Recycling Myths

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Start the new year off by reading some of these recycling myths. While we all love being outdoors, we are all responsible for recycling, picking up litter, and trying to cut down on our personal waste.

RECYCLING MYTH #1: Recycling is  Hard. As long as the community is able to provide adequate recycling opportunities and accessibility, recycling should not be difficult for the consumer. Providing bins and visuals in the community help residents know what can be recycled. Many communities accept commingled recyclables and the materials no longer need to be separated. Removing labels and caps is not necessary, they are removed by machines during the separation process.

RECYCLING MYTH #2: We are already recycling as much as we can

•  The national recycling rate is about 30%, the U.S. EPA has set a goal of 35%.
• Many easily recycled materials are still thrown away. For example, 78% of glass containers, 60% of aluminum cans, 41% of steel cans, 45% of paper, paperboard containers and packaging are not currently recycled.
• Many Americans focus on recycling in the kitchen, but forget about products and packaging consumed elsewhere, like bathrooms, laundry rooms and garages.
• Americans are increasingly on the go, and we can do much more to make recycling convenient in public places, from downtown streets to shopping malls and sports stadiums.

RECYCLING MYTH #3: Any plastic product that has a number within the chasing arrows is recyclable. The plastics industry created the resin identification code in 1988 to differentiate the different plastic polymer types. The code includes the recycling symbol along with a number that identifies the type of resin used. Contrary to public belief, the code on a plastic product does not mean that material is recyclable or has been recycled. It has no other meaning aside from identifying the type of plastic.

RECYCLING MYTH #4: Recycled bottles are made into new bottles. Recycled materials are reprocessed and turned into a variety of new products. Recycled plastics are used in the production of toothbrushes, plastic construction timber and carpets, to name a few. Recycling allows for greater innovation when it comes to the manufacturing of new products.

RECYCLING MYTH #5: Material in a landfill will decompose. Landfills are not meant to break down trash, but rather to bury it. This design helps prevent decomposing materials from contaminating groundwater. Thus recycling creates more space in landfills and lessens the chance of trash leeching into our soil and water. Landfills are designed so that little oxygen or moisture flows through – two essential components of decomposition.

RECYCLING MYTH #6: There is plenty of landfill space, so why bother. Also, landfills are safe disposal options.

• Recycling’s true value comes from preventing pollution and saving natural resources and energy, not landfill space.
• Recycling is largely responsible for averting the landfill crises.
• The number of landfills in the United States is steadily decreasing – from 8,000 in 1988 to 1,858 in 2001. The capacity, however, has remained relatively constant. New landfills are much larger than in the past.
• Landfills can be major sources of groundwater pollution. For example, leachate from solid waste landfills is similar in composition to that of hazardous waste landfills.
• Municipal solid waste landfills are the largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for about 34% of these emissions, which are a potential cause of global warming.

RECYCLING MYTH #7: There are no markets for recyclables

• Demand for recycled materials has never been greater and, in many cases, exceeds the supply currently provided by the American public.
• Rapid industrial development, particularly in China and other Asian nations, has created a huge surge in demand for recyclables.
• Domestic and international markets exist for all materials collected in curbside recycling programs, as long as they meet basic quality standards. In fact, there is intense competition among users for many recycled materials.
• The recycling industry is comparable in size to the auto and truck manufacturing industry. It’s a large industry that demands lots of raw materials.
• A recycled aluminum beverage can returns to the grocer’s shelf as a new, filled can in as few as 60 days after collection, which tells us that the markets are functioning efficiently.

RECYCLING MYTH #8: Recycling should pay for itself. If recycling made sense, the free market will make it happen.

• Recycling pays for itself in many ways, from the direct financial benefits of selling the materials to the many economic and environmental benefits.
• Recycling creates 1.1 million U.S. jobs, $236 billion in gross annual sales and $37 billion in annual payrolls. Recycling creates four jobs for every one job created in the waste management and disposal industries.
• Public sector investment in local recycling programs pays great dividends by creating private sector jobs. For every job collecting recyclables, 26 jobs are created to process the materials and manufacture them into new products.
• Landfills and incinerators don’t pay for themselves; in fact they cost more than recycling programs. The government supports lots of services that the free market wouldn’t provide, such as the delivery of running water and electricity.
• If the market were truly free, long-standing subsidiaries that favor virgin materials and landfills would not exist, and recycling could compete on a level playing field.
• Thousands of U.S. companies have saved millions of dollars through their voluntary recycling programs. They wouldn’t recycle if it didn’t make economic sense.

Recycling Myth #9: All the paper, plastic, metal and glass dumped in recycling bins has to be painstakingly (and expensively) sorted by hand. When municipal recycling was first catching on in the 1980s, it wasn’t clear how carefully people would sort their recyclables. “Some towns used to have a dozen different boxes for different types of bottles, cans and so on,” recalls Richard Porter, a University of Michigan economics professor who authored The Economics of Waste. Not everyone was eager to devote that much effort to sorting up front–but it was either that or pay people to do it by hand at the end of the line, which was prohibitively expensive.

These days, processors are beginning to move toward “single-stream” material recovery facilities, which allow homeowners to dump all their recycling in one bin and rely on machines to do the dirty work. According to Eileen Berenyi, a consultant who studies solid waste management, the number of single-stream facilities in the U.S. jumped from 70 in 2001 to 160 in 2007.

Such state-of-the-art facilities now feature magnets to attract steel, eddy currents to deflect aluminum, infrared spectrometers to identify different types of plastics, and a host of other sorting technologies. These plants are expensive, so they only make sense if 100 to 200 tons of recyclables are being processed daily, and they still require some human sorters to oversee the process. But the collection costs of picking up a single bin, rather than multiple ones, are much lower–and because it’s easy for homeowners, the recycling rates are higher–so the overall economics of mechanized sorting pays off.

RECYCLING MYTH #10: Recycling causes more pollution than it prevents.

• Recycling helps reduce our reliance on foreign oil by saving energy.
• A national recycling rate of 30% reduces greenhouse gas emissions as much as removing nearly 25 million cars from the road.
• In 2007, recycling was conservatively projected to save the same amount of energy used in 9 million homes (900 trillion BTUs).
• In the U.S., processing minerals contributes almost half of all reported toxic emissions from industry, sending 1.5 million tons of pollution into the air and water each year. Recycling can significantly reduce these emissions.
• It takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to make it from raw materials. Making recycled steel saves 60%, recycled newspaper 40%, recycled plastics 70% and recycled glass 40% less energy. These savings far outweigh the energy created as byproducts of incineration and landfilling.
• Mining is the world’s most deadly occupation. On average, 40 mine workers are killed on the job each day, and many more are injured. Recycling reduces the need for mining.
• Tree farms and reclaimed mines are not ecologically equivalent to natural forests and ecosystems. Recycling prevents habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and soil erosion associated with logging and mining.

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