Authorities have changed their views by commencing comprehensive strategic reviews as to how waste under their jurisdiction needs to be dealt with. In some cases this means unitary authorities are progressing plans to introduce extended agreements, usually around two-and-a-half decades long, through which to regulate all of their waste materials management needs. These deals will most likely include the need to build a facility through which to handle all waste material created throughout the city by sorting all waste material streams. The contracts might also incorporate the collection of waste and recyclables from homes across the area. So the issue of waste management is changing rapidly. The days of simply throwing everything in the dustbin have vanished and the arrival of new technologies are upon us. The introduction of new technologies will play a huge role in the future of waste management.
Conclusion
Recycling has become a lifestyle and is not going anywhere soon. It has evolved over the years from something that was carried out with no real thought behind it. The trusty rag and bone man was just working to make a living. Today, many blue chip organisations are setting out plans for a ‘zero to landfill’ waste plan, where the intention is very obvious - reduce waste, reuse waste and recycle waste, but no waste must wind up in landfill.
Many households across the country now have some type of container in which to separate waste for recycling. The decision to split up newspapers, aluminium cans and plastic bottles are almost the norm. Whilst in industrial and commercial areas, there is an increasing list of items to consider for recycling like printer cartridges, office paper, metal and electrical equipment. Even on street corners and airports you see bins to recycle such items as newspapers and drink cans.
Ideally the whole process would be a complete cycle such as it was in the days of the horse. However the advent of new technologies will increase further the way in which our waste is to be managed in the future, but it is highly improbable that we will ever reach the ultimate waste free society. There will always be a need for waste to be disposed of somewhere, somehow.
