Recycling Facts

Recycling Facts

Expand all Collapse all

• Recycling Containers Placement Form (Adobe PDF Format)

  This Placement Form will help you to decide how many recycling/waste containers you need. Take this with you as you do a walk of your facility.

  Recycling Container Placement Form (PDF - 0.89mb)

• The Five Most Dangerous Myths About Recycling

  Myth #1:
  We can recycle only 25 to 30% of our solid wastes.
  Fact:
  Twenty-five percent was considered a maximum level in 1985. Today it should be considered a minimum, not maximum.
  
  Myth #2:
  Recycling is more expensive than trash collection and disposal.
  Fact:
  When designed right, recycling programs are cost-competitive with trash collection and disposal.
  
  Myth #3:
  Landfills and incinerators are more cost-effective and environmentally sound than recycling options.
  Fact:
  Recycling Programs, when designed properly, are cost-effective with landfills and incinerators, and provide net pollution prevention benefits. Recycling materials not only avoids the pollution that would be generated through landfilling and incinerating these, but also reduces the environmental burden of virgin materials extraction and manufacturing processes.
  
  Myth #4:
  Landfills are significant job generators for rural communities.
  Fact:
  Recycling creates many more jobs for rural and urban communities than landfill and incineration disposal options.
  
  Myth #5:
  The marketplace works best in solving solid waste management problems; no public sector intervention is needed.
  Fact:
  The solid waste system has always operated under public sector rules and always will. Currently these rules encourage unchecked product consumption and disposal. Public-sector intervention is needed to shape a system in which materials are produced, used, discarded, and recovered efficiently. We needed to change the rules so that disposal alternatives - source reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting - operate in a level playing field. Even after we level the playing field, favoring disposal alternatives makes sense because of its many community and public sector benefits.
  
  Source: Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Washington, DC
  

• Resource Recycling's official guide to doubling your recycling rate without spending a penny

  Resource Recycling's
  official guide to doubling your recycling rate without spending a penny
  by Jerry Powell
  Resource Recycling
  
  LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Be it advised that potential public and private investors in waste management and recycling operations should consider carefully those investments in which the business or operational plan is based in any manner on a published "recycling rate." Also, be it advised that public policy actions based on "recycling rates" may be inappropriate.
  
  Is your community failing to meet a state-mandated recycling rate? Is your industry's trade association reporting a recycling rate that pales in comparison to those reported for competitive industries?
  Worry not. By using the tricks of the trade described in this article, you, too, can have an award-winning recycling rate. And, you can attain this incredible leap in performance without spending one dime (though, because we've gone to great effort to compile this guide, renewing your subscription to this magazine would be appreciated).
  Every one of these techniques is being used today, throughout America, by so-called leaders in recycling. Each trick has proved effective in conning the media, the public and elected officials into thinking that massive volumes of materials are being recovered, when actual results are far less. By using these devious methods, you, too, will attain personal glory and improve your resume.
  
  Never report sales, report only collections
  
  The first thing you need to do is boost the numerator.
  One widely used trick is to focus on collections. The output from a processing plant never equals the volume of material received at the recycling sorting center. Residents and businesses always put out nonrecyclables with their recyclables; thus, all processing plants generate residues. For heaven's sake, never calculate your community's recycling rate based on the actual volumes that were sent to recycling mills. While that method is truthful, it also is dumb. Instead, use collection volumes, because they typically can be greater than actual recycling levels by 10 percent or more.
  The same goes for state recycling rate calculations. If you survey processors, never ask for sales data. Rather, ask for the volume of material received at the plant.
  
  Take advantage of being an urban community
  
  Here's another devious method used by numerous local communities and even by states.
  For years, Newark, New Jersey promoted the fact that it had a humongous recycling rate. But everyone knew that the city's recovery efforts were unremarkable. How could such a reported success be possible?
  Newark, like every other industrialized large city, pulls in scrap metal, paper, plastics and other recoverables from the outlying area. Cities such as Newark have the infrastructure, zoning patterns, labor pool and other elements to lure and retain numerous processing companies.
  Thus, to report a prize-winning recycling rate, all that an urban community needs to do is to seek data on the volumes received by such firms, making sure never to determine how much actually was generated within the city and how much came from outside.
  The same deception works for heavily industrialized states that suck in recyclables from neighboring states.
  
  Find a high-volume recyclable and call it trash
  
  A third guaranteed way to goose your recycling rate is to include things in the numerator that never will appear in the denominator.
  For example, is your state's recycling rate lower than those in neighboring states? Here's a simple fix: Change the rules to allow the recycling of scrap auto hulks to be included in the numerator (auto recycling levels are among the highest of all materials). This should boost your numerator by about 200 pounds per capita per year. And don't worry that junk cars never end up in today's modern transfer stations or landfills. That's beside the point.
  So go out and find some scrap item or byproduct that's recycled at an extremely high level but never appears in a trash can, and add those recovery volumes to your calculation. For instance, some folks up in Wisconsin have said the state has a 90 percent recycling level. Of course, they include the gigantic volume of fly ash from power generation plants that is reutilized.
  
  Do the one-, two-, three-, four-count dance
  
  The next clever method is the most commonly used.
  To boost recovery volumes, always combine all reported shipment recycling levels, no matter the source. If a waste hauler delivers some recyclable material to a processor, count it. Then, get the data from that processor and include these figures. Who cares that it's the same tonnage? If the processor peddles the material to a broker, use the broker's data, too. By topping it off with data from the consuming mill, you've increased the actual recycling level by 300 percent.
  Using this trick, you actually can reach a recycling rate of greater than 100 percent, and thus qualify to give the keynote address at next year's National Recycling Congress.
  
  Revise the state law, but don't tell the media or public
  
  You also can use legislative means to scam the public.
  For many good reasons, numerous states have waste management policies that place a higher priority on waste reduction than on recycling. In order to help translate such policies into local action, several states provide recycling-rate credits to local communities if they undertake specific waste reduction steps.
  In other words, if a community distributes a few home composting bins and provides a list of local reuse stores in an obscure city publication, it can take a two-percentage-point credit. Of course, when the local government brags to the media about its phenomenal recycling rate, it never mentions that a portion of the rate actually has nothing to do with recycling.
  
  Ban it, then overestimate it
  
  Legislative action can falsely boost a state recycling rate in a second way.
  An Arkansas measure in the early 1990s required that at least 75 percent of yard debris be banned from disposal. So, state officials then calculated the amount of yard debris generated, using national data, and said that since a ban was in effect, 75 percent of this material was "recycled." No measure was made at all to determine how much actually was diverted to composting. It was just assumed that nearly 260,000 tons per year of yard debris miraculously were recovered.
  
  Fudge on the post-consumer definition
  
  Every industrial process - from metal forming to envelope making to can filling - generates scrap. In fact, the page you are reading had its edge trimmed. Generally, such industrial processes result in scrap being about 5 to 10 percent of raw material consumption. Invariably, little if any of this material is bound for landfills.
  The trick for the trade association or the state or local government is to get data on all this post-industrial scrap recovery activity, and then mush these data together with the data for actual post-consumer recycling activities. Bingo, you look better.
  For example, in the production of newspapers, clean white newsprint is generated, as are printers' waste and over-issue papers (newspapers that are not sold or delivered to homes and businesses). All of this fiber is recovered and recycled. Always has been. But, in recycling rate calculations, make sure to lump the data for this pre-consumer scrap with that for old newspaper recovery, and then report a "newspaper recycling rate."
  
  Use international shipments to your advantage
  
  No country exports the same amount of a recyclable as it imports. You are either a net importer or exporter of the material. If you are a trade association, this can be to your advantage in jacking up the recovery rate.
  For example, because the U.S. has available secondary smelting capacity and large can stock markets, more aluminum cans flow into the country, especially from Canada, than flow out. A simple, hidden way to make the aluminum can recycling rate look robust is to include Canadian tonnage melted in the U.S. when determining the numerator.
  
  If you're a net MSW exporter, count only in-state disposal
  
  Now that you've jacked up the numerator to an astounding level, you need to reduce the denominator. Here's our first sly trick.
  Garbage often moves great distances to find an acceptable home, and huge volumes of trash cross a state line or two on their way to their final residence.
  If your state is a net exporter of garbage (more goes out than comes in), make sure to use only the figure for in-state disposal. Don't trouble yourself with honestly calculating the waste generation rate in your state. It's best to find and use the lowest disposal figure available.
  
  Don't use MSW figures if you don't have to
  
  To boost your recycling rate, don't use municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal levels in calculating the denominator.
  In a curbside recycling collection program, the easiest way to do this is to use only a portion of residential solid waste volumes in the denominator and residential recycling collection tonnages in the numerator. Why do it this way? The residential recycling rate from a strong curbside recycling and composting collection program to single-family homes often will be higher than the community's overall recycling level, especially if there is no substantial effort to recover materials from multi-family dwellings, medium- to small-size businesses, and institutions.
  
  Don't use year-to-year data if you don't have to
  
  Arkansas says, with a straight face, that it has "a 1999 recycling rate of nearly 44 percent." How did this state attain such a high level?
  Their trick is very simple. The 1991 Arkansas Legislature said the state should recycle the equivalent of 40 percent of its 1991 waste stream by 2000. Thus, ever since 1991, state officials have compared current recovery levels against the 1991 waste stream volume. To use 1999 data in the numerator and 1991 data in the denominator is brilliantly devious.
  
  Develop firewalls to protect your inflated rate
  
  The final recommendations involve how you prepare and present your newly inflated recycling rate.
  Never make the rate calculation activity transparent, especially if you are a trade association. In other words, do not allow alternative voices at the table. For example, in determining an industry's recycling rate, never have a nonaffiliated expert involved, such as a knowledgeable government official or an academic. Make sure the recycling rate is determined by a few select members, and never say who they are. Always say all data are proprietary. It is best to try to make the process as mysterious as the development of the atom bomb during World War II.
  Then, make sure the only person allowed to talk about the rate knows nothing about how it was calculated. That way, a smart person (or a journalist) cannot get any questions answered about the rate.
  
  Source: Resource Recycling - http://www.resource-recycling.com
  

• Plastic Coding System

  The coding system was launched in 1988 by the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) in the United States, and has since been adopted by industry groups in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan. Two of the key issues are the need to make it more specific (ie. to distinguish between grades of polymer) and to avoid confusion with established recycling symbols. This coding sytem (see below) is only intended for use on packaging. Other systems are being developed for plastics in general. There is a draft international standard ISO/DIS 11469 called "Plastics - Generic Identification and Marking of Plastic Products" TYPE OF PLASTIC CHARACTERISTICS APPLICATIONS Polyethylene Terephthalate PET Clear, tough, solvent resistant, often us as a fibre Carbonated soft drink bottles, pillow and sleeping bag filling, textile fibres High Density Polyethylene HDPE Hard to semi-flexible, waxy surface, opaque, melts at 135°C Crinkly shopping bags, freezer bags, milk bottles, bleach bottles, buckets, rigid agricultural pipe, milk crates Unplasticized Polyvinyl Chloride UPVC Hard rigid, can be clear, can be solvent welded Electrical conduit, plumbing pipes and fittings, blister packs, clear cordial and fruit juice bottles Plasticized Polyvinyl Chloride PPVC Flexible, clear, elastic, can be solvent welded Garden hose, shoe soles, cable sheating, blood bags and tubing, watch straps Low Density Polyethylene LDPE Soft, flexible, waxy surface translucent, withstands solvents Garbage bags squeeze bottles, black irrigation tube, black mulch film, garbage bins Polypropylene PP Hard but still flexible, waxy surface, melts at 145°C, translucent, withstands solvents. Very versatile material with many applications Potato crisps bags, drinking straws, microwave ware, plastic kettles, plastic garden settings, baby baths, plastic hinged lunch boxes Polystyrene PS Clear, glassy, rigid, brittle, opaque semi-tough, melts at 95°C. Affected by fats and solvents Plastic cutlery, imitation 'crystal glassware', low cost brittle toys Expanded Polystyrene EPS Foamed, light weight, energy absorbing, heat insulating Panel insulation, produces boxes, protective packaging for fragile items OTHER : Includes all other resins and multi materials (eg laminates). Examples are polyamide, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), acrylic, nylon, polyurethane (PU) and phenolics.

• Public Area Recycling - Resource Recycling November 2002 Issue (Adobe PDF Format)

  Public Area Recycling - Resource Recycling November 2002 Issue (PDF - 3.73mb)

• How to Set Up a Green Room (Adobe PDF Format)

  This article covers the idea of a "Green Room" and how to set one up in your office.

  "Offices and individuals accumulate new and used office supplies they no longer have a use for but that can be used by someone else. These supplies are placed in the Green Room for redistribution. The Green Room should be the FIRST source to check when additional supplies are requested."

  How to Set Up a Green Room (PDF - 0.11mb)

• Weight Conversion Factors for Recyclable Content

  Weight Conversion Factors for Recyclable Content

• Up-to-date Listing for Recycled Paper Market Prices

  Up-to-date Listing for Recycled Paper Market Prices

• Free Waste Prevention Clipart for use with Recycling Posters

  California Integrated Waste Management Board