Are We Still Wasting Materials?

I can assure you that not everyone recycles bottle cans, and paper from their home.

milo

My local landfill is in the top three percent of landfill operations. Recycling of standard wastes like bottles and cans is close to universal around where I live.

Suppose the last frontier would be all the squishy stuff, and busted chunks of concrete.

Best model for recycling I know of is car batteries, which approaches 99 percent in the US.

Far as I know, recycling of tires has one great application when they are ground up and added to asphalt creating a long lived road surface.

In the US alone almost 10 million tons per year of iron oxides from mines, steel mills, manufacturers shops each year is landfilled. This includes all the metallic dust, scale, sludge, etc.

Around the world this figure is about 100 million tons per year. It is the nature of the beast from using metal in products. A lot of the waste is considered contaminated from zinc, cadmium, lead and other materials that is part of the makeup of steel and stainless products.

In the US as well as around the world almost nothing is being recycled of the wastes. There are a few processes out there that could use it but there is no incentive to do so by the mills as long as rules and regs look the other way.

Today, since the price of the raw material iron oxide has jumped by 300% or so and going higher plant owners are starting to look around to save money, but unless there is an incentive like tests plants or grants, the developers are between a rock and a hard place scrambling for assistance. In other countries governments support new tech. development but in the US it is a political decision and all grant money goes to universities.

I've been there-done that.

So yes there are still major areas that should be looked at, metal waste is only one.

Consumer goods/office equipment comes to mind. Printers for example, that are cheaper to replace than repair. Likewise audio equipment that fails within a year or two.

I know there is some recycling of these in some parts of the world, but certainly not all. (Where I live, I pay a private company that accepts cans and household plastic for recycling, since the municipal/regional recycling program is limited to beverage containers and paper.)

The best answer to the equipment issue would be to make long lasting models available, and to use designs that are easily repaired (as Milo pointed out elsewhere, know your weak link and design for it). From an economic standpoint, producers would have to (a) charge more for the product in the first place, and (b) adopt a maintenance revenue stream. This is opposite to the present situation, where manufacturing is happening far from the consumer, therefore no interest/no opportunity for the same parties to engage in maintenance of the product.

This is what's happening in Europe

WEEE

23.4.10

The waste pickers in India are getting organised through Non Governmental Organisations ( NGOs ). It is heartening to know that tyre recycling has caught on. This can be a substantial revenue stream for these BPL ( blow poverty line ) people in a country where vehicle population is burgeoning. Will you be kind enough to pass on more details to nalinipalyam@gmail.com and wastematterspune@gmail.com

Most of them are presently stuck with collection of plastic, glass and paper waste and work in really pathetic conditions at dumping grounds.

Regards,

Vinay Isloorkar, Pune India

One of the ways to get them coming and going is this one;

The town where I used to live accepted all concrete sidewalk , floors, all concrete waste. They weighed your truck, charged you to leave the waste concrete there. On the way out you could purchase crushed concrete waste for fill etc., at a nominal cost to you. Now that's what I call profitable recycling, they got you coming & going.

If we could only come up with a similiar solution for used tires!

I haven't heard of recycling of the chemical run-off from farming operations.

I believe there is one way to recycle farm byproducts and it is using the methane bio/ gas to produce electricity. There are facilities utilizing biogas from landfills, sewage tmt plants and farms to generate electricity.

The millions of tons of machining waste already detailed; I'll just cite a 2007 EPA report on ewaste that found at most 10% regionally (in the USA) of all consumer electronics, excluding house appliances, were recycled at all. Only a small percentage of that was responsibly recycled.

Planned Obsolescence based businesses models are still very much dominant. Ask Apple.

I didn't quite understand the first comment about machining waste already detailed.

I think we can emphatically state that we are in agreemence with the low level of recycled e-material. I have had a number of inquiries from foreign sources that would like to set up an accumalation activity and export the e-materials, mainly because in their area of concern they have all the labor they would need for about a dollar a day, and the amount of exotic metals alone in each piece of trash would be worth at least 4 times the total cost of recovering it.

I have suggested that it would be an ideal project to have an organization like the Goodwill or Salvation Army take this on and pay whoever brings in an article receive a token amount. Perhaps from homeless or vagrants since they seem to be doing it anyway. As much as we in the US buy everything as a throw away item there should be a nice little business here for the charities.

I have had a number of inquiries from foreign sources that would like to set up an accumalation activity and export the e-materials, mainly because in their area of concern they have all the labor they would need for about a dollar a day, and the amount of exotic metals alone in each piece of trash would be worth at least 4 times the total cost of recovering it.

If it were that the recipient on our e-wastes would irresponsibly expose the environment and personnel to the hazards of our e-wastes would we not be responsible for the resultant DNA/ecological repercussion?

E-waste:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081044.pdf

http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/HazardousWaste/EWaste/MoreInfo.cfm#Export_Regulations

I disagree with the comment about machining wastes. Our Precision machining industry in the US recycles every bit of metallics that it can. I would be hard pressed to document a loss of 50 # over a year per shop as 'occasional' chips going out in rags, rugs, and pant cuffs. (We have to do mass balance calculations for TRI reporting). Our scrap bins are stored under cover to prevent stormwater run off issues. Machining operations are not the bad guys.

Steel bands, clips, wires and other packaging materials are recycled as well.

milo

I had no statement of "machining waste" in the post...only e-waste is pertinent.

Agreed, I felt that there was no need to make an additional post to clutter up everyone's in box, as this one would fall after theose preceeding.

milo

I was referring to tcinc002's comment. And I agree it was unfair of me to say "machining waste". My exposure to metal manufacturing is either small-run/prototyping or anecdotal.

Finding myself in extreme economic conditions, I checked out a place in Seattle that I usually wouldn't visit: Goodwill Outlet.

They concentrate on clothes and toys, and also furniture. But they also have electronics equipment.

I was truly amazed at the amount of useful stuff people throw away. And these are things people bothered to give to Goodwill. Think of all the stuff that goes straight to trash. It is definitely a situation here in the US and probably many other countries. There is a lot of room for creative ideas in the areas if reusing fabrics, plastics, furniture and electronics (including working equipment and parts).

Trial run samples can be eliminated. This allows manufacturers to produce only the quantity needed. Rather than just guessing, the process can be "pre-tuned" by controlling just a few variables. One piece flow is also possible!