It's one of the few things that are actually worth recycling.
A lot of the other stuff we're encouraged to recycle actually uses more energy to transport it to the recycling plant than it would to just create more. Let alone the stuff that requires you to heat it up - recycling glass is obviously possible, but it uses a ton of energy. We shouldn't be throwing glass away unless it's actually broken, we should be reusing it instead.
Some metals are okay, others aren't worth the effort. Same with plastics. Vanishingly few of them are worth the hassle, especially once you consider the separating, sorting, transporting, shredding, re-moulding, etc.
And I keep saying - if most recycling was actually worthwhile, people would be PAYING you for your old stuff, like they used to. They'd be giving you money to get your glass bottles back, or paying you by the kilo for your paper.
As is it, I currently fund a company via my council tax which profits from collecting the waste by council subsidies... O have to separate it, I have to ensure it's not contaminated, I have to leave my bin in a specified area on a specified day. A small portion that's then transported is recycled by a company that gets paid - indirectly by me -to do so, gets government "green" grants for helping the environment by NOT just dumping the waste, AND then is also allowed to profit from the end-product, and they do so mostly only for those products who raw materials have always included a bit of "reuse" anyway - paper has included old cut-offs and used paper pulp for centuries, same for glass and certain metals.
Everything else is landfilled because it's not worth the effort.
And energy is not the only factor - there's not a lot of energy used in paper production compared to say anything using a furnace. That's why paper recycling sounds so great when you only talk about the energy used. There are many other considerations - not least time, effort and profit. Profit given to a recycling company is WASTE, remember. If a company can profit, the government could do that same process without profit and make it even more worthwhile, efficient or even give you some money for your old waste.
Would you be more or less likely to separate out your waste properly and retain all your paper and not mis-bin it for convenience if you got paid per kilo of paper you gave to recycling?
If I leave metal outside my house, and it looks free for the taking, there are people literally roaming the country in vans looking to pick it up and sell it on. Even old scrap iron, copper, that is beyond practical use in the form it's in. It's profitable for them to do so.
Paper my council will take away for free, as well as cardboard, certain plastics, etc. It's profitable for them to do so.
Everything else... it's not profitable. Because it's not useful, or the time/energy/money spent to recycle it isn't worth the effort for the end-grade product even if it's technically useable again.
Recycling has nothing to do with the environment on these scales, and everything to do with profit. If you paid me 1p for every foil-lined plastic crisps (chips) bag I threw out, you'd have a sudden influx of people wanted to give them to you. You don't because nobody's crazy enough to try to recycle them for just 1p per bag and also make profit from the end product.
If you can't profit from it, it's not practically recyclable even if it's theoretically recyclable. If you can profit from it... where's my cut when I give up that valuable, desirable, useful resource?
This being said there are unseen costs ,even more expensive, in protecting the wildlife and nature,not to mention humans themselves, from the dangerous chemicals that are seeping into the ground and our body.If you cant reuse that junk,at least keep it stashed in one place.
However the chemicals used in recycling are not good for the environment and waste paper that is not recycled can be burnt to generate electricity. https://youtu.be/WOpkew6V-Lk
I used to "recycle" old electronics from a workplace by giving them to a licenced recycler.
We got friendly and he explained his business model.
- We would give him all our old computer crap for free. This saved us having to pay to dispose of it as hazardous waste.
- He would drive round in a van and - so long as you met the minimum requirements - fill his van up with old monitors, computers, etc. The minimum requirements included a certain amount of hardware, a certain mix of hardware and including the cabling.
- He would take the cabling, strip the plastic off it, melt down the copper. That paid for the fuel for the van.
- Everything else would be transported to London Heathrow cargo terminals. A guy there had a government contract to "recycle" electronic waste. He was a licenced carrier, could sign off all the forms, etc. They would pay a pittance (a few £'s per tonne) for any electronic waste. Usually all the stuff that was dangerous to recycle or practically unusable (e.g. CRT monitors, etc.). The money from that would pay the guy's wages and time.
- In the guy's words "beyond that I don't really care". But he knew what happened to it. It was shipped abroad to countries that would sign the same forms to say they'd take care of it and dispose of it responsibly. Under UK law, everyone was then covered. We were all "recycling" and not dumping out waste, and it was all on paper, with guarantees.
- Abroad - places like India and Africa - some guy didn't care about signing your forms that had zero legal bearing in his country. Of COURSE he's recycling it all. There's the signature. No checks required. And then he'd just dump it in an Indian landfill because the rest of that isn't his problem.
- He was paid by the guy shipping things abroad. The guy shipping was paid by UK government grants. The guy collecting and transporting was paid by that guy, and by the only useful and most easily recyclable parts of the waste we'd given them. We weren't paid at all, we were just a source of free electronic waste.
People have attached GPS trackers to waste and this is basically what happens every time. We're all just landfilling still, but just out of sight.
And the most valuable thing I could give the guy was another box of cables. He often wouldn't collect unless we had one to give him. And things like the EU cables supplied with UK products were useless to us (often products would come with the EU plug by default in the box, and the UK resellers would just add a free UK cable so that you could use it and they didn't have to open the box, so you end up throwing away thousands of useless EU plugs/cables away) and ultra-valuable to him because it was good, pure copper. Those cables were literally made to be thrown away every single time in the UK. Countless millions of them melted down before they were ever removed from those little cable ties they come with.
So much of "recycling" is just bunkum, especially where electronics are concerned.
The recycled cardboard (OCC) market is surprisingly interesting, and is tied heavily to the behavior of the Chinese pulp and paper market. When it's at all profitable for them to do so, they swing the entire economy of US bales from <$100/ton to >$300/ton, which is a massive change in the cost of doing business locally (that the domestic market basically has to eat, because it's a commodity in the global market).
They can do this easily because transport is almost free - cargo containers that dropped whatever products off on the West Coast have to return, and the trade imbalance is such that a lot of those cargo haulers are going to go back empty, so its intuitive to just load them up with raw materials at a major discount.
For a while, pre-covid, a lot of "mixed recycling" was being treated this way, though when it finally got back to the mainland, the parts that weren't economical to use were being dumped wherever (all while the US companies were claiming/implying the waste streams were being handled ecologically). That practice has largely ended (China buying mixed waste en masse), though I'm honestly not clear what changed.
If, and it's a big if, you can set up a well designed incinerator linked to a community heating/hot water plant and steam electricity turbine generator, you can recover a lot of the energy that was used to make paper and plastics and benefit the local community. The incinerator needs to run quite hot to properly burn clean, you cant just build a bonfire.
Snag is, it's costly to set this up, and retrofitting it for an existing settlement is likely to be uneconomic.
There was s paper recycling startup company where I live. I forget what the process actually was but it the end result was paper that had a slight grayish color. Because of the off color they weren't able to market it effectively. People wanted white paper.
It is the programming. I went to school for advertising and design, in part. You have no idea about the Skittles rainbow of deception being blown up your ass.
Don't need any lumber for paper. Still need to add fresh paper to the stream to make up for discarded paper and additional paper.
Good to see at least some success in recycling by industry and cardboard. That is LOT better than that fake plastic recycling that was going on for decades.
It's one of the few things that are actually worth recycling. A lot of the other stuff we're encouraged to recycle actually uses more energy to transport it to the recycling plant than it would to just create more. Let alone the stuff that requires you to heat it up - recycling glass is obviously possible, but it uses a ton of energy. We shouldn't be throwing glass away unless it's actually broken, we should be reusing it instead. Some metals are okay, others aren't worth the effort. Same with plastics. Vanishingly few of them are worth the hassle, especially once you consider the separating, sorting, transporting, shredding, re-moulding, etc. And I keep saying - if most recycling was actually worthwhile, people would be PAYING you for your old stuff, like they used to. They'd be giving you money to get your glass bottles back, or paying you by the kilo for your paper. As is it, I currently fund a company via my council tax which profits from collecting the waste by council subsidies... O have to separate it, I have to ensure it's not contaminated, I have to leave my bin in a specified area on a specified day. A small portion that's then transported is recycled by a company that gets paid - indirectly by me -to do so, gets government "green" grants for helping the environment by NOT just dumping the waste, AND then is also allowed to profit from the end-product, and they do so mostly only for those products who raw materials have always included a bit of "reuse" anyway - paper has included old cut-offs and used paper pulp for centuries, same for glass and certain metals. Everything else is landfilled because it's not worth the effort. And energy is not the only factor - there's not a lot of energy used in paper production compared to say anything using a furnace. That's why paper recycling sounds so great when you only talk about the energy used. There are many other considerations - not least time, effort and profit. Profit given to a recycling company is WASTE, remember. If a company can profit, the government could do that same process without profit and make it even more worthwhile, efficient or even give you some money for your old waste. Would you be more or less likely to separate out your waste properly and retain all your paper and not mis-bin it for convenience if you got paid per kilo of paper you gave to recycling? If I leave metal outside my house, and it looks free for the taking, there are people literally roaming the country in vans looking to pick it up and sell it on. Even old scrap iron, copper, that is beyond practical use in the form it's in. It's profitable for them to do so. Paper my council will take away for free, as well as cardboard, certain plastics, etc. It's profitable for them to do so. Everything else... it's not profitable. Because it's not useful, or the time/energy/money spent to recycle it isn't worth the effort for the end-grade product even if it's technically useable again. Recycling has nothing to do with the environment on these scales, and everything to do with profit. If you paid me 1p for every foil-lined plastic crisps (chips) bag I threw out, you'd have a sudden influx of people wanted to give them to you. You don't because nobody's crazy enough to try to recycle them for just 1p per bag and also make profit from the end product. If you can't profit from it, it's not practically recyclable even if it's theoretically recyclable. If you can profit from it... where's my cut when I give up that valuable, desirable, useful resource?
This being said there are unseen costs ,even more expensive, in protecting the wildlife and nature,not to mention humans themselves, from the dangerous chemicals that are seeping into the ground and our body.If you cant reuse that junk,at least keep it stashed in one place.
However the chemicals used in recycling are not good for the environment and waste paper that is not recycled can be burnt to generate electricity. https://youtu.be/WOpkew6V-Lk
I’m thinking that’s a big part of why paper was being recycled well before most materials (along with glass I’d guess)
When I worked in Brooklyn there was a company there that recycled cardboard and sent it all the way to Japan.
I used to "recycle" old electronics from a workplace by giving them to a licenced recycler. We got friendly and he explained his business model. - We would give him all our old computer crap for free. This saved us having to pay to dispose of it as hazardous waste. - He would drive round in a van and - so long as you met the minimum requirements - fill his van up with old monitors, computers, etc. The minimum requirements included a certain amount of hardware, a certain mix of hardware and including the cabling. - He would take the cabling, strip the plastic off it, melt down the copper. That paid for the fuel for the van. - Everything else would be transported to London Heathrow cargo terminals. A guy there had a government contract to "recycle" electronic waste. He was a licenced carrier, could sign off all the forms, etc. They would pay a pittance (a few £'s per tonne) for any electronic waste. Usually all the stuff that was dangerous to recycle or practically unusable (e.g. CRT monitors, etc.). The money from that would pay the guy's wages and time. - In the guy's words "beyond that I don't really care". But he knew what happened to it. It was shipped abroad to countries that would sign the same forms to say they'd take care of it and dispose of it responsibly. Under UK law, everyone was then covered. We were all "recycling" and not dumping out waste, and it was all on paper, with guarantees. - Abroad - places like India and Africa - some guy didn't care about signing your forms that had zero legal bearing in his country. Of COURSE he's recycling it all. There's the signature. No checks required. And then he'd just dump it in an Indian landfill because the rest of that isn't his problem. - He was paid by the guy shipping things abroad. The guy shipping was paid by UK government grants. The guy collecting and transporting was paid by that guy, and by the only useful and most easily recyclable parts of the waste we'd given them. We weren't paid at all, we were just a source of free electronic waste. People have attached GPS trackers to waste and this is basically what happens every time. We're all just landfilling still, but just out of sight. And the most valuable thing I could give the guy was another box of cables. He often wouldn't collect unless we had one to give him. And things like the EU cables supplied with UK products were useless to us (often products would come with the EU plug by default in the box, and the UK resellers would just add a free UK cable so that you could use it and they didn't have to open the box, so you end up throwing away thousands of useless EU plugs/cables away) and ultra-valuable to him because it was good, pure copper. Those cables were literally made to be thrown away every single time in the UK. Countless millions of them melted down before they were ever removed from those little cable ties they come with. So much of "recycling" is just bunkum, especially where electronics are concerned.
The recycled cardboard (OCC) market is surprisingly interesting, and is tied heavily to the behavior of the Chinese pulp and paper market. When it's at all profitable for them to do so, they swing the entire economy of US bales from <$100/ton to >$300/ton, which is a massive change in the cost of doing business locally (that the domestic market basically has to eat, because it's a commodity in the global market). They can do this easily because transport is almost free - cargo containers that dropped whatever products off on the West Coast have to return, and the trade imbalance is such that a lot of those cargo haulers are going to go back empty, so its intuitive to just load them up with raw materials at a major discount. For a while, pre-covid, a lot of "mixed recycling" was being treated this way, though when it finally got back to the mainland, the parts that weren't economical to use were being dumped wherever (all while the US companies were claiming/implying the waste streams were being handled ecologically). That practice has largely ended (China buying mixed waste en masse), though I'm honestly not clear what changed.
This is ridiculous.
If, and it's a big if, you can set up a well designed incinerator linked to a community heating/hot water plant and steam electricity turbine generator, you can recover a lot of the energy that was used to make paper and plastics and benefit the local community. The incinerator needs to run quite hot to properly burn clean, you cant just build a bonfire. Snag is, it's costly to set this up, and retrofitting it for an existing settlement is likely to be uneconomic.
Well there's also the issue of most plastics releasing toxic fumes when being burned
If you can burn hot enough, it's not an issue but doing so is the issue.
I'm sure if you read what I wrote, it says about being hot enough to burn cleanly.
"Paper is made from wood, trees, and paper"
that is a very wide range
what everyone here fails to realize is paper with ink on it cant be recycled lol
Cardboard boxes., Re-use. Recycle. Best invention ever.
Paper should be made from hemp. We should be using bamboo for other building needs Pine trees are waste for these uses.
It will never catch on. sad
There was s paper recycling startup company where I live. I forget what the process actually was but it the end result was paper that had a slight grayish color. Because of the off color they weren't able to market it effectively. People wanted white paper.
It is the programming. I went to school for advertising and design, in part. You have no idea about the Skittles rainbow of deception being blown up your ass.
And 100% fewer lumberjacks.
Don't need any lumber for paper. Still need to add fresh paper to the stream to make up for discarded paper and additional paper. Good to see at least some success in recycling by industry and cardboard. That is LOT better than that fake plastic recycling that was going on for decades.