Chemicals and Hazardous Waste Household hazardous wastes include drain
cleaners, oven cleaners, window cleaners, disinfectants, motor oil,
paints, paint thinners, and pesticides. Most municipalities ban
hazardous waste from the regular trash. Periodically, citizens are
alerted that they can take their hazardous waste to a collection point
where trained workers sort it, recycle what they can, and package the
remainder in special leak-proof containers called lab packs, for safe
disposal. Typical materials recycled from the collection drives are
motor oil, paint, antifreeze, and tires.
Business and industry have made much progress in reducing both the
hazardous waste they generate and its toxicity. Although large
quantities of chemical solvents are used in cleaning processes,
technology has been developed to clean and reuse solvents that used to
be discarded. Even the vapors evaporated from the process are recovered
and put back into the recycled solvent. Some processes that formerly
used solvents no longer require them.
Nuclear Waste Certain types of nuclear waste can be recycled, while
other types are considered too dangerous to recycle. Low-level wastes
include radioactive material from research activities, medical wastes,
and contaminated machinery from nuclear reactors. Nickel is the major
metal of construction in the nuclear power field and much of it is
recycled after surface contamination has been removed.
High-level wastes come from the reprocessing of spent fuel (partially
depleted reactor fuel) and from the processing of nuclear weapons. These
wastes emit gamma radiation, which can cause birth defects, disease, and
death. High-level nuclear waste is so toxic it is not normally recycled.
Instead, it is fused into inert glass tubes encased in stainless steel
cylinders, which are then stored underground.
Spent fuel can be reprocessed and recycled into new fuel elements,
although fuel reprocessing was banned in the United States in 1977 and
has never been resumed for legal, political, and economic reasons.
However, spent fuel is being reprocessed in other countries such as
Japan, Russia, and France. Spent fuel elements in the United States are
kept in storage pools at each reactor site.
REASONS FOR RECYCLING Rare materials, such as gold and silver, are
recycled because acquiring new supplies is expensive. Other materials
may not be as expensive to replace, but they are recycled to conserve
energy, reduce pollution, conserve land, and to save money.
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Resource Conservation Recycling conserves natural resources by reducing
the need for new material. Some natural resources are renewable, meaning
they can be replaced, and some are not. Paper, corrugated board, and
other paper products come from renewable timber sources. Trees harvested
to make those products can be replaced by growing more trees. Iron and
aluminum come from nonrenewable ore deposits. Once a deposit is mined,
it cannot be replaced.
Energy Conservation Recycling saves energy by reducing the need to
process new material, which usually requires more energy than the
recycling process. The amount of energy saved in recycling one aluminum
can is equivalent to the energy in the gasoline that would fill half of
that same can. To make an aluminum can from recycled metal takes only 5
percent of the total energy needed to produce the same aluminum can from
unrecycled materials, a 95 percent energy savings. Recycled paper and
paperboard require 75 percent less energy to produce than new products.
Significant energy savings result in the recycling of steel and glass,
as well.
Pollution Reduction Recycling reduces pollution because recycling a
product creates less pollution than producing a new one. For every ton
of newspaper recycled, 7 fewer kg (16 lb) of air pollutants are pumped
into the atmosphere. Recycling can also reduce pollution by recycling
safer products to replace those that pollute. Some countries still use
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to manufacture foam products such as cups and
plates. Many scientists suspect that CFCs harm the atmosphere's
protective layer of ozone. Using recycled plastic instead for those
products eliminates the creation of harmful CFCs.
Land Conservation Recycling saves valuable landfill space, land that
must be set aside for dumping trash, construction debris, and yard waste
(see Solid Waste Disposal: Landfill). In the United States, each person
on average discards almost a ton of municipal solid waste (MSW) per
year. MSW is raw, untreated garbage of the kind discarded by homes and
small businesses. Waste from industry and agriculture normally is not
part of MSW, but construction and demolition wastes are. The United
States has the highest MSW discard level of any country in the world.
Landfills fill up quickly and acceptable sites for new ones are
difficult to find because of objections by neighbors to noise and
smells, and the hazard of leaks into underground water supplies. The two
major ways to reduce the need for new landfills are to generate less
initial waste and to recycle products that would normally be considered
waste.
In 1994 about 6.8 million metric tons (7.5 million U.S. tons) of food
and yard debris were composted in the United States, accounting for
about one-sixth of the overall 23.6 percent recycling rate. The combined
effort of reducing waste and recycling resulted in 41 million fewer
metric tons (45 million U.S. tons) of material going to landfills.
Solid waste can also be burned instead of buried in the ground.
Typically, waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities burn trash to heat water for
steam-turbine electrical generators. This WTE recycling keeps another 16
percent of municipal solid waste out of the landfills.
Economic Savings Recycling in the short term is not always economically
profitable or a break-even financial operation. Most experts contend,
however, that the economic consequences of recycling are positive in the
long term. Recycling will save money if potential landfill sites are
used for more productive purposes and by reducing the number of
pollution-related illnesses.
HISTORY People have recycled materials throughout history. Metal tools
and weapons have been melted, reformed, and reused since they came in
use thousands of years ago. The iron, steel, and paper industries have
almost always used recycled materials. Recycling rates were modest in
the United States up through the 1960s, although rates increased during
World War II (1939-1945). Since the 1960s, recycling has steadily
increased. Recycling in the United States between 1960 and 1994 rose
from 5.35 million metric tons (5.9 million U.S. tons) per year to 44.7
million metric tons (49.3 million U.S. tons). In 1930 about 7 percent of
municipal solid waste was recycled. By 1994 that amount had climbed to
23.6 percent. Experts predict the MSW recycling rate will reach 30
percent by the year 2000.
European countries have a long history of recycling and, in some cases,
stiff requirements. In 1991 the German parliament approved legislation
setting recycling targets of 80 to 90 percent for packaging materials
and banned the sale of products from companies that do not cooperate.
France has set specific recycling goals. Other countries with
significant overall recycling rates include Spain at 29 percent,
Switzerland at 28 percent, and Japan at 23 percent.
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