Recycling
-------
FILMSCRIPTS ON SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT
This script is one of a series published to help
lecturers, teachers, and group leaders prepare for viewing
and discussion of solid waste management films. It is
also intended for those in an audience who want
a permanent record of the data presented in a film.
It was written by Stuart Finley, Inc.,
the producer of the film, in close cooperation with staff of the
Federal solid waste management program.
Titles and publication numbers of scripts
for solid waste management films are shown below.
The Third Pollution SW-39c.l
Burn, Bury, or What? SW-39c.2
Recycling SW-39e.3
5000 Dumps SW-39c.4
In the Bag SW-39c.5
o
The Green Box SW-39c.6
The Stuff We Throw Away SW-39c.7
What's New in Solid Waste Management? SW-39c.8
Instructions for borrowing or purchasing these films are
given with each script and are summarized in the
brochure Films Tell the Story, available from the
Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington, D.C., 20402.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1972
-------
21 mnrates, IC-mm motion picture, sound, color, 1971. Order no. M-2118-X.*
RECYCLING shows a variety of efforts to recover and reuse more of our discards.
This approach has the dual benefit of conserving our resources while minimizing
the expense and difficulty of solid waste disposal. New and improved techniques
that are being investigated and demonstrated under provisions of the Solid Waste
Disposal Act are illustrated. Ideal for classroom use and for showing to
community action groups and local officials to explain the emerging new field of
reuse, recovery, and recycling.
Junkman driving horse drawn cart
pifcd high with salvage
Cart driving off
In earlier times there was the junkman ... he knew that one
man's trash could be another man's cash.
We must learn that what we throw away today contains the
resources we will need tomorrow.
Various scenes of can collection
center
Youngsters carrying stacks of cans
Cans loaded into trucks
Today's "junkman" is often a member of the environmentally
conscious younger generation, who has joined a recycling
campaign.
These young people are taking part in an innovative campaign
against "cantamination"-and are helping to conserve a
valuable resource.
Young man paying for cans
Truck hauling cans to a recycling
plant; man feeding furnace; close-
up of furnace
They are paid 10
-------
Additional scenes of cans being This recycling operation in San Diego is reclaiming some two
reclaimed at collection center million cans a month. Collections from all aluminum com-
panies nationwide will soon bring the total to nearly 200
million a year.
Boys moving cans along conveyor But with five billion aluminum cans manufactured a year,
into receptacle that’s only a drop in the bucket—or more precisely—the
garbage can!
Cans smoldering at open dump If there’s a dump in your town, what’s being done about it? In
this Age of Aquarius, dumps should be as obsolete as the pony
express.
Smoking incinerator in urban area Yes, the overall problem of solid waste management is
enormous. Municipal, commercial, and industrial waste
amounts to a million tons a day. And the tonnage rises every
year! Incinerators are used to reduce the volume of refuse but
the old-fashioned incinerator creates air pollution so it is not
much better than a burning dump.
Incinerator stacks tilting to in Even new incinerators. .. equipped with air pollution control
cinerator residue devices.., cannot do a good job when they are overloaded.
They merely scorch the wastes leaving large quantities of
unburned, combustible material in the residue that must be
buried.
Sanitary landfill operation with The most widely used, acceptable method of solid waste
birds flocking in as garbage is disposal today is the sanitary landfill where refuse is
buried compacted and buried. Garbage can be protected from birds,
insects, and rodents by applying earth cover quickly. Water
pollution can be prevented through careful landfill design and
operation. But burying all our wastes is still not an ideal
long-range solution because valuable land is needed and
everything that is buried is essentially lost for all time...
withdrawn from the resource cycle.
Junked cars strewn aaoss the land- In these days of environmental crisis, the American public
scape expects our technology to provide the most effective systems
for solid waste management. Burning or burying our reusable
resources or strewing them about the countryside is literally
wasteful. Increased recycling will provide the means for
recovering and reusing more of our resources.
Close-up of claw Junked cars can be turned into high-grade scrap steel.
Processing plants, like this one on the west coast, have been
doing it for only a few years.
2
-------
Claw lifting car onto conveyor A huge claw lifts a doomed car onto a conveyor for its final
journey. To misquote the bard: these cars are getting ready to
shuffle off their mortal coils. They’ve come full circle .. . from
the assembly line to the disassembly line.
Cars on conveyor These are stripped hulks. The auto wrecking industry removes
motor, battery, radiator, and other saleable parts before these
bodies are chewed up by the shredder.
Views of the shredder Rube Goldberg might have designed this enormous
shredder... with an appetite for a thousand cars a day
covering half a city block . . . costing several million dollars.
Electro-magnet lifting pieces of Today’s mechanical shredder is able to separate steel from all
steel other materials in your old car and convert it into high-grade
pulverized steel.
Baler compressing scrap For many years, the hydraulic baler has been used to compress
scrap metal to save transportation costs. When selected
materials are baled, they constitute readily saleable scrap.
However, when car hulks are baled, the resulting bundles vary
in content and therefore have a limited market.
Today, the salvage industry is entirely a private enterprise
venture producing a secondary material which has to compete
favorably with virgin materials in the open market.
BaJed scrap Recycling this mammoth mess of metal boggles the mind.
Car on conveyor; scrap steel It will take the know-how of private industry and the
cooperation of local, state, and federal government and
concerned citizens to shift this scrap cycle into high gear.
Station wagon driving up to glass Glass manufacturers have launched a campaign to recycle their
collection center products. The objective: to salvage an estimated 11 billion
glass containers a year.
Youngsters returning sacks of This collection center in Lakewood, California, offers a penny
bottles a pound for bottles and jars. An important concept is being
tested: Will citizens cooperate in recycling campaigns?
Woman writing results on chart; The drive has enlisted the help of 150 organizations. In a
youngster carrying carton period of eight weeks, more than three thousand youngsters
have brought in one hundred tons of glass.
Receptacles loaded with separated If clear and colored glass are mixed and reprocessed, they
bottles; pile of glass containers produce glass that is a dirty shade of grey and is so
3
-------
unattractive that few users will buy it. However, after the
various colors are sorted and separated, the glass can be
crushed and the cullet recycled into attractive new containers.
The method is not new with the industry. Rejects have always
been recycled. But only recently has there been a significant
attempt to recover and recycle used glass.
Scenes of glass making The glass industry has met the competition of the no-return
can with the no-return bottle. From a solid waste management
standpoint, the results have been disturbing.
Bottles moving on conveyor; The deposit bottle, in its heyday, was reused an average of 20
woman removing rejects times. But the forecast is that, by 1976, 45 billion glass
containers will be produced annually and the deposit bottle
will be obsolete!
To solve this problem, the glass industry and retail
establishments will have to reconsider reuse, through the
returnable bottle, or recovery, by large-scale recycling.
Peaches flowing down conveyor The old proverb says, “Waste not —want not.” These culled
into hopper peaches from canneries are waste . . . part of the annual two
billion tons of agricultural wastes of all types.
Pipeline; barge at anchor What’s going to happen to these peaches? They’re going to be
ground, pumped through a pipeline, loaded aboard a barge,
and dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
But we have come to realize that our oceans are not limitless
and that using them as a dumping ground is not a peachy
solution!
Multitude of oranges In contrast, the oranges at this cannery will not only be used
for juice, but the peelings and pulp will be converted into
animal fodder.
Peelings moving to conveyor; con- Most oranges today are squeezed in the cannery... not the
versaon equipment; man examining kitchen. This cannery is preventing pollution by making
fodder byproducts from the squeezings. Every agricultural processing
industry has listed waste management as its major problem.
They emphasize the need to curb land and water pollution, to
eradicate flies and odors, to find ways to reuse agricultural
waste more effectively.
Cows eating fodder In this instance, converting orange peelings and pulp into
4
-------
animal fodder produces contented cows... and happy
ecologists.
Johnson City signpost, refuse truck; At Johnson City, Tennessee, a federal demonstration project
variegated waste moving on con- has undertaken to evaluate whether it is practical to compost
veyor; men sorting refuse refuse. Here is the process. All types of refuse are brought to
the plant. Any large items which could not be handled by the
plant equipment—such as metals, large bottles, plastics—are
manually removed. The rejects aie hauled to the landfill.
About 25 percent of the refuse is rejected.
Refuse on conveyor; grinder in The remainder of the refuse is moved on a conveyor to a
action grinder.
Trucks brought 35 tons of municipal refuse a day to the
composting plant for processing.
Sewage lagoons Another hard to dispose of solid waste is sewage sludge.
Sewage sludge from the Johnson City sewage treatment
plant is added to the ground refuse.
Wide shot of drum The water is removed from the sludge and the dewatered solids
are mixed with the compost.
Forming compost windrows The end product of composting is a humuslike material which
can be used as a soil conditioner.
Long shot of windrows; windrows The compost is laid out in windrows. The process takes about
being turned; close-up of compost 42 days. The windrows are turned regularly, much as any good
gardener turns his own compost heap. But composting has its
shortcomings. There is no profitable market. Bits of glass,
plastic, and rubber degrade the final product. And complex,
costly equipment is necessary.
Truck distributing compost to In many sections of the country where the land is barren, the
barren land compost could serve a useful purpose by retaining soil
moisture and stimulating plant growth. Despite its
shortcomings, composting is stil1 a good recycling method for
organic wastes, and every possible avenue must be explored to
discover better methods for better living in a better
environment.
Close-up of n n dumping particles; To recycle solid wastes effectively today you have to be able
M.S. of air classifier unit to separate discards mechanically. That’s the purpose of the
zigzag Air Classification Unit developed by the Stanford
Research Institute. The Environmental Protection Agency is
sponsoring this project in an effort to perfect a practical
5
-------
system to separate paper, wood, glass, and metal.
Man preparing to switch on ap-
paratus; cyclone separator
Close-up of 7jgzag in motion
Close -up of man at cyclone separa-
tor
Batches of separated particles
Sugar esne hulls; man feeding
baga e into machine
Pilot plant equipment; wide shot of
man approaching equipment; pro-
tern fibers emerging
CPU-400 equipment
Wide shot of men checking equip-
ment; men in control room;
close-up of two men discuuing
operatons
Newspapers at curb
Papers loaded into compartments
The system uses a blower drawing air up a column and through
a cyclone separator. Light material moves upward through the
column to a receptacle and heavy material which cannot be
transported in the airstream falls to the bottom of the column.
The zigzag separation method promises to be an efficient type
of classification system.
The Air Classifier has many possibilities for preparing refuse
for compostirig and landfilling.
Sharp clean separation of solid wastes is particularly applicable
to recycling, a potential that should be explored to the fullest.
Bagasse, the remains of the sugar cane after the juice has been
removed, is the basis for a reuse project. At Louisiana State
University, research—sponsored by the E.P.A.—is underway to
convert cellulose waste into high protein food for animals and
possibly for human consumption.
The pilot plant should be capable of producing protein from
bagasse at the rate of some 75 pounds a day. Some day you
might be asked to please pass the bagasse but, at the moment,
the prime objective of the LSU project is to produce protein
for animal consumption.
What if we could burn refuse to develop heat energy? We’d
have a dual advantage: generation of electricity and disposal of
solid wastes.
The Environmental Protection Agency is exploring that
possibility with the CPU-400, a turboelectric generator plant
that will be designed to use 400 tons of refuse a day to
produce up to 15,000 kilowatts of electric power.
This too, is a form of recycling.., converting waste into
useful energy.
In Madison, Wisconsin, recycling was put to the test when
local authorities asked residents to bundle newspapers
separately from other solid wastes.
Sanitation trucks were equipped with special compartments
for newspapers.
6
-------
Other refuse loaded Now the city is participating in a successful recycling
project. . . from newsprint to newsprint.
Newspapers separated from other Sanitation engineers had questioned whether urban citizens,
refuse busy with their personal affairs, would balk at the additional
chore of separating newspapers and tying them. Madison
proved that citizens will cooperate.
Papers thrown in bins; papers Instead of burning papers, adding to waste and pollution loads,
loaded on truck the citizens of Madison are helping to conserve a valuable
resource. This is particularly significant when you consider
that paper represents almost 50 percent of the usual municipal
refuse and that each of us uses an average of 575 pounds of
paper products a year.
Pulping process; washing stage This recycling process was made possible by a newspaper
reporter who developed a method of removing ink from
newsprint. His company, which is participating in the news-
paper collection project in Madison, is supplying many
newspapers with recycled stock.
Stock flowing on paper making But recycling mills are few and far between and only about 5
machinery; man tamping rolls of percent of newsprint is being reused. Recently, however, the
paper President has instructed the General Services Administration
to review all federal specifications and revise them to permit
the maximum inclusion of recycled fiber in the many grades of
paper the government purchases.
Close-up of municipal refuse; man New and better solid waste management systems must be
shoveling refuse onto conveyor; developed. Here at Middletown, Ohio, a demonstration project
refuse coming off conveyor tests the effectiveness of a wet grinding system. The input is
ordinary municipal refuse . . . cans, bottles, everything.
Refuse flowing into hydrapulper; The objective is to recover useful material from trash: paper
hydrapulper equipment fiber, glass cullet, and ferrous metals. The method is to dump
raw refuse into a hydrapulper which disintegrates the refuse.
Fibrous materials from paper and cardboard are reclaimed
with equipment similar to that used in the paper industry.
Reject material; man examining This rejected material will be burned in the fluidized bed
fibers incinerator. Future large scale operations could use this heat
to generate electric power.
Junk ejector The junk ejector removes heavy metallic objects. Further
processing can segregate reusable, ferrous metals.
7
-------
Uquid cyclone
Fibrous materials
Solid waste recycling plant being
oonstructed at Franklin, Ohio;fluid
bed reactor; exterior shot if plant;
pan to site of sewage treatment
—t
Zoom from exterior of solid waste
building to roofing materials
manufacturing plant nearby
Junked car with pea symbol on
its door... zooming back to show
other cars stacked on it and next to
it... panning to left to show other
cars; claw reaches in and picks up a
car hu& and drops it into hopper
The slurry is pumped though a liquid cyclone which removes
particles such as broken glass, sand, and small pieces of metal.
This pilot plant is a prototype for systems that could be
established nationwide.
The first full-scale hydrasposal system is being installed in the
town of Franklin, Ohio. Like the pilot plant, it is designed to
reclaim paper fiber, magnetic metals, aluminum and glass. This
big fluid bed reactor will burn all unreclaimed soft material at
the end of the process.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is helping to pay
for this $1.75 million plant under its demonstration grants
program. A model regional sewage treatment plant is about to
be built here next to the solid waste reclamation center. The
solid waste plant will get process water from sewage effluent
and will burn sewage sludge.
There will also be industrial cooperation. The reclaimed paper
pulp from Franldin’s refuse will be bought by this nearby
roofing materials manufacturing company. Franidin’s citizens
will still have to pay to dispose of their solid wastes. . . but
some of the expense of this superior system will be paid
through reclamation.
Recycling our wastes is fundamental ... conserving our
resources... and minimizing the expense and difficulty of
solid waste disposal. But effective large-scale recycling will
require some basic changes in our society. Manufacturers,
packagers and retailers must be willing to modify their
products and processes to meet recycling requirements.
Government, at all levels, must cooperate to provide new
equipment and better systems. Citizens must insist on
recycling as a way of life. We must inject as much creative
energy into recycling our products as we do in producing
them.
8
‘t I3.S R e El(TPRlNT1IIG flcE1g72— 7 9-397f131
------- |