solid waste management
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^4'^t>*v I an environmental protection publication (sw-117) ,
^^/ I in the solid waste management series
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i U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
1974
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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.
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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>
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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,
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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.
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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 $?
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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
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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-
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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.
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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
//
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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
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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
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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
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