solid waste management ------- l Of > -'" "N no |, vtyr-s^ ;jv , ^ f. "\ i ^-•7/ >';'<>'< Tficros /I'C^X0-' «MJ c -'^-^^! ^ ri N\$^J> _ ^4'^t>*v I an environmental protection publication (sw-117) , ^^/ I in the solid waste management series '• --m^1 & * ' . ' • i U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY 1974 UKifOKI C.POSITSOJ4 tth'4 coc^rntct. -*,.' ------- recycling and the consumer s the American people have become aware of the environmental crisis the Nation faces, many have come to look on the recycling of materials * and products as the way to conserve valuable resources, and cut our waste disposal problems down to manageable size. Unfortunately, neither the problem nor its solution is simple. For despite all the attention that recycling has received in recerit'years, the United States today recycles a lower percentage of its resources than ever before in history. In recent years, the United States has consumed roughly 190 million tons of paper, major metals, glass, textiles, and rubber annually. Of the 190 mil- lion tons, 48 million tons—about a quarter—were acquired through recycling operations. The rates at which the classes of materials are recycled vary: Materials used Paper Iron and steel Aluminum Copper and lead Glass and textiles Rubber Percent recycled 19 31 18 50 4 26 Almost all the wastes salvaged today come from manufacturers and ibusinesse|, where large amounts. of relatively clean and homogeneous wastes accumulate. They are collected, and some- times processed* by the secondary materials in- dustry, a well-established industry with 80,000 employees and annual sales of approximately $8 billion. The wastes are then sold to manufacturers for reuse. In addition to the wastes salvaged by the secondary materials industry, large tonnages of scrap are derived from basic manufacturing proc- esses and are recycledrwithout leaving their point of origin. ------- At least 125 million tons of solid wastes are col- lected by American communities every year. This figure excludes industrial, demolition, and con- struction wastes, for which little statistical data exists. The annual throw-away includes 39 million tons of paper, 4 million tons of plastics, and 55 billion beverage containers. Unfortunately, almost nothing is salvaged once it is in the garbage can. Salvage requires that the wastes be separated into basic categories such as paper, iron and steel, aluminum, and glass; the wastes are1 then purified and processed to make them suitable for reuse in manufacturing operations. efforts to recycle household wastes Some household wastes are recycled by being kept out of the garbage can—for example, the news- papers put aside for the Boy Scout drive and the old clothes and other useable items given to char- ity. But in the affluent America of today, this is done much less than it once was. Since Earth Day 1970, these familiar examples of "separation at the source" have been supplemented by some 3,000 collection centers set up and operated by public- spirited citizens determined to overcome the bar- riers to recycling. Despite many difficulties, local recycling projects, manned by dedicated volun- teers, are striving to makfc resource recovery from household wastes a current reality. The importance of these citizen efforts goes well beyond the rela- tively small amounts of wastes they have succeeded in recycling. The centers, a concrete and useful symbol of our Nation's new environmental aware- ness, have shown that many citizens are willing to work to help solve environmental problems. Con- cerned industries have established depots to facil- itate the redemption of such materials as glass bot- tles, steel cans, and aluminum cans. Governments and industries have responded by paying more attention to recycling. Increasingly, municipal offi- cials, who may have once regarded their solid waste problem solely in terms of collection and disposal, are expanding their considerations to include re- source recovery, especially where disposal costs are high and the relative costs of waste recovery are attractive. page.tux> ------- Recycling is thwarted by a network of circumr stances that are a longstanding and'integral part of the American scene. When the United States was a young and growing nation, tax laws and govern- ipent regulations were designed to encourage ex- ploitation of our plentiful resources. Special tax incentives, such as depletion and capital gains al-, lowances, and depreciation schedules, favor use of natural resources. So do some shipping rates and policies on use of Federal land.'And so do the loca- tions of industrial plants and their l^abor supplies. For example, most paper mills are close to forests —but far from large cities and the concentrated supplies of wastepaper that the mills-are capable of recycling. After years of development and atten-' tion, American industry has become remarkably efficient at processing raw materials. In contrast, relatively little attention has been placed on meth- ods of processing raw waste materials. Some traditional attitudes and habits of the American people also stand in the way of recycling. To most people, a blanket labeled "made of virgin wool" seems more desirable than one labeled . "made of reprocessed wool," even though the re- processed wool blanket may_ be entirely suitable for its intended purpose. These conditions that discourage recycling are a culmination of, a concerted national effort to ex- .ploit natural resources. There is evidence, however, that we are beginning to understand that, his- torically, our concept of cost has been too narrow. Information is emerging to show that recovering resources is indeed economical if we put a price on other factors, such as protecting the environment and conserving energy and other natural resources. If we look at all the steps involved—extracting, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, transport- ing, and disposing—we find that the system using recycled materials almost .always causes less air :and water pollution, generates less solid wastes, ------- and consumes less energy than does a system using raw, or virgin, materials. Recycling is also bene- ficial because domestic resource reserves are con- tinuing to decline and our dependence on foreign supplies is increasing at a time when world resource consumption is rising rapidly. Thus, as the movement accelerates to recycle more of the resources now wasted and converted into pollutants, the entire Nation—its people, busi- nesses, governments, and other institutions—is questioning many of its traditional ways of think- ing and doing things. As the public's understanding of the need for ecological and environmental re- sponsibility has deepened, it has begun to reap- praise its own views as consumers and citizens. The public is concerned with the energy and en- vironmental costs of transportation. It is looking more critically at disposable products, at how pro- ducts are packaged and how long they last, and at the custom of throwing out last year's still useful model because this year's is slightly better or dif- ferent. American consumers' concerns are part of an even bigger concern—the growing, worldwide realization that the people of this planet cannot go on using finite resources as if they were infinite. ------- encouragng tr< A number of forces are already at work that may in time encourage recycling by narrowing the price gap between virgin and recycled materials. As new and more stringent air and water pollution control laws are enforced, industry's costs for processing raw materials will increase, and this may direct at- tention to the opportunities for the increased use of waste materials. Rapidly rising energy costs will also favor waste materials, since their processing generally consumes less energy than processing raw materials. At the same time, local governments are taking another look at recycling, sometimes because of citizen enthusiasm, but—in the case of large cities without land for disposal—out of sheer necessity. As disposal becomes more difficult and expensive, recycling solid wastes becomes an attractive and economically competitive option for local govern- ments. Rising energy costs are making the recovery of heat energy from wastes a particularly promis- ing option. Even communities with land available for dis- posal may turn more to waste recycling as they are forced to close their open dumps. Thousands of communities still use open dumps, which may ap- pear to be inexpensive in terms of disposal costs, but are very expensive in terms of the damage they do to the environment. As cities reject open dump- ing, recycling becomes more competitive economi- cally. A recycling option need not be totally self- COAL $? ------- supporting. A community can afford to subsidize recycling if the costs to the local public are in the range of what would be required to dispose of the wastes by environmentally sound methods. As these forces gain momentum, they may begin to encourage recycling by narrowing the cost gap between natural and waste materials. As part of the Nation's growing environmental awareness, methods are being explored to close the cost gap. One method is to usfe governments' purchasing power.' Federal specifications," for example, once prohibited use of recycled fibers in paper purchased by the Government. All Federal restrictions against use of recycled fibers have now been re- moved, and 77 paper specifications have already been rewritten to require, some percentage of re- cycled fibers. The Department of the Army has stepped up its use of retreaded tires for automobiles and trucks. The Federal Highway Administration is evaluating various waste products for use in con- structing and maintaining highways. By these actions, the Government can establish the tech- nical and economic practicability of using recycled materials and so promote the growth of larger markets. Changes in Federal labeling laws offer an additional opportunity for increasing markets, for recycled materials.' Present Federal laws or reg- ulations require that materials such as lubricating oils and wool be labeled in ways that suggest to the consumer that they are Inferior. Freight rate schedules are another area where the search is on to find ways to further the'cause of recycling. The Federal Government is now study- ing shipping rates on both rail and ocean freight. Transportation costs are* a significant portion of the total cost in marketing recycled materials, so it is essential that they are equitable and do not dis- criminate against Waste materials. Modifications to the Federal tax structure are also being studied as a possible means of encouf- .aging recycling. Among the proposals that have been put forth are eliminating or reducing-the long- standing tax incentives available to processors of raw materials, imposing new taxes'on raw mate- rials, or subsidizing waste materials to lower their prices. Until the end of.World War II, significant amounts of materials were salvaged from municipal wastes. Some wastes were set aside in the home for separate collection, either by a collection agency, civic group, or social service agency. In some communi- tithe. source. is one BIX ------- ties, workers on trucks or at dumps and incin- erators removed salvageable materials such as newspapers, cardboard, metals, glass, and rags. As labor costs rose and the compactor truck was intro- duced, picking operations became more expensive and difficult, and so they were slowjy abandoned. At the beginning of this decade when Americans became more aware of environmental quality, al- most nothing was being recycled from municipal wastes. Attention soon focused on technological recycling systems involving separating and reusing wastes after they had been transported to a central point. But some environmentalists who wanted to take more direct and immediate action advocated a return to the old method of keeping wastes sepa- rated at the point where they are generated. Compared to technological systems, separation at the source is simple, inexpensive, and capable of being put into effect quickly. At least 80 com- munities are collecting some wastes (usually news- papers) separately as part of their regular service. In 1969, Madison, Wisconsin, for example, began asking its residents to bundle their newspapers and put them at the curb with other wastes. The city's regular sanitation trucks collect the papers, placing them in special bins below the truck body. The pa- pers are sold and made into newsprint in a plant about a hundred miles from Madison. Almost 60 percent of Madison householders participate in the voluntary program. Some separate-collection pro- ------- grams are required in other cities by ordinance—as in Hempstead, New York. Newspapers have been collected separately since 1971, and currently about 80 percent of the households in Hempstead participate in the program. A number of American cities are exploring new technological systems for recycling mixed munici- pal wastes. One especially promising system in- volves burning the organic portions of the wastes for the production of heat and electrical energy. For many years, some European cities have used the heat produced by incinerators to make steam and electricity. But in the United States, accus- tomed as we were to abundant supplies of cheap fuels, this approach has until quite recently re- ceived only scant attention. Now the City of St. Louis, assisted by a grant from the U.S. Environ- mental Protection Agency, is burning some of its wastes with pulverized coal in the boiler furnaces of the Union Electric Company. The wa-ste is shredded. Then metals, glass, and other noncom- bustible materials are removed by air classification. ------- 0*| MJO approach uses some of to collection. About 1 pound of this shredded and classified waste is burned with 4 pounds of coal. Very few changes were required in the power plant, .-mil it appears that any technical problems from burning wastes can be solved. The St. Louis project has at- tracted widespread interest since existing power plants in many communities could be adapted to burn municipal wastes as a supplementary fuel to produce energy and at the same time cut down significantly the quantity of waste requiring dis- posal. Similar operations are already being planned GrLASS // ------- in other parts of the country. In fact, the State of Delaware recently decided to change the emphasis in an EPA-supported demonstration project from humus production to energy recovery, patterned after the St. Louis project. The shredded wastes will supplement fuel oil in an existing steam-elec- tric boiler of the Delmarva Power and Light Com- pany. Other types of recycling plants are now being built with EPA assistance in three other cities. Two of the plants—in Baltimore and San Diego—'- will use, a pyrolysis process involving heating wastes in a controlled-oxygen environment. The organic matter is converted to a liquid or gas that can be burned as a fuel. Both plants will reclaim metals and glass. The third plant, in Lowell, Massachusetts, will process the residue from in- cinerators to recover metals and glass. For several years a recycling plant at Franklin, Ohio, has been demonstrating a method for proc- essing municipal waste through the use of tech- niques developed- in the paper industry. In this highly automated.plant, built with EPA assist- ance, the wastes are disintegrated in water in a ves- sel resembling a huge,kitchen blender. Paper fibers can be separated by screens and other mechanical devices. Paper fiber is a promising target for recycling because it is the largest single compo- nent of municipal wastes and potentially very valuable. At Franklin, metal and glass are also separated from the mixed wastes. Plans are under consideration to duplicate a part of the Franklin system in other cities. As these new technologies are demonstrated, they will add to the alternative's available to a community, if it decides to recycle some of its wastes as part of its total solid waste management system. And, indeed, numerous alternatives are needed, .for local conditions vary widely and prob- ably no single approach is-capable of meeting every community's needs.'Large cities experiencing very high costs because they have'no conveniently lo- cated'land for disposal may conclude that one of these technologies, or a program involving sepa- rating some wastes in the home, if there is a mar- ket for secondary materials, is the best answer to their needs. This is especially true if the energy or material recovered can be sold to nearby markets that do not involve large transportation costs. But no matter what approach a community selects, it will still have wastes which cannot be recycled and which must be disposed of on land in ways that do not contribute to environmental or public health problems. Moreover, at this time the problem of disposal—particularly ,in large urban areas—can only be described as critical. Today, resource recovery is still in its infancy. The infant will grow, but just how fast depends on the American'people. The problems are not primarily technical. They are political, social, and economic problems that an informed and involved people can solve. The phenomenal growth of public in- terest generally, and of citizen recycling centers— as Well as the involvement of important segments of industry—suggests that the Nation is ready now to attack those'problems. One important way the consumer can help is to become conscious of how his attitudes, actions, and habits affect the future prospects of recycling waste resources and conserving natural resources. By showing his willingness to buy products made from recycled materials, he can influence industry to turn out more such products. Once the consumer makes himself heard, manufacturers can find new ways of conserving and recovering resources. They can re-orient many of their practices, finding new ways of using waste materials and new processes that produce less waste. Manufacturers can make an important contribution to our resource and- waste problems if they consume fewer resources in the first place. Thus they can avoid overpackaging their products. They cari design their products so ------- that they last longer and are easier to repair, and easier to salvage or dispose of when their useful life is at an end. Once American industry applies its skills and ingenuity to the final steps of salvage or disposal, it should be able to cut costs and improve efficiency just as it has in all other industrial operations. It is important for the individual to be heard as a consumer, but it is even more important that he be heard as a citizen. Once the citizen fully under- stands the complex political and social issues in- volved, he can make his views known to those in government and industry who are grappling with solid waste management problems. Our institu- tions need the support of an informed and involved citizenry to bring about the kind of changes needed to ensure that we use our resources more wisely and protect the environment. The informed citizen is particularly effective at the local level as the community tries to find the best solid waste man- agement system for local conditions and needs. •. To start today to help make recycling a national reality, seek out environmental, professional, civic, and service groups involved in solid waste man- agement efforts in your community. If you should need additional information on the subject, write to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Solid Waste Management Programs, Washington, D.C. 20460. page. U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1974 O-550-157 ------- What you as a consumer can do to help encourage the recycling pf waste materials: • Let manufacturers and distributors know that you are willing to buy products made from re- cycled materials. • When such products come On the market, buy them and encourage others to buy them. • Be a thoughtful shopper and consumer. Be sure that the packaging and disposability you pay for is what you need. Don't throw products into the trash heap when they still have useful life. Consuming less is a sure way of conserving our resources and reducing waste. • Support—or start-—recycling projects in your office, business, or school. • Use citizen recycling centers, and take part in other community recycling projects. • Assist your community in closing dumps. • Above all, let your government officials know of your concern. Many of the important decisions on resource use and recycling have far-reaching political and social implications. To bring about the changes needed in public policies, officials must have the support of informed and involved citizens. ya654R page twtlve, ------- |