Landfills vs. Recycling

Without question, a recycling strategy of one kind or another is the ultimate goal but like with so many other things (the "paperless office", ethanol from corn, solar power, etc) these things do not happen in a vacuum. Rather they require changes and improvements in a broad base of inter-related technology and processes to come to fruition. The ability to extract energy and useful raw materials from the unsorted waste stream from the coming together of market conditions and a blend of technological improvements is a perfect example.

The fact that we have invested much time and money in setting up the present "presorted" recycling system, where much of the sorted and collected material actually ends up in landfills or incinerators anyway, due to a variety of factors, or often cost much more to collect, final sort, transport and process than it is worth without heavy subsidies is just another example of getting stampeded into premature "pie in the sky" scenarios.

This is such an example:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/5136

I think the new technology for extracting energy, useful raw materials and fertilizer from unsorted garbage is terrific.

It might be a good time to unload any stocks in recycling companies.

Greg

While clearly understanding the numbers for the landfill capacity you cite I would like to also point out a couple of benefits for recycling that are not related to landfill capacity.

First, much landfill capacity is distant from the generators of the waste - hence transportation is an additional cost (and environmental) burden on sending bulk waste to landfills that should drive decision making to look at local alternatives which may well include recycling of some if not much of the MSW. Shipping costs, not landfill capacity may provide the metric to drive these decisions.

Second, a robust recycling program should have as its goal reuse of natural resources to minimize environmental impacts on sources. As an example, recycled newsprint uses less energy and water, does not require trees to be cut down and shipped to the mill, and generates less waste. There are a number of other examples of reuse that have benefits that are not directed to landfill capacity concerns.

No recycling/incineration/landfill decision process should be limited to the question of landfill capacity. Even in the most ingeneous and robust ("ideal") recycling world there will be an end life to recyclability of most materials which would be landfilled. Where the opportunity to exploit the value of reuse of these materials exists or can resonably be created, there is a general (environmental) benefit and in some cases a cost benefit to do so (especially considering transportation and waste to energy finacial impact). The discussion on dealing with any waste stream should be include an honest evaluation of ALL alternatives, and not be limited to do we landfill or not.

LOW COST RECYCLING

Have prisoners sort the recycled trash for free.

8 hours of work gets you "3 hots and a cot".

Give them bread and water with isolation if they refuse.

It works for the NAVY, where they give out 45 days restriction with extra duty all the time.

No one is physically forced to work, just well motivated.

The situation in countries with higher population density is different. The available landfill capacities in the UK are nearer to 4 years than 40, so recycling is much higher up the agenda.

Water is also being recycled now. Close to these co-ordinates there is a plant that takes 40000tonnes/day of secondary-treated sewage effluent, removes the nutrients, and passes it to the inlet of a drinking water treatment works after blending it with river water.

"Horses for courses".

The import of recycled USA television programming is also particularly alarming locally...

Maybe we should ship all our waist over to the USA they have loads of space to put it. We to could use our prisoners to man the ships and only give them enough feul for a one way trip. that would solve two problems at once not enough land fill sites and over crowded prisons.

Well bend me over and call me blair

You already did that once and it is called Georgia.

I agree that is not about landfill space, it is about waste and resources. If you look at the source of trash, you will see how wasteful it is to just bury all this stuff, except future generations will know exactly where to go to mine it.

Glass and metals take a huge thermal energy load to get a finished product, and metals recycling can pay for whole programs.

Plastics are made from oil and natural gas...enough said.

What we do now is just not sustainable.

Georgia? Not Australia?

Oops...Make that twice...Good Point.

Today's landfills are tomorrow's gold mines. Landfills are currently accumulating material that emergent technologies will treat, more and more efficiently, as valuable "ore." Watch. Remember that you first heard it from Guest on CR4.

Back in the early 70s I was running three landfills (1 MSW, 2 Special wastes) and was approached by a Dutch firm that had the technology to extract metals from the landfills. The economics of transportation short circuited the project and after a few years they went on to bigger and better things (at least to them). The MSW landfill was not attractive to them since the ratio of metals to gross mass did not meet a suitable metric for recovery. Raw ore has higher concentrations of useable metal. They were intersted in the landfills that were exclusively set aside for incinerator ash. Unless you know of landfills were they are burying gold (probably in violation of permit) I don't expect "today's landfills are tomorrows's gold mines." Nice thought but shouldn't drive disposal decisions

Um...I posted that 5 hours before you...

Anyway, I think the cost of mining ore will increase over time as it becomes more and more scarce, so technology will have to improve to the point where landfills become mines. Due to transport, they'll probably have to be on-site processors...

Or...They'll figure out fusion and will be able to make any element you want in a microwave sized box...100 years?

Hell we went from Star Trek communicators being fiction to digital cell phones with full internet and bluetooth in 35 years...

Recovery from landfills isn't llimited to metals. Before the 90s, when refining processes were less efficient, much amorphous polyalphaolefin was produced and discarded in landfills because it was deemed useless. In the 90s, more and more uses were found for the material. Now, since much of that waste has been recovered from landfills, most of it is currently made via processes designed to yield it. It's just one example. Also, the technologies and the economics that will spur and justify the recovery efforts are not those that are in place today.

My point refers to the original comments in this blog which deal with the elements one needs to consider when making a decision to landfill or to recycle. I am an advocate of a comprehensive and integrated approach to waste trasport/disposal/reuse strategies. In the 70s we landfilled a lot of materials that even at that time had recycle value (metals in particular) because either the cost or the technology (or both) to efficiently recover them was not available when / where it was needed. I would assume that if the future value of amorphous polyalphaolefin was recognized in the 70s and 80s efforts to recycle would have been cost effective. If we are discussing the decision making process on a waste stream, holding out hope of some future technology that can recover what we bury - at least to me - is not a sound engineering decision metric. That being said, I do agree that we should be looking at ways to recover value from landfilled materials as you cite in your example.

Thanks for the update - I haven't been running landfills for a while and was unaware of the plastics scavenging.

Penn and Teller did a B/S espisode on this. The only thing ecomomical to recycle is aluminum everthing else is a waste of time and money. Land fill capacity is not an issue at all. It is a bogus justification by the environmental police. These are the same people who killed our logging industry only to see most of our forests go up in smoke due to weather related forest fires because there was no under brush removal. (A natural occurence on land that is maintained by the logging industry.) Newsprint may be able to be reprocessed but the cost did not include the cost to sort it and retrieve it. Collection trucks waste huge amounts of fuel to go a pick up the recyled materials. Manpower to sort the garbage is another hidden cost.

Yeah, because I get all my information from a Showtime Series by 2 magicians that I wouldn't trust with a 5 dollar bill.

There have been numerous rebuttals to that show and it is thoroughly biased, non-scientific and a stinking pile of, well, you know.

Just Google "penn and teller recycling rebuttal"

http://www.mmmfiles.com/mmm/index.php/2006-12-21/59/

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/611_ACF17F.htm

Hello Hello, another greenie think globally and stuff up locally issue. I'd like to know more about the logging story.

Newsprint is probably better made into compost (so long as it is done at point of readership and not transported).

What about the Planet Ark scam where you mail your used greeting cards to them for recycling, I shakes my head. They expect us to respect them as human beings!