Super Eco

Photo credit: Aine D, flickr

Every Wednesday night I roll a big bin on wheels out into the street. The bin is large, blue, and it's where I throw all my empty bottles, cans and used paper. It never occurred to me that a paper envelope might be different from a paper cup, so I dump it all in there. This is how I recycle.

On Thursday morning when I get dressed (2:00 p.m.?) I go outside and roll the bin back up behind my apartment, and it's magically empty! I don't know what happened to it; all I know is that the contents are gone and I did my civic duty by making sure empty bottle after empty bottle was recycled into... I don't know... pixie dust? I've previously been under the impression that everything in the recycling bin gets put into a large compactor à la Star Wars, crushed into a giant cube, then dumped into a tube made of magic that produces brand new glass bottles and aluminum cans.

For all of you who think the same way I do, it's time to take a science-y stroll down Manufacturing Lane to learn the wonders of the recycling process.

Aluminum

The first step is to collect all the cans into one place and crush them together (See? I was sort of right about that part). Cans from recycling centers and deposit machines are all transported to a scrap processing company where they are packed into rectangular formations of about 1,200 pounds each. It's a bit like your friend Brian who crushes cans against his head, but thousands of them at once. Everyone has a friend named Brian who does that.

These large bales are transported to an aluminum company, where they're further crushed, chopped and then heated to remove their outer coloring. The resulting aluminum pieces are typically sprayed with chemicals to remove bacteria or other impurities. The aluminum pieces are then funneled into a melting furnace that heats them to over 1220 degrees Fahrenheit before mixing with new aluminum. Caps and Stems built their own aluminum melting furnace that you can build yourself for a few hundred dollars, if you're so inclined.

The fresh, molten aluminum is pressed through a long machine that flattens it out, creating thin sheets of new aluminum. These aluminum sheets are sent to factories who mold them into whatever shape they need for their products, be it a can of soda or aluminum foil.

The best part of this process, and a way to distinguish it from some other forms of recycling, is the relative ease and small amount of energy it takes to do it.

Take-away: Recycle all your aluminum cans. They will be brand new cans within weeks and it requires very little energy and resources.

Glass

Glass falls into the same category as aluminum: it's broken down fairly easily and takes relatively little energy to turn into a new glass product. Unlike aluminum cans, however, there's no burning off the color from glass. The recycling centers have to separate green, brown, and clear bottles, and process them separately. Glass bottles that are still clean are the best, but if the product has been somehow contaminated, they can be used as ingredients in less pure creations, such as concrete. Sadly, if contaminated glass ends up at a factory that makes more fragile products, such as light bulbs, those bottles more often than not end up in the garbage.

So let's say you and your friends have finished watching football and downing beers (except for the designated driver, of course), and then you suggest “Hey, fellas, let's go down to the collection plant!” Since the Newcastle bottles are all clear they stay in the same bin and are crushed and melted in a large furnace. The resulting crushed glass is called "cullet." You and your friends would get back in your Prius and follow the cullet to another manufacturing plant, where it is mixed with sand and limestone. The mixture is then fed into an even hotter furnace until the glass becomes liquid. In this fluid state, it can then be formed into any number of shapes, be it a bottle, a vase or a window.

Glass recycling is all well and good, but it takes far less energy to simply rinse out the bottle and reuse it. Denmark has an amazing system whereby consumers return their used bottles to beverage makers, who then wash the bottles and refill them! There's no waste and very little energy expended. It's so simple that I'm shocked the United States has not widely embraced this practice. Though recycling glass bottles is obviously preferable to throwing them in the garbage, U.S. consumers should demand deposit laws and central deposit locations. If we could emulate Denmark, where over 90% of bottles are reused, we would save millions of bottles and dollars. Currently, the number of glass bottles trashed by Americans every year would have filled up both World Trade Center towers 25 times over.

Suddenly turned off by the thought of throwing your bottles into the abyss of the recycling bin? Why not donate them to the creation of a majestic bottle tree?

Take-away: Recycle glass bottles for now, but write to your congressperson and the U.S. Department of Energy, asking for a system to reuse existing bottles.

Paper

This is where it gets really tricky. My plan was to trace a Starbucks cup through the paper-recycling process, but there's a snag. It turns out that Starbucks cups are made from paper fiber and a low-density polyethylene plastic, meant to help keep the paper stable and prevent leakage. This bit of plastic in the material makes Starbucks cups non-recyclable. Though the cups are made out of 10% post-consumer waste, 1.5 billion are thrown in the trash every year. So, before I get into the paper recycling process, I implore you to bring your own mug or thermos to your coffee house of choice, instead of relying on paper cups.

For our purposes, let's assume that we're recycling an ecotainer coffee cup, made out of paper and a plant-based plastic lining. At a paper recycling plant, the cup is de-inked and mixed with water to create a sludgy substance called "slurry." The pulp mixture is further diluted and spun at a high speed to remove contaminants like glue. The slurry is then pressed and wrapped into large rolls of new paper, which can then be used to make new cups, newspaper, toilet paper and more.

Critics often make the case that recycling paper uses up more energy than using trees to make new paper, due to the diesel expenditure of recycling trucks. The recycling process, however, uses 40% less energy than creating paper from shredded trees on tree farms. One ton of recycled paper also saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill.

Take-away: Avoid paper products when possible, but recycle when you do use them. Urge companies that currently use non-recyclable paper products to switch to 100% recyclable material.

Plastic

I saved plastic for the end since it causes the most problems. If you drink out of a water bottle, it is almost certainly made out of PET, or polyethylene terephthalate. These bottles are coded with the number 1, what's known as a resin identification code to distinguish it from other plastics. This characteristic is important, since other plastic products such as plastic utensils are not made of PET and cannot be recycled at all.

At recovery facilities, PET bottles are crushed and shredded to create plastic flakes that can be used in any number of industries for their products. Here's the big problem: very few PET flakes are used to produce new plastic bottles. They are nearly always used in non-recyclable products, such as textiles, carpet fibers or composite lumber, and by consequence, nearly all new plastic bottles are made from scratch using petroleum.

Therefore, purchasing plastic bottles is not only wasteful, but it's mistakenly over-encouraged because the majority of us believe that recycling them will help prevent other petrol-based products from being used. If you're not sure what kind of plastic material a product is made out of, Wikipedia has a chart of resin codes to help you figure it out.

Take-away: Seriously, just don't use plastic bottles. Whether you throw them in the trash or recycle them, it wastes a significant amount of energy. Buy a water filter and get out of the habit of purchasing bottled water.

There you have it. A “Magic School Bus” tour of what we recycle and how it works. While aluminum and glass have great practical uses, it's best to save the paper plates and plastic forks for picnics. With all the products we use that end up in the trash, it's clear we need more effective solutions for dealing with our waste, not that I wouldn't like to meet Wall-E, but let's keep it up on the big screen. Recycle your cans and paper, reuse your glass, and avoid plastic whenever possible.