July 31, 2013 • 41 mins
What are the numbers behind recycling? Which materials are more easily recycled? What else can we do besides recycle?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future. It says, it
feels just like I'm walking on broken glass. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(00:21):
I'm Lauren WelCom, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
going to talk about the three RS, but mainly recycling.
That's of course, reducing, reusing and recycling. We were talking
about the future of trash and is recycling part of
that future and where does it play it's part and
how important is it and does it make sense? Uh?
(00:42):
And some of the answers are are might you know
they might surprise you. Um, it's not even across the board.
And also it's something that's constantly changing due to our
improvements in the technology and processes. Let me guess it's
for hippies. You shouldn't do it, according to and teller, Yeah,
what you should do is go out consuming. That doesn't
(01:04):
surprise me. They had a they had a show. Um,
I'm not sure if I can actually say the title
of the show was was the name? That was the
name of the show? And um, and they had an
episode on recycling in which Pen in particular came down
very harshly on it. Yeah, well, I mean most of it.
And there there are certain arguments you can make against
(01:25):
recycling certain products. I think a lot of that again
will change over time due to improvements in tech and processes.
But to really, first of all, I mean, let's talk
about what recycling is. Obviously, it's it's for those who
just have never heard the term Welcome to Earth. Recycling is,
of course taking material that you normally would just throw
(01:47):
away and and uh and breaking it down to be
reused in some form further down the line, whether it's
to create more of the same product as what you
were currently using or something entirely different. I think part
of the key of understanding recycling is the idea that
there's some reprocessing involved, right, that it's not just reusing,
(02:08):
saying right, right, right, It's not taking a jar that
you've used and putting something different in it, hopefully after
you've washed it. Um that that would be reusing. By
the way, if anyone comes over to my house for
any sort of party or whatever, you're going to be
drinking out of Mason jars, I'm not a hipster. It's
not that I think that that's a cool thing. You're
just Southern and that's what you have. I buy a
(02:29):
lot of pickled vegetables, and then I think I want
to keep using these jars, and so that's that's my
glassware for the most part. I mean it just it is.
I got to collect your urine for the apocalypse somehow,
that's right. Well, I'll start on my urine later. I'm
collecting other people's right now. And it turns out that
it's a lot harder to convince people than I first expect,
(02:52):
like biometric falsification, yeah, or just throwing at aliens just
in case that happens to be their weakness. So recycling
has been has it has been used actually for for
for really for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Um,
going going back to when people were making metal tools,
realized I don't really like this one. Let's melt it
(03:12):
down and make it again. Um, technically is recycling. Got
that tool or sword or etcetera. Right, Right, So if
you've if you folded in a thousand times and major
katana for your end of Days duel against the Kurgan,
you know, yeah, or if you just were, I guess,
if you were to beat your swords into plashhairs, right, recycling. So,
(03:35):
but but really that's not you know, that's that's one
form of recycling, but it's not really what we think
of when we're talking recycling. It's not the industry level
thing that we've got going on today. Yeah, there was
a I mean, obviously there was a big push to
recycling back in the thirties and forties, right right, well
even even before that, around the turn of the century
is is when a bunch of industries started getting together
(03:56):
and um processing scraps. World War One was when this
became much more important because because because materials became so
scarce due to the global war efforts that uh, some
companies began rendering garbage to recover grease and make make
tankage out of the rest of it. Tankage being um
uh non fat related proteins, usually from from animal parts
(04:20):
that can be used for fertilizer um and uh. And
then yeah, the through through the nineteen thirties, during the
Great Depression here in America certainly, and hard economic times
in many other places, conservation recycling became so important due
to I mean a lot of people made most of
their income by collecting items and selling them for scrap.
And then you get to World War Two and there's
(04:42):
more recycling efforts for the war effort. Again, Uh, you
had fewer people to work on things because you had
so much of the workforce sent off to war that
you know, you didn't have as many people to actually
get the raw materials you usually would need to produce.
And in wartime production is a big part of it, right,
(05:03):
I mean everything from the stuff you would think of
like vehicles and weapons and ammunition that sort of stuff.
Two things that you might not necessarily imagine, just to
keep everyone who's still, you know, away from the fighting
supplied with the stuff that they need. Boots did you
need to make in World War two? Lots? Yeah, rubber
(05:24):
and UH and nylon items that were made that were
used at the time to make lots of common clothing
items wound up being used in Uh. Nylon was used
for parachutes for the war effort, and UH, and of
course rubber for tires and yeah. Actually, the fact that
they switched from like DuPont was making nylon stockings, they
stopped making nylon stockings in order to make materials for
(05:46):
the war effort, and apparently that caused a bunch of
um well they were called nylon riots when when DuPont
went back to creating nylon stockings, there was apparently a
run on stores because I rum didn't mean to make
a run joke. Boy, that was a pun. That was
complete puns. We're so yeah, that was that again, And
(06:12):
that was sort of changing gears for production. But it
also meant that repurposing this material for something else. Repurposing
and recycling was so big during the wars. It was
more far reaching than than most people today really realize. UM.
For for example, during the UH during the Victorian era,
fancy cemeteries, UM every cemetery plot would have these gorgeous
(06:33):
wrought iron fencings around them. And during the Two World Wars,
you won't find those today basically anywhere because all of
them were melted down during the wars. And so you
know it's its People would picnic there. It was very nice,
you know, cemetery, that's what you do. Yeah, sure, but
doing yere in Atlanta to Oakland Cemetery does it all
the time. That is where I learned about this. By
(06:58):
the way, visit Oakland there you go. Also, so you
get up to like the nineteen seventies, that's really when
we got into the environmentalism movement. So recycling up until
the nineteen seventies was more about conserving resources for use
for particular efforts, like the World War effort. When you
say resources, you mean the raw materials themselves, like the
(07:20):
thing that's being reprocessed. Right, it was. It was recycling
because in order for us to meet our needs to
do them. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't you know. It
wasn't a save the environment kind of thing. It was
we need more X. The best way to do it
is to pull up a bunch of Y, melt it
down and turn them into X. Right. Right. And in fact,
(07:41):
immediately after the war, especially here in the States, we
went through that economic boom where people were very um
conspicuously consuming, and it became argue, we're still there, are
more conspicuous than others, especially at the time, by pair
of glasses buying new stuff. Jonathan just got his Google glass.
(08:01):
It's very exciting, um or our Google glass. It's all
of ours, you can share, come on over. But yeah,
it wasn't until the first Earth Day in nine seventy
and um in three was when the first curb side
recycling program got off the ground here in the States.
Um and and then through through the nineties, I think
(08:23):
is when it started really picking up, you know, due
to a Captain, Planet and Gully. Tim Curry played the
bad guy in that he did you know? I laughed?
But Captain and Planet made an impression on me, did he?
I think? So? Were you? Were you a planet tier?
I guess you know, I never got a ring. But see,
(08:44):
for me, it's always I just go back to the
image of the Native American with the one tear going
down the cheek to avoid littering. That's that's where my
environmentalism comes from. Isn't it funny All these issues kind
of get blurred together, like waste waste management, littering, landfills, recycling.
But it'll be worth us talking about exactly what the
(09:08):
real benefits of recycling are. Well, first I kind of curious,
like how does it happen? Like how does recycling work? Well? Yeah,
that's interesting. So there are um okay, well let's start
at your house. I guess. Okay, so you've got a
bunch of recyclables and they'll be say glass bottles and uh,
plastic containers, paper products like cardboard and newspaper, and cans,
(09:35):
aluminum cans, steel cans, tin um. And you want to
get all this stuff recycled, Well there are two. There's
a big distinction you want to make right at the beginning,
which is sorted versus unsorted um, And different municipalities I
think will deal with that in different ways. Like some
people require sorted, and that makes sense because it's much
(09:56):
easier to process when the recycling a drives pre sorted
to the processing facility. But what I've read is that
that also lowers participation because you're putting the burden on
the person and for some people that's just too much trouble. Yeah,
they don't they don't want to go through the effort
(10:17):
of sorting through the stuff that they want to recycle
and put it into one of five different bins or whatever. Um.
So it also just makes it it makes it less
convenient for the person. And the sad fact is is
the more inconvenient it is, the lower the participation is
going to be. Yeah, So these facilities get more materials
(10:38):
overall if they allow mixed mixed mixed materials material Yeah, yeah,
but then that makes it more difficult to actually to
actually recycle the stuff, right, and they sort it. Interestingly,
we're getting a lot better at that. Um. So, the
so you put you take these mixed materials and you
have say curb curbside pickup, so a tryan spur truck
(11:00):
comes along along a route and and picks up all
the materials and takes them to a place called materials
recovery facility. And from there you essentially put all your
materials on a conveyor belt and from here. It's not
the same at every facility. Um But so I'm just
gonna give kind of a standard view of some things
(11:21):
I've seen. Um One thing that's going to vary between
all these facilities is the level of automation versus manual sorting.
Um So, more advanced facilities have fewer human workers working
to take these things out and have better processes for
sorting automatically. But so, usually the first thing will happen
is there's some kind of initial purge where obvious trash
(11:43):
is removed because you know, what, do you know, people
put pizza in their recycling and stuff that they can't take.
Um So you try to remove that at the beginning,
and then usually after that, one of the first things
they want to do is remove glass, because glass is
kind of a different animal than most of these other
things we recycle, and so glass will be moving along
(12:06):
conveyor belt, and if it's not removed manually, it can
be removed automatically by like a raking mechanism that separates
based on weight and shape, or there can be gravity sorting,
so that there's a conveyor belt moving sort of upward
at an angle with enough friction to carry up plastic
and paper products, right, but glass rolls down off of it.
(12:31):
And so once the glass is separated, that's usually crushed
up into a constituency of shards called cullet, and that
that can be used for all kinds of different things.
But most of the rest of the products apart from glass,
eventually what the goal is to bail them, like hey, um,
(12:52):
And so after glass is removed, they'll usually sort out
paper products and they can do that by mechanical action
or by hand. Um. And you separate those out and
take them to a fiber bailer and bail them up together. Uh.
Steel cans are often separated by magnets and that's interested.
The UH conveyor belt will just pass under a very
(13:13):
powerful magnet just sucks them straight up. But then you've
got a problem that you've got all these aluminum cans
and these other alloys that aren't their non ferrest materials,
so they're not attracted to magnets. So one of the
popular ways of dealing with that these days is you
have something called an eddy current separator, and that's this
powerful magnetic rotor that generates a field that blasts non
(13:38):
ferrost metals off in some direction. It creates a separate
magnetic field within the can itself, and UH and and
and that magnetic field will be at at odds with
with the field being generated by the device. We'll just
pop it right off the belt. Interesting, so you've got
so say you've separated everything else by now, and you've
got non ferros metals, and you've got plastic and they're
(14:01):
rolling along. The plastic will just sit there. But when
the the aluminum cans pass over this thing, they shoot, shoot,
you know, fly away, I guess into a big basket
or whatever you use, take them to the bailor smash
them down into a cube. Um, those will be ready
and then finally, usually you're gonna have plastic, and that's
(14:21):
sort of according to type. So you've probably seen like
number one plastic, number two plastics, like type two plastics
like milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs, that kind of thing. Yeah,
And those things are separated into different groups for ease
of reprocessing um and uh. And that can be done
by hand or automatically by things like they're sort of
(14:43):
optical field separators. So they shoot out some beam of
light that penetrates a different plastics in different ways and
use a sensor to to figure out what bits uh
exactly which. Yeah, as it passes over like a like
a gap in the conveyor um or or something like that,
it will use air jets to to to shoot out
(15:06):
the ones that it wants to. Yeah. So then at
the end, and so you got your plastic leftover and
smash that into bales, and then at the end, your
final product is you've got glass color, bales of plastic,
bales of paper products, bales of aluminum, bales of steel
um and all of these things are then sold to
manufacturers or I guess really whoever wants them, and you
(15:28):
can buy recycled materials and just go pay for a
bale of steel. Yeah, and in fact, um, let's talk
about some of the stuff that can be made from
recycled materials. Now, there's some stuff that you know, is
you've probably heard of things like you know, made tires
made out of recycled materials, even pavement made from recycled materials. Uh.
(15:49):
Typically a lot of the stuff ends up making more
of whatever it was before. So, for example, a lot
of paper, recycled paper ends up going into things like
paper plates, napkins, paper towels, uh, that sort of stuff.
So a lot of that reclaimed paper just becomes more
paper products. Same thing with aluminium, a lot of like
you know, the odds of an aluminium can becoming something
(16:11):
like a car frame are low. It can happen. There
are manufacturers out there that will use recycled aluminum as
part of their materials for designing this stuff. But it's
far more likely that the aluminium can you tossing the
recycling is going to become a new aluminium can. Glass
some glass depending. Glass is tricky because glass comes in
(16:34):
a lot of different kinds as well, Like you can
have glass that's and colors or you can have clear
glass that can change things up. Often glass will get
down cycled. Now, down cycle means that you convert this
into material that is slightly less valuable than what the
raw material was or what the original product was. So,
for example, a glass jar, you might throw that out
(16:57):
in in recycling or whatever, and it gets re cycled
as part of uh something that's made out of fiberglass,
and by weight, it's less valuable. That's why we call
it down cycling, because it's moved down a level. Um,
So that will uh, that's fairly common to for a
glass to go into things like fiberglass. But then there's
(17:17):
some kind of cool stuff. I'm going to mention some
specific companies too, just for some sort of nifty products
that are made of recycled materials. For example, Uh, there's
a group called Keens Harvest Bags. They make like messenger bags, okay,
but they make them out of recycled air bags from cars.
(17:38):
Are actually really cool. Uh, you know, they just kind
of a nifty way of reusing this material that otherwise
might not ever be used. There's violence, what's that I
just imagined getting a messenger bag that had like blood
or I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen. I think that
might be bad press for the company. Um, I appalled
(18:00):
gized to Keene's harvest bill. No, I'm not that would happen.
I know, I know, it's just the first know, I'm
right there with you. U. There's vinyl luxe. Vinyl Luxe
uses uh something that has beloved to me old vinyl records.
So some old vinyl records are beyond the uh they've
(18:22):
just they've passed their prime right there. There might be scratches,
there might be some sort of warping, and anyway, it
makes the music less than or whatever was recorded on
them less than interesting or pleasurable to listen to. And
so what vinyl X does is it takes old vinyl
records that are you know, kind of messed up and
then creates things like bowls or clocks, uh, ornaments and
(18:45):
other stuff and uh, anything that they don't use, like
any scraps that are left over from their their projects
gets sent to a plant in Nashville actually, and all
of that those scraps are melted down to create new
vinyl records, to help to be the material for new
vinyl records, so nothing gets wasted There is another company
(19:08):
called Looped Works, and they have used recycled neoprene, nylon,
vinyl polyester leather to create all sorts of different products,
like like electronics covers, like a cover case for you know,
a tablet or something. Uh, some really cool designs coming
out of them. And then there's a company called Moving
(19:29):
Comfort like this one a lot. They remove chemicals from
coffee grounds and turn it into yarn and then we've
cloth out of this stuffy fibrous shirts. It's actually the
chemicals from coffee grounds. So they're making a synthetic yarn
(19:50):
from various chemicals they extract from coffee grounds and they
turn that into yarn and they use that to make clothing.
So companies called Moving Comfort, you can look them up.
Pretty cool stuff. It's pretty pretty Eight. There's a there's
recycled Bikes, which is out of here's a here's a shocker.
I know you guys are gonna be amazed when you
hear this. Portland, Oregon Recycled Bikes which make bikes out
(20:13):
of recycled aluminum um. Their seats are made out of
renewable cork. Uh right now. They also are belt driven bikes,
not chain driven because they said that the belt driven
ones are easier to maintain. Um. They say that their
goal is one day to have a recycled materials bike.
Right now it's not quite there, but that's their goal,
(20:36):
is to to just make bikes that are completely made
out of recycled materials. Up in Vancouver, the city is
experimenting on creating new types of pavement that is made
up of wax partially from recycled plastic. So they're taking
this plastic in and they're processing it into this wax
to go into new pavement production, which is kind of
(20:58):
neat um. So, yeah, that's just some examples. I mean,
obviously there are tons of different examples of ways to
use recycled materials. Uh. And you know what new products
you can make from recycled materials. So let's kind of
talk a little bit about some statistics like what is
actually getting recycled and how much is being recycled. Uh. Now,
(21:20):
we're going to be citing some factors from a report
done by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is which is
here in the United States, and we should also mention
obviously a lot of the stuff we're talking about is
very US centric because that's where we are located. There
are obviously lots of different recycling companies and facilities around
the entire world, but we we are focusing mainly on
(21:41):
the US because that's really where we can get the
most recent information, uh, the in a very easy way
since we happen to live here, it makes it pretty convenient.
But the report we're looking at is citing statistics from
two thousand eleven, which was the most recent information that
we could find. And according to that report, of all
(22:04):
UH newspaper slash mechanical papers were recovered meaning recycled, fifty
seven percent of yard trimmings were recovered. Thirty of metals
were were recycled. Uh so you know, you see that
this number is going down. Glass there was even less
um and and plastic is a little weird too. But
(22:25):
by recycling the metals, there was actually seven point five
million tons of metal recycled in two thousand eleven. According
to the e p A, we eliminated twenty million tons
of greenhouse gas emissions, which totals more than twenty metric
tons of carbon dioxide. And again according to them, they
say that that's about equivalent to removing four million cars
(22:49):
from the road. For an entire year. So, I mean
this is showing that there can be a real impact
these programs. If you participate, you can actually really help
to reduce in greenhouse gasses because the amount of energy
needed to go into recycling some of these materials, not
all of them, but some of them is so much
(23:09):
less than what it would take for you to create
a new product from raw virgin material that you are
saving quite a bit of energy and as a result,
emitting fewer carbon carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. UM.
So you're doing lots of good work all along the way.
But that's that's kind of like the basic lowdown on recycling.
(23:31):
I mean, it's a it's a big deal. It's very
much down to individual participation as well as community participation. Clearly,
if you live someplace that doesn't have a recycling program,
it makes it much more difficult to be part of this. Right. Um,
the I think that report said that that overall, UM
in two thousand eleven, Americans generated about two and fifty
(23:53):
million tons of trash, and UM recycled about thirty four
point seven percent of that. Yeah. Yeah, out of all
of the trash that was generated. Uh, usually we were
referred to it as a municipal solid waste or msw uh,
and it's a very it kind of excludes other types
of of trash, things like industrial waste or construction waste
(24:16):
that's toxic waste, this sewage. Yeah, these are not included
in municipal solids, the kind of stuff that you would
see ending up in a typical landfill. And I think
that especially in Europe, a lot of other places do
a little bit better than that. But but but again,
like Jonathan said, it really depends on the resources here
in the States, in your specific community. Of course, it
(24:37):
matters vastly by region and what what kind of what
kind of plants, what kind of processing plants you have,
and whether or not people find it um I mean,
you know, fortunately or unfortunately it's it's monetarily based a
lot of the time. Well, you know how how worth
it is? Right, if it's cheaper to throw something in
a landfill than it is to recycle it, or if
(24:57):
it's cheaper to build new products out virgin material than
it is to take old material and repurpose it to
make this stuff, then from an economic standpoint, you can
see why people, companies, organizations pick the landfill option because
it means that they save money in the long run. Now,
a lot of us, especially for those of us who
feel very environmentally conscious, kind of cringe at that the
(25:20):
idea that somehow money can dictate this when you know,
you might say, but in the long run, it's much
much better for us to do this. That's easy to say.
But if if you have to have money to create
these systems so that everything works, it's hard. Yeah, you
can't just you can't just wave it away. I mean
you have to be willing to put forth that investment.
(25:42):
And either that means you know, uh, starting up a
private company and trying to make recycling work for you
as a business. Uh. And we'll talk more about that
in kind of a waste disposal podcast that we'll be
doing a little bit later. Or you know, you have
to be a government that's willing to go to the
citizens and say, you're telling us, you want us to
(26:03):
deal with this this problem. We can do that, but
it's going to require this much money. So that means
we're going to have to either raise taxes or repurpose
money for meant for other products projects or whatever. You know,
that's the sad fact of it is that economics are
going to play a role, and it really depends from
from item to item. Um. That's true. Yeah, and we'll
(26:23):
talk about that. You know, I think that that's a
good way of finishing this up. But before we do,
I want to mention one other thing about recycling, one
other type of recycling, which is e waste, electronic waste,
things like computers, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, all this stuff
that we use, these electronics that we use. You know,
(26:44):
we're kind of uh encouraged to go through these things
at a rate that is pretty steep steep. Yeah, Like,
so are you saying we shouldn't just throw an old
computer in the dumpster? I'm getting there. I will, I
will say that. I will say that, But I was
going to say at first that, you know, we we
here in the United States in particular, we live in
(27:06):
a society where we are encouraged to update our electronics
on a frantic basis. For instance, if you are an
iPhone user, and you know, if you're an iPhone user,
then essentially once a year, you're showing off the brand
new version of the iPhone that is clearly superior. Yeah,
the whole thing is designed to get you to buy iPhones,
which makes sense. That's the business, right, So I mean,
(27:28):
but you know, if, especially in the US, the way
that the contract system works for our phones, often those
contracts lock you in for two years. So you've got
this this level of consumer frustration where I want the
new iPhone, but I'm locked into this contract. I'll just
pay to get out of it, or whatever it's. It's
it feels like you are obligated to upgrade on a
(27:51):
regular basis. I don't mean to pick on Apple. If
you're an Android user, that's more like every couple of months,
because there's a new Android phone coming from various manufact
acturers every few months that is obviously better than the
one you bought last week. And there's that old joke
about computers that by the time you get at home,
it's absolutely obsolutely yeah exactly, which really isn't that much
(28:11):
of a joke. It's pretty true. So we've got so
let's let's say that even if you are being as
responsible as possible, where you are not buying the newest
electronic device every time it comes out, eventually you're going
to get to a point where you're going to need
to get rid of some of your electronics. Either they
stop working or you've replaced them with something else and
(28:32):
you need to remove it from your life. Created an
entire wall of dead computers just for example. I'm not
that I know anyone. I've got a corner of the
garage that is the monitor graveyard. Yeah, and I'm talking
about monitors. I'm not talking about displays. I'm talking about
those huge monitors. But yeah, so eventually gonna need to
(28:53):
get rid of some of these electronics, right, So what
do you do, well, Joe, like you were saying, you
don't want to throw them in the trash out. A
lot of these electronics have some pretty nasty stuff in them,
some toxic materials. I mean things like lead, which is
obviously toxic. Yeah, not not not the music, but like mercury,
which is toxic, berylli um, cadmium, other things from the
(29:20):
Table of Elements song that Daniel Radcliffe can sing for
some reason anyway, Uh yeah, this is this is dangerous
stuff and if you threw it away, there's a chance,
depending upon where you live, there's a chance that could
end up going to an incinerator. There aren't that many
in the United States but in other parts of the world,
incinerators are big business, and it would release this stuff
(29:43):
in and you would have to deal with it then,
because if it went out into the environment, it could
cause some real health hazards. In fact, in China that's
a huge problem because there are some major uh E
waste reclamation centers in China, and reclamation by that, I
mean they're trying to get anything useful out of these
uh these electronic devices that they can, and then they
(30:06):
burn everything else and it tends to release lots of
toxic materials that can go on to create severe health
hazards and a really negative environmental impact in the surrounding area.
So E waste is one of those things that needs
to be handled very carefully. There are actually quite a
few programs out there that allow you to donate your
(30:28):
device so that can then be refurbished and sold again.
So that means it extends the lifetime of that device
and give someone else who wants it that opportunity to
own it. Now. In that case, one thing I would
stress to everybody is if it's any sort of device
that contains personal information, you want to make certain that
(30:49):
you wipe all that personal information off before you donate it.
There are a lot of organizations out there that will
do this, or at least they say that they do that,
that that's one of their their standards operating juice. It's
obviously an important part. Personally, I would never hand over
anything unless I was relatively certain that I had wiped
(31:09):
it clean. Uh. Just as an aside, I bought my
Xbox three sixty refurbished and it had the the gamer
tag information of the previous owner still on there because
he or she had never bothered to wipe that from
the Xbox. Uh. Not to say that I would necessarily
(31:30):
have done anything about that, like logged in as that
person and done something nefarious. But if I had been
someone else, maybe I would have. I'm not that kind
of guy. So what I did was the first thing
I did, was I wiped it clean so that I
wouldn't have any of that access to that person's account
at all. Reformatting the driver is the really important thing
to do there because a lot of the especially um services,
(31:51):
like if you have Netflix or something on your Xbox,
will retain your information for a shocking period of time
after you've contacted the company about your stolen Xbox to
tell them to take down that bit from any previous machines. Yeah, so,
so just word of warning, you know, and you know,
do some research. If you're going to donate some of
your or or if you want to recycle some of
(32:12):
your electronics, do some research out there and make sure
that whatever outlet you're going to use as a reputable one. Um,
that's always a good thing. They're they're more and more
of those rising up because people are trying to be
more responsible with this sort of approach, which is that's admirable.
Just make sure that you know the one that you're
going to go with is in fact a responsible organization.
(32:35):
So now let's get into this whole idea about does
recycling makes sense? Does it make sense from an economic
standpoint and an environmental standpoint? And the reason why we
even have this question is because there are certain materials
where you could possibly make an argument that it really
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to recycle. That
doesn't mean that we should be using it like crazy
(32:56):
and throwing it out the window, but rather that there
may be other alternatives to recycling that we should consider. So,
for example, uh, one thing that does make perfect sense
to recycle is aluminum is incredibly efficient form of recycling.
There's very little processing that you need to make uh
some aluminium reusable. Uh yeah, recycling I can, I think
(33:19):
saves of the energy it would have required to make
a new one. Right, it only takes five percent of
that energy you would take. Like if you were to
take the virgin material and then turn that into an
aluminium can, and then you were to recycle an old
aluminum can into aluminium can, the recycle can would take
only five percent of the energy that you needed to
(33:39):
make the brand new can. So clearly they're recycling makes
perfect sense as long as you have a way of
sorting the the the trash, the recyclables in such a
way that you can get at that aluminium. It makes
perfect sense that sorting might be what holds you up,
depending upon what technology you're using. By uh, if you're
(34:01):
using pre sorted recyclables, then it's a no brainer. Plastics
a little tricky. It does only require one tenth of
the energy to recycle plastic than it would to produce
plastic from new material that you raw material that you've
just managed to get. But again sorting is the big
problem there and sorting between plastics can be such a
(34:24):
huge issue that some recycling facilities will end up sending
much or even all of the plastics they received to
a landfill. So even though you are putting your stuff
in a recycling bin and a recycling truck is picking
it up, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is going
to be recycled. Some of that or maybe even all
of it might end up in a landfill, depending upon
(34:46):
where you are. Now, don't hear this and say well,
I shouldn't recycle plastic anymore. I mean, your local facility
maybe doing well, but and especially with that with that
technology that I was talking about, the optical sorting, Um,
I think that it's made that process a lot more efficient. Yeah, exactly.
It's not that you shouldn't bother recycling. Maybe that your
(35:07):
facility is lagging behind the others, but I hope that
most of them are working toward improving those those processes
so that they can recapture more of the plastic. It
it makes sense, uh, financially, you know, economically as well
as environmentally. It's just for some facilities they have to
catch up a little more than others, and so um,
(35:29):
it's important to continue to recycle even with plastic. But
just know that we're you know, the level of sophistication
technologically speaking, when we get to sorting is not so
widespread as to be infallible by any means. Uh, paper,
about six the energy you would need to make a
(35:50):
new piece of paper from raw materials is what is
what you would need to make a piece of paper
from recycled materials, So a little over half the amount
of energy you would normally need. So, as you see,
we're moving further away from that that five percent that
aluminum has and now with paper it's more like six. However,
(36:11):
paper is a lot easier to sort, So it turns
out that you know, a lot of paper tends to
get recycled. And if you recycle about let's see, I
think a ton of paper ends up being about seventeen trees.
So if you think about that, you know you're you're
actually saving forests from getting cut down because you're reducing
the need for new paper. And and furthermore, I mean,
(36:33):
you know, trees are renewable resource, but um but those
old growth forests, um that that really provide a better
environmental habitat are frequently torn down. For for pulp wood trees,
which grow much more quickly and are much more useful
for the creation of paper. But you know, it's it's
(36:53):
not really, it's not really the ecological equivalent, right, And
that that kind of brings us up to glass, which
is a problem child really Uh so glass, glass is
not made from a precious material. Essentially made from sand. Yeah,
take sand, apply heat, you eventually get glass. Um, it's
(37:13):
a little more complicated than that, but not by a
whole lot. And it's basically quartz, right, Well, it's silicate silicon,
you know, it's and and it's a bunch of stuff. Really,
I don't know, Okay, I was just guessing. I don't know.
It's talcum powder, right. Yeah. So recycling glass only saves
(37:35):
about thirty percent of the energy that you would need
to create a new piece of glass from raw material.
So it's you're not saving that much more energy by
recycling than you would be by producing something new. The
raw material itself is not a precious material. It's not
something that's incredibly valuable on its own. It's not like
(37:57):
taking more sand is really affecting the vironment in a
terrible way. So there are a lot of reasons why
recycling is it makes less sense with glass. It's not
that it's ineffective. It's not that you shouldn't do it,
it's that it's just not from an economic and environmental
standpoint as important. What I would suggest is instead of recycling,
(38:20):
you reuse, just like I do with my Mason jars
that you'll be drinking out of if you come visit
me in my house, assuming I offer you something to drink.
Who knows, I'm not the most hospitable guy. Um say
that's if you if you have bread and salt, you
know you're safe. If not, it's a nice day for
(38:41):
a red wedding, all right. So yeah, so recycling glass
maybe not as as big a deal comparatively speaking, but
reusing is very important. Um. If you if you are
able to reuse, that's the best thing to do. If not,
recycling is perfectly line. It's not like it's bad. It's
(39:02):
just not as efficient as some of the other materials.
And I mean, eventually I'm going to reach a point
where I don't need more Mason jars because I'm never
gonna have four and fifty people in my house. And
while making forts of it is fun, it's also really
dangerous with the Jack Russell in the house. So I
will eventually be recycling Mason jars as opposed to reusing
(39:24):
them over and over again. But uh uh that's that's
really you know, the end story there and and again
recycling for all of these materials is just going to
improve over time as uh it becomes more economically feasible. Uh.
In our next podcast, we'll be talking about waste disposal
in general, and we'll talk about the economics of that
(39:46):
and how just throwing stuff away costs money. It's not
like throwing something away is free. It's actually there is
an expense to it. And if recycling ends up being
economically more uh advantageous and just throwing it into a landfill,
you can bet that that will take off, and that
means the technologies will improve that much more quickly and
(40:08):
the environment, the environmental factors will improve as well. Uh.
It's again depending upon your point of view, and maybe
a little sad to say, this is all kind of
dictated ultimately by a price tag, but that's kind of
the world we live in until we reach that Star
Trek future where we don't need cash anymore, in which
case we'll be replicating everything we need anyway and using
(40:29):
cold fusion to power all of our everything. Yeah, and
then we'll create some sort of what was it? It
was a cold fusion bomb and the first Star Trek,
wasn't it the reboot that was? Yeah, I don't understand
how that works. I'll get on that, I'll get on
the I'll get on the communicator with Spock and we'll
find out anything else about recycling. Guys, that's what I got.
(40:53):
All right. That was an emphatic note from Joe. So
with that in mind, we're going to wrap this up. Guys.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember you can get
in touch with us and let us know what you
would like to hear on future episodes of Forward Thinking.
Our email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com.
Go to FW thinking dot com for all of the blogs, podcasts,
the video series, which just continues to get more awesome.
(41:18):
I love working on this, It's fantastic. I really want
you guys to be part of this conversation, so join in,
let us know what you think, and we will talk
to you again. Release it. We're more on this topic
in the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com
(41:44):
brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future. It says, it
feels just like I'm walking on broken glass. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(00:21):
I'm Lauren WelCom, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
going to talk about the three RS, but mainly recycling.
That's of course, reducing, reusing and recycling. We were talking
about the future of trash and is recycling part of
that future and where does it play it's part and
how important is it and does it make sense? Uh?
(00:42):
And some of the answers are are might you know
they might surprise you. Um, it's not even across the board.
And also it's something that's constantly changing due to our
improvements in the technology and processes. Let me guess it's
for hippies. You shouldn't do it, according to and teller, Yeah,
what you should do is go out consuming. That doesn't
(01:04):
surprise me. They had a they had a show. Um,
I'm not sure if I can actually say the title
of the show was was the name? That was the
name of the show? And um, and they had an
episode on recycling in which Pen in particular came down
very harshly on it. Yeah, well, I mean most of it.
And there there are certain arguments you can make against
(01:25):
recycling certain products. I think a lot of that again
will change over time due to improvements in tech and processes.
But to really, first of all, I mean, let's talk
about what recycling is. Obviously, it's it's for those who
just have never heard the term Welcome to Earth. Recycling is,
of course taking material that you normally would just throw
(01:47):
away and and uh and breaking it down to be
reused in some form further down the line, whether it's
to create more of the same product as what you
were currently using or something entirely different. I think part
of the key of understanding recycling is the idea that
there's some reprocessing involved, right, that it's not just reusing,
(02:08):
saying right, right, right, It's not taking a jar that
you've used and putting something different in it, hopefully after
you've washed it. Um that that would be reusing. By
the way, if anyone comes over to my house for
any sort of party or whatever, you're going to be
drinking out of Mason jars, I'm not a hipster. It's
not that I think that that's a cool thing. You're
just Southern and that's what you have. I buy a
(02:29):
lot of pickled vegetables, and then I think I want
to keep using these jars, and so that's that's my
glassware for the most part. I mean it just it is.
I got to collect your urine for the apocalypse somehow,
that's right. Well, I'll start on my urine later. I'm
collecting other people's right now. And it turns out that
it's a lot harder to convince people than I first expect,
(02:52):
like biometric falsification, yeah, or just throwing at aliens just
in case that happens to be their weakness. So recycling
has been has it has been used actually for for
for really for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Um,
going going back to when people were making metal tools,
realized I don't really like this one. Let's melt it
(03:12):
down and make it again. Um, technically is recycling. Got
that tool or sword or etcetera. Right, Right, So if
you've if you folded in a thousand times and major
katana for your end of Days duel against the Kurgan,
you know, yeah, or if you just were, I guess,
if you were to beat your swords into plashhairs, right, recycling. So,
(03:35):
but but really that's not you know, that's that's one
form of recycling, but it's not really what we think
of when we're talking recycling. It's not the industry level
thing that we've got going on today. Yeah, there was
a I mean, obviously there was a big push to
recycling back in the thirties and forties, right right, well
even even before that, around the turn of the century
is is when a bunch of industries started getting together
(03:56):
and um processing scraps. World War One was when this
became much more important because because because materials became so
scarce due to the global war efforts that uh, some
companies began rendering garbage to recover grease and make make
tankage out of the rest of it. Tankage being um
uh non fat related proteins, usually from from animal parts
(04:20):
that can be used for fertilizer um and uh. And
then yeah, the through through the nineteen thirties, during the
Great Depression here in America certainly, and hard economic times
in many other places, conservation recycling became so important due
to I mean a lot of people made most of
their income by collecting items and selling them for scrap.
And then you get to World War Two and there's
(04:42):
more recycling efforts for the war effort. Again, Uh, you
had fewer people to work on things because you had
so much of the workforce sent off to war that
you know, you didn't have as many people to actually
get the raw materials you usually would need to produce.
And in wartime production is a big part of it, right,
(05:03):
I mean everything from the stuff you would think of
like vehicles and weapons and ammunition that sort of stuff.
Two things that you might not necessarily imagine, just to
keep everyone who's still, you know, away from the fighting
supplied with the stuff that they need. Boots did you
need to make in World War two? Lots? Yeah, rubber
(05:24):
and UH and nylon items that were made that were
used at the time to make lots of common clothing
items wound up being used in Uh. Nylon was used
for parachutes for the war effort, and UH, and of
course rubber for tires and yeah. Actually, the fact that
they switched from like DuPont was making nylon stockings, they
stopped making nylon stockings in order to make materials for
(05:46):
the war effort, and apparently that caused a bunch of
um well they were called nylon riots when when DuPont
went back to creating nylon stockings, there was apparently a
run on stores because I rum didn't mean to make
a run joke. Boy, that was a pun. That was
complete puns. We're so yeah, that was that again, And
(06:12):
that was sort of changing gears for production. But it
also meant that repurposing this material for something else. Repurposing
and recycling was so big during the wars. It was
more far reaching than than most people today really realize. UM.
For for example, during the UH during the Victorian era,
fancy cemeteries, UM every cemetery plot would have these gorgeous
(06:33):
wrought iron fencings around them. And during the Two World Wars,
you won't find those today basically anywhere because all of
them were melted down during the wars. And so you
know it's its People would picnic there. It was very nice,
you know, cemetery, that's what you do. Yeah, sure, but
doing yere in Atlanta to Oakland Cemetery does it all
the time. That is where I learned about this. By
(06:58):
the way, visit Oakland there you go. Also, so you
get up to like the nineteen seventies, that's really when
we got into the environmentalism movement. So recycling up until
the nineteen seventies was more about conserving resources for use
for particular efforts, like the World War effort. When you
say resources, you mean the raw materials themselves, like the
(07:20):
thing that's being reprocessed. Right, it was. It was recycling
because in order for us to meet our needs to
do them. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't you know. It
wasn't a save the environment kind of thing. It was
we need more X. The best way to do it
is to pull up a bunch of Y, melt it
down and turn them into X. Right. Right. And in fact,
(07:41):
immediately after the war, especially here in the States, we
went through that economic boom where people were very um
conspicuously consuming, and it became argue, we're still there, are
more conspicuous than others, especially at the time, by pair
of glasses buying new stuff. Jonathan just got his Google glass.
(08:01):
It's very exciting, um or our Google glass. It's all
of ours, you can share, come on over. But yeah,
it wasn't until the first Earth Day in nine seventy
and um in three was when the first curb side
recycling program got off the ground here in the States.
Um and and then through through the nineties, I think
(08:23):
is when it started really picking up, you know, due
to a Captain, Planet and Gully. Tim Curry played the
bad guy in that he did you know? I laughed?
But Captain and Planet made an impression on me, did he?
I think? So? Were you? Were you a planet tier?
I guess you know, I never got a ring. But see,
(08:44):
for me, it's always I just go back to the
image of the Native American with the one tear going
down the cheek to avoid littering. That's that's where my
environmentalism comes from. Isn't it funny All these issues kind
of get blurred together, like waste waste management, littering, landfills, recycling.
But it'll be worth us talking about exactly what the
(09:08):
real benefits of recycling are. Well, first I kind of curious,
like how does it happen? Like how does recycling work? Well? Yeah,
that's interesting. So there are um okay, well let's start
at your house. I guess. Okay, so you've got a
bunch of recyclables and they'll be say glass bottles and uh,
plastic containers, paper products like cardboard and newspaper, and cans,
(09:35):
aluminum cans, steel cans, tin um. And you want to
get all this stuff recycled, Well there are two. There's
a big distinction you want to make right at the beginning,
which is sorted versus unsorted um, And different municipalities I
think will deal with that in different ways. Like some
people require sorted, and that makes sense because it's much
(09:56):
easier to process when the recycling a drives pre sorted
to the processing facility. But what I've read is that
that also lowers participation because you're putting the burden on
the person and for some people that's just too much trouble. Yeah,
they don't they don't want to go through the effort
(10:17):
of sorting through the stuff that they want to recycle
and put it into one of five different bins or whatever. Um.
So it also just makes it it makes it less
convenient for the person. And the sad fact is is
the more inconvenient it is, the lower the participation is
going to be. Yeah, So these facilities get more materials
(10:38):
overall if they allow mixed mixed mixed materials material Yeah, yeah,
but then that makes it more difficult to actually to
actually recycle the stuff, right, and they sort it. Interestingly,
we're getting a lot better at that. Um. So, the
so you put you take these mixed materials and you
have say curb curbside pickup, so a tryan spur truck
(11:00):
comes along along a route and and picks up all
the materials and takes them to a place called materials
recovery facility. And from there you essentially put all your
materials on a conveyor belt and from here. It's not
the same at every facility. Um But so I'm just
gonna give kind of a standard view of some things
(11:21):
I've seen. Um One thing that's going to vary between
all these facilities is the level of automation versus manual sorting.
Um So, more advanced facilities have fewer human workers working
to take these things out and have better processes for
sorting automatically. But so, usually the first thing will happen
is there's some kind of initial purge where obvious trash
(11:43):
is removed because you know, what, do you know, people
put pizza in their recycling and stuff that they can't take.
Um So you try to remove that at the beginning,
and then usually after that, one of the first things
they want to do is remove glass, because glass is
kind of a different animal than most of these other
things we recycle, and so glass will be moving along
(12:06):
conveyor belt, and if it's not removed manually, it can
be removed automatically by like a raking mechanism that separates
based on weight and shape, or there can be gravity sorting,
so that there's a conveyor belt moving sort of upward
at an angle with enough friction to carry up plastic
and paper products, right, but glass rolls down off of it.
(12:31):
And so once the glass is separated, that's usually crushed
up into a constituency of shards called cullet, and that
that can be used for all kinds of different things.
But most of the rest of the products apart from glass,
eventually what the goal is to bail them, like hey, um,
(12:52):
And so after glass is removed, they'll usually sort out
paper products and they can do that by mechanical action
or by hand. Um. And you separate those out and
take them to a fiber bailer and bail them up together. Uh.
Steel cans are often separated by magnets and that's interested.
The UH conveyor belt will just pass under a very
(13:13):
powerful magnet just sucks them straight up. But then you've
got a problem that you've got all these aluminum cans
and these other alloys that aren't their non ferrest materials,
so they're not attracted to magnets. So one of the
popular ways of dealing with that these days is you
have something called an eddy current separator, and that's this
powerful magnetic rotor that generates a field that blasts non
(13:38):
ferrost metals off in some direction. It creates a separate
magnetic field within the can itself, and UH and and
and that magnetic field will be at at odds with
with the field being generated by the device. We'll just
pop it right off the belt. Interesting, so you've got
so say you've separated everything else by now, and you've
got non ferros metals, and you've got plastic and they're
(14:01):
rolling along. The plastic will just sit there. But when
the the aluminum cans pass over this thing, they shoot, shoot,
you know, fly away, I guess into a big basket
or whatever you use, take them to the bailor smash
them down into a cube. Um, those will be ready
and then finally, usually you're gonna have plastic, and that's
(14:21):
sort of according to type. So you've probably seen like
number one plastic, number two plastics, like type two plastics
like milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs, that kind of thing. Yeah,
And those things are separated into different groups for ease
of reprocessing um and uh. And that can be done
by hand or automatically by things like they're sort of
(14:43):
optical field separators. So they shoot out some beam of
light that penetrates a different plastics in different ways and
use a sensor to to figure out what bits uh
exactly which. Yeah, as it passes over like a like
a gap in the conveyor um or or something like that,
it will use air jets to to to shoot out
(15:06):
the ones that it wants to. Yeah. So then at
the end, and so you got your plastic leftover and
smash that into bales, and then at the end, your
final product is you've got glass color, bales of plastic,
bales of paper products, bales of aluminum, bales of steel
um and all of these things are then sold to
manufacturers or I guess really whoever wants them, and you
(15:28):
can buy recycled materials and just go pay for a
bale of steel. Yeah, and in fact, um, let's talk
about some of the stuff that can be made from
recycled materials. Now, there's some stuff that you know, is
you've probably heard of things like you know, made tires
made out of recycled materials, even pavement made from recycled materials. Uh.
(15:49):
Typically a lot of the stuff ends up making more
of whatever it was before. So, for example, a lot
of paper, recycled paper ends up going into things like
paper plates, napkins, paper towels, uh, that sort of stuff.
So a lot of that reclaimed paper just becomes more
paper products. Same thing with aluminium, a lot of like
you know, the odds of an aluminium can becoming something
(16:11):
like a car frame are low. It can happen. There
are manufacturers out there that will use recycled aluminum as
part of their materials for designing this stuff. But it's
far more likely that the aluminium can you tossing the
recycling is going to become a new aluminium can. Glass
some glass depending. Glass is tricky because glass comes in
(16:34):
a lot of different kinds as well, Like you can
have glass that's and colors or you can have clear
glass that can change things up. Often glass will get
down cycled. Now, down cycle means that you convert this
into material that is slightly less valuable than what the
raw material was or what the original product was. So,
for example, a glass jar, you might throw that out
(16:57):
in in recycling or whatever, and it gets re cycled
as part of uh something that's made out of fiberglass,
and by weight, it's less valuable. That's why we call
it down cycling, because it's moved down a level. Um,
So that will uh, that's fairly common to for a
glass to go into things like fiberglass. But then there's
(17:17):
some kind of cool stuff. I'm going to mention some
specific companies too, just for some sort of nifty products
that are made of recycled materials. For example, Uh, there's
a group called Keens Harvest Bags. They make like messenger bags, okay,
but they make them out of recycled air bags from cars.
(17:38):
Are actually really cool. Uh, you know, they just kind
of a nifty way of reusing this material that otherwise
might not ever be used. There's violence, what's that I
just imagined getting a messenger bag that had like blood
or I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen. I think that
might be bad press for the company. Um, I appalled
(18:00):
gized to Keene's harvest bill. No, I'm not that would happen.
I know, I know, it's just the first know, I'm
right there with you. U. There's vinyl luxe. Vinyl Luxe
uses uh something that has beloved to me old vinyl records.
So some old vinyl records are beyond the uh they've
(18:22):
just they've passed their prime right there. There might be scratches,
there might be some sort of warping, and anyway, it
makes the music less than or whatever was recorded on
them less than interesting or pleasurable to listen to. And
so what vinyl X does is it takes old vinyl
records that are you know, kind of messed up and
then creates things like bowls or clocks, uh, ornaments and
(18:45):
other stuff and uh, anything that they don't use, like
any scraps that are left over from their their projects
gets sent to a plant in Nashville actually, and all
of that those scraps are melted down to create new
vinyl records, to help to be the material for new
vinyl records, so nothing gets wasted There is another company
(19:08):
called Looped Works, and they have used recycled neoprene, nylon,
vinyl polyester leather to create all sorts of different products,
like like electronics covers, like a cover case for you know,
a tablet or something. Uh, some really cool designs coming
out of them. And then there's a company called Moving
(19:29):
Comfort like this one a lot. They remove chemicals from
coffee grounds and turn it into yarn and then we've
cloth out of this stuffy fibrous shirts. It's actually the
chemicals from coffee grounds. So they're making a synthetic yarn
(19:50):
from various chemicals they extract from coffee grounds and they
turn that into yarn and they use that to make clothing.
So companies called Moving Comfort, you can look them up.
Pretty cool stuff. It's pretty pretty Eight. There's a there's
recycled Bikes, which is out of here's a here's a shocker.
I know you guys are gonna be amazed when you
hear this. Portland, Oregon Recycled Bikes which make bikes out
(20:13):
of recycled aluminum um. Their seats are made out of
renewable cork. Uh right now. They also are belt driven bikes,
not chain driven because they said that the belt driven
ones are easier to maintain. Um. They say that their
goal is one day to have a recycled materials bike.
Right now it's not quite there, but that's their goal,
(20:36):
is to to just make bikes that are completely made
out of recycled materials. Up in Vancouver, the city is
experimenting on creating new types of pavement that is made
up of wax partially from recycled plastic. So they're taking
this plastic in and they're processing it into this wax
to go into new pavement production, which is kind of
(20:58):
neat um. So, yeah, that's just some examples. I mean,
obviously there are tons of different examples of ways to
use recycled materials. Uh. And you know what new products
you can make from recycled materials. So let's kind of
talk a little bit about some statistics like what is
actually getting recycled and how much is being recycled. Uh. Now,
(21:20):
we're going to be citing some factors from a report
done by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is which is
here in the United States, and we should also mention
obviously a lot of the stuff we're talking about is
very US centric because that's where we are located. There
are obviously lots of different recycling companies and facilities around
the entire world, but we we are focusing mainly on
(21:41):
the US because that's really where we can get the
most recent information, uh, the in a very easy way
since we happen to live here, it makes it pretty convenient.
But the report we're looking at is citing statistics from
two thousand eleven, which was the most recent information that
we could find. And according to that report, of all
(22:04):
UH newspaper slash mechanical papers were recovered meaning recycled, fifty
seven percent of yard trimmings were recovered. Thirty of metals
were were recycled. Uh so you know, you see that
this number is going down. Glass there was even less
um and and plastic is a little weird too. But
(22:25):
by recycling the metals, there was actually seven point five
million tons of metal recycled in two thousand eleven. According
to the e p A, we eliminated twenty million tons
of greenhouse gas emissions, which totals more than twenty metric
tons of carbon dioxide. And again according to them, they
say that that's about equivalent to removing four million cars
(22:49):
from the road. For an entire year. So, I mean
this is showing that there can be a real impact
these programs. If you participate, you can actually really help
to reduce in greenhouse gasses because the amount of energy
needed to go into recycling some of these materials, not
all of them, but some of them is so much
(23:09):
less than what it would take for you to create
a new product from raw virgin material that you are
saving quite a bit of energy and as a result,
emitting fewer carbon carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. UM.
So you're doing lots of good work all along the way.
But that's that's kind of like the basic lowdown on recycling.
(23:31):
I mean, it's a it's a big deal. It's very
much down to individual participation as well as community participation. Clearly,
if you live someplace that doesn't have a recycling program,
it makes it much more difficult to be part of this. Right. Um,
the I think that report said that that overall, UM
in two thousand eleven, Americans generated about two and fifty
(23:53):
million tons of trash, and UM recycled about thirty four
point seven percent of that. Yeah. Yeah, out of all
of the trash that was generated. Uh, usually we were
referred to it as a municipal solid waste or msw uh,
and it's a very it kind of excludes other types
of of trash, things like industrial waste or construction waste
(24:16):
that's toxic waste, this sewage. Yeah, these are not included
in municipal solids, the kind of stuff that you would
see ending up in a typical landfill. And I think
that especially in Europe, a lot of other places do
a little bit better than that. But but but again,
like Jonathan said, it really depends on the resources here
in the States, in your specific community. Of course, it
(24:37):
matters vastly by region and what what kind of what
kind of plants, what kind of processing plants you have,
and whether or not people find it um I mean,
you know, fortunately or unfortunately it's it's monetarily based a
lot of the time. Well, you know how how worth
it is? Right, if it's cheaper to throw something in
a landfill than it is to recycle it, or if
(24:57):
it's cheaper to build new products out virgin material than
it is to take old material and repurpose it to
make this stuff, then from an economic standpoint, you can
see why people, companies, organizations pick the landfill option because
it means that they save money in the long run. Now,
a lot of us, especially for those of us who
feel very environmentally conscious, kind of cringe at that the
(25:20):
idea that somehow money can dictate this when you know,
you might say, but in the long run, it's much
much better for us to do this. That's easy to say.
But if if you have to have money to create
these systems so that everything works, it's hard. Yeah, you
can't just you can't just wave it away. I mean
you have to be willing to put forth that investment.
(25:42):
And either that means you know, uh, starting up a
private company and trying to make recycling work for you
as a business. Uh. And we'll talk more about that
in kind of a waste disposal podcast that we'll be
doing a little bit later. Or you know, you have
to be a government that's willing to go to the
citizens and say, you're telling us, you want us to
(26:03):
deal with this this problem. We can do that, but
it's going to require this much money. So that means
we're going to have to either raise taxes or repurpose
money for meant for other products projects or whatever. You know,
that's the sad fact of it is that economics are
going to play a role, and it really depends from
from item to item. Um. That's true. Yeah, and we'll
(26:23):
talk about that. You know, I think that that's a
good way of finishing this up. But before we do,
I want to mention one other thing about recycling, one
other type of recycling, which is e waste, electronic waste,
things like computers, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, all this stuff
that we use, these electronics that we use. You know,
(26:44):
we're kind of uh encouraged to go through these things
at a rate that is pretty steep steep. Yeah, Like,
so are you saying we shouldn't just throw an old
computer in the dumpster? I'm getting there. I will, I
will say that. I will say that, But I was
going to say at first that, you know, we we
here in the United States in particular, we live in
(27:06):
a society where we are encouraged to update our electronics
on a frantic basis. For instance, if you are an
iPhone user, and you know, if you're an iPhone user,
then essentially once a year, you're showing off the brand
new version of the iPhone that is clearly superior. Yeah,
the whole thing is designed to get you to buy iPhones,
which makes sense. That's the business, right, So I mean,
(27:28):
but you know, if, especially in the US, the way
that the contract system works for our phones, often those
contracts lock you in for two years. So you've got
this this level of consumer frustration where I want the
new iPhone, but I'm locked into this contract. I'll just
pay to get out of it, or whatever it's. It's
it feels like you are obligated to upgrade on a
(27:51):
regular basis. I don't mean to pick on Apple. If
you're an Android user, that's more like every couple of months,
because there's a new Android phone coming from various manufact
acturers every few months that is obviously better than the
one you bought last week. And there's that old joke
about computers that by the time you get at home,
it's absolutely obsolutely yeah exactly, which really isn't that much
(28:11):
of a joke. It's pretty true. So we've got so
let's let's say that even if you are being as
responsible as possible, where you are not buying the newest
electronic device every time it comes out, eventually you're going
to get to a point where you're going to need
to get rid of some of your electronics. Either they
stop working or you've replaced them with something else and
(28:32):
you need to remove it from your life. Created an
entire wall of dead computers just for example. I'm not
that I know anyone. I've got a corner of the
garage that is the monitor graveyard. Yeah, and I'm talking
about monitors. I'm not talking about displays. I'm talking about
those huge monitors. But yeah, so eventually gonna need to
(28:53):
get rid of some of these electronics, right, So what
do you do, well, Joe, like you were saying, you
don't want to throw them in the trash out. A
lot of these electronics have some pretty nasty stuff in them,
some toxic materials. I mean things like lead, which is
obviously toxic. Yeah, not not not the music, but like mercury,
which is toxic, berylli um, cadmium, other things from the
(29:20):
Table of Elements song that Daniel Radcliffe can sing for
some reason anyway, Uh yeah, this is this is dangerous
stuff and if you threw it away, there's a chance,
depending upon where you live, there's a chance that could
end up going to an incinerator. There aren't that many
in the United States but in other parts of the world,
incinerators are big business, and it would release this stuff
(29:43):
in and you would have to deal with it then,
because if it went out into the environment, it could
cause some real health hazards. In fact, in China that's
a huge problem because there are some major uh E
waste reclamation centers in China, and reclamation by that, I
mean they're trying to get anything useful out of these
uh these electronic devices that they can, and then they
(30:06):
burn everything else and it tends to release lots of
toxic materials that can go on to create severe health
hazards and a really negative environmental impact in the surrounding area.
So E waste is one of those things that needs
to be handled very carefully. There are actually quite a
few programs out there that allow you to donate your
(30:28):
device so that can then be refurbished and sold again.
So that means it extends the lifetime of that device
and give someone else who wants it that opportunity to
own it. Now. In that case, one thing I would
stress to everybody is if it's any sort of device
that contains personal information, you want to make certain that
(30:49):
you wipe all that personal information off before you donate it.
There are a lot of organizations out there that will
do this, or at least they say that they do that,
that that's one of their their standards operating juice. It's
obviously an important part. Personally, I would never hand over
anything unless I was relatively certain that I had wiped
(31:09):
it clean. Uh. Just as an aside, I bought my
Xbox three sixty refurbished and it had the the gamer
tag information of the previous owner still on there because
he or she had never bothered to wipe that from
the Xbox. Uh. Not to say that I would necessarily
(31:30):
have done anything about that, like logged in as that
person and done something nefarious. But if I had been
someone else, maybe I would have. I'm not that kind
of guy. So what I did was the first thing
I did, was I wiped it clean so that I
wouldn't have any of that access to that person's account
at all. Reformatting the driver is the really important thing
to do there because a lot of the especially um services,
(31:51):
like if you have Netflix or something on your Xbox,
will retain your information for a shocking period of time
after you've contacted the company about your stolen Xbox to
tell them to take down that bit from any previous machines. Yeah, so,
so just word of warning, you know, and you know,
do some research. If you're going to donate some of
your or or if you want to recycle some of
(32:12):
your electronics, do some research out there and make sure
that whatever outlet you're going to use as a reputable one. Um,
that's always a good thing. They're they're more and more
of those rising up because people are trying to be
more responsible with this sort of approach, which is that's admirable.
Just make sure that you know the one that you're
going to go with is in fact a responsible organization.
(32:35):
So now let's get into this whole idea about does
recycling makes sense? Does it make sense from an economic
standpoint and an environmental standpoint? And the reason why we
even have this question is because there are certain materials
where you could possibly make an argument that it really
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to recycle. That
doesn't mean that we should be using it like crazy
(32:56):
and throwing it out the window, but rather that there
may be other alternatives to recycling that we should consider. So,
for example, uh, one thing that does make perfect sense
to recycle is aluminum is incredibly efficient form of recycling.
There's very little processing that you need to make uh
some aluminium reusable. Uh yeah, recycling I can, I think
(33:19):
saves of the energy it would have required to make
a new one. Right, it only takes five percent of
that energy you would take. Like if you were to
take the virgin material and then turn that into an
aluminium can, and then you were to recycle an old
aluminum can into aluminium can, the recycle can would take
only five percent of the energy that you needed to
(33:39):
make the brand new can. So clearly they're recycling makes
perfect sense as long as you have a way of
sorting the the the trash, the recyclables in such a
way that you can get at that aluminium. It makes
perfect sense that sorting might be what holds you up,
depending upon what technology you're using. By uh, if you're
(34:01):
using pre sorted recyclables, then it's a no brainer. Plastics
a little tricky. It does only require one tenth of
the energy to recycle plastic than it would to produce
plastic from new material that you raw material that you've
just managed to get. But again sorting is the big
problem there and sorting between plastics can be such a
(34:24):
huge issue that some recycling facilities will end up sending
much or even all of the plastics they received to
a landfill. So even though you are putting your stuff
in a recycling bin and a recycling truck is picking
it up, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is going
to be recycled. Some of that or maybe even all
of it might end up in a landfill, depending upon
(34:46):
where you are. Now, don't hear this and say well,
I shouldn't recycle plastic anymore. I mean, your local facility
maybe doing well, but and especially with that with that
technology that I was talking about, the optical sorting, Um,
I think that it's made that process a lot more efficient. Yeah, exactly.
It's not that you shouldn't bother recycling. Maybe that your
(35:07):
facility is lagging behind the others, but I hope that
most of them are working toward improving those those processes
so that they can recapture more of the plastic. It
it makes sense, uh, financially, you know, economically as well
as environmentally. It's just for some facilities they have to
catch up a little more than others, and so um,
(35:29):
it's important to continue to recycle even with plastic. But
just know that we're you know, the level of sophistication
technologically speaking, when we get to sorting is not so
widespread as to be infallible by any means. Uh, paper,
about six the energy you would need to make a
(35:50):
new piece of paper from raw materials is what is
what you would need to make a piece of paper
from recycled materials, So a little over half the amount
of energy you would normally need. So, as you see,
we're moving further away from that that five percent that
aluminum has and now with paper it's more like six. However,
(36:11):
paper is a lot easier to sort, So it turns
out that you know, a lot of paper tends to
get recycled. And if you recycle about let's see, I
think a ton of paper ends up being about seventeen trees.
So if you think about that, you know you're you're
actually saving forests from getting cut down because you're reducing
the need for new paper. And and furthermore, I mean,
(36:33):
you know, trees are renewable resource, but um but those
old growth forests, um that that really provide a better
environmental habitat are frequently torn down. For for pulp wood trees,
which grow much more quickly and are much more useful
for the creation of paper. But you know, it's it's
(36:53):
not really, it's not really the ecological equivalent, right, And
that that kind of brings us up to glass, which
is a problem child really Uh so glass, glass is
not made from a precious material. Essentially made from sand. Yeah,
take sand, apply heat, you eventually get glass. Um, it's
(37:13):
a little more complicated than that, but not by a
whole lot. And it's basically quartz, right, Well, it's silicate silicon,
you know, it's and and it's a bunch of stuff. Really,
I don't know, Okay, I was just guessing. I don't know.
It's talcum powder, right. Yeah. So recycling glass only saves
(37:35):
about thirty percent of the energy that you would need
to create a new piece of glass from raw material.
So it's you're not saving that much more energy by
recycling than you would be by producing something new. The
raw material itself is not a precious material. It's not
something that's incredibly valuable on its own. It's not like
(37:57):
taking more sand is really affecting the vironment in a
terrible way. So there are a lot of reasons why
recycling is it makes less sense with glass. It's not
that it's ineffective. It's not that you shouldn't do it,
it's that it's just not from an economic and environmental
standpoint as important. What I would suggest is instead of recycling,
(38:20):
you reuse, just like I do with my Mason jars
that you'll be drinking out of if you come visit
me in my house, assuming I offer you something to drink.
Who knows, I'm not the most hospitable guy. Um say
that's if you if you have bread and salt, you
know you're safe. If not, it's a nice day for
(38:41):
a red wedding, all right. So yeah, so recycling glass
maybe not as as big a deal comparatively speaking, but
reusing is very important. Um. If you if you are
able to reuse, that's the best thing to do. If not,
recycling is perfectly line. It's not like it's bad. It's
(39:02):
just not as efficient as some of the other materials.
And I mean, eventually I'm going to reach a point
where I don't need more Mason jars because I'm never
gonna have four and fifty people in my house. And
while making forts of it is fun, it's also really
dangerous with the Jack Russell in the house. So I
will eventually be recycling Mason jars as opposed to reusing
(39:24):
them over and over again. But uh uh that's that's
really you know, the end story there and and again
recycling for all of these materials is just going to
improve over time as uh it becomes more economically feasible. Uh.
In our next podcast, we'll be talking about waste disposal
in general, and we'll talk about the economics of that
(39:46):
and how just throwing stuff away costs money. It's not
like throwing something away is free. It's actually there is
an expense to it. And if recycling ends up being
economically more uh advantageous and just throwing it into a landfill,
you can bet that that will take off, and that
means the technologies will improve that much more quickly and
(40:08):
the environment, the environmental factors will improve as well. Uh.
It's again depending upon your point of view, and maybe
a little sad to say, this is all kind of
dictated ultimately by a price tag, but that's kind of
the world we live in until we reach that Star
Trek future where we don't need cash anymore, in which
case we'll be replicating everything we need anyway and using
(40:29):
cold fusion to power all of our everything. Yeah, and
then we'll create some sort of what was it? It
was a cold fusion bomb and the first Star Trek,
wasn't it the reboot that was? Yeah, I don't understand
how that works. I'll get on that, I'll get on
the I'll get on the communicator with Spock and we'll
find out anything else about recycling. Guys, that's what I got.
(40:53):
All right. That was an emphatic note from Joe. So
with that in mind, we're going to wrap this up. Guys.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember you can get
in touch with us and let us know what you
would like to hear on future episodes of Forward Thinking.
Our email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com.
Go to FW thinking dot com for all of the blogs, podcasts,
the video series, which just continues to get more awesome.
(41:18):
I love working on this, It's fantastic. I really want
you guys to be part of this conversation, so join in,
let us know what you think, and we will talk
to you again. Release it. We're more on this topic
in the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com
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Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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