Recycling: Nothing More Than Feelings

[Mehen]

Just a little note - my dad is involved with graphic design and printing, he tells me that buying recycled paper do to his print jobs on is significantly more expensive. When you're talking thousands and thousands of sheets, its not worth it to the consumer. Not only that, the recycled stuff looks worse.

edit: not saying that small amounts are worth it either

[Dr Mordrid]

Watch the video Brian. Any argument you might have right now suffers from a certain degree of ignorance, at least because most were mentioned and answered in the video and you're insulting people when you force them to quote from a source that is more than available to you.

AMEN!!

They point out in stinging detail the difference between feel-good environmentalism and street reality. Theory is fine, but if they fail to provide a real and cost-effective alternative or solution it's all just mental masturbation.

[Brian Ellis]

Just a little note - my dad is involved with graphic design and printing, he tells me that buying recycled paper do to his print jobs on is significantly more expensive. When you're talking thousands and thousands of sheets, its not worth it to the consumer. Not only that, the recycled stuff looks worse.

edit: not saying that small amounts are worth it either

I would agree with this 20 years ago but not today. In fact, it is extremely difficult to buy 100% virgin paper now and you have to go really out of your way to do so. The same applies to 100% recycled paper. Nearly all paper is a mix of the two and this is taken for granted. I just had a look at my office paper package and it doesn't give the proportions, but it is a high quality white, dust-free, 200-year archival type bearing the unqualified recycled symbol. Yes, I pay a premium of about 10% over the cost of "ordinary" photocopy paper but this is because I don't like jamming or crinkling in my two-sided 35 pages/min laser printer.


I found an interesting document:

Aren't Recycled Papers More Expensive?

In the past, recycled papers often cost considerably more than virgin papers. Today, many grades such as text and cover (often used for letterhead, brochures and publications) and some coated papers are cost-competitive with virgin papers or even cost less. Copier and offset papers still tend to cost somewhat more, but the price differentials are smaller than ever, usually only a few percent.

When there are cost differences, they are primarily caused by many recycled papers being made on smaller paper machines than virgin papers (creating a difference in economies of scale), by virgin paper mills dropping their prices because of vagaries in the market, and by imbalances caused by a newly capitalized and still-developing recycling system vs. a well-established and industrially integrated tree-pulping production system. Additionally, recycled paper incorporates all its costs into the product, including providing an alternative to disposal, and is not rewarded for its significantly lower energy and water use. Virgin paper costs, on the other hand, are masked by generous government timber, energy and water subsidies and do not incorporate responsibility or costs for the product's eventual disposal.

What About Quality?

In the 1980s, recycled paper was often of uneven quality, sometimes appearing tan, gray, or spotted. But today recycled paper is available in all colors, including the brightest whites, and meets the highest technical standards, sometimes even exceeding comparable virgin papers.

In 1998, the U.S. Conference of Mayors conducted a study with leading equipment manufacturers and the Government Printing Office. Over two million sheets were tested for paper feeding, reliability, image quality, toner fixability, smoothness, curl, and other aspects. Results proved that recycled papers with 30% postconsumer content performed just as well as virgin papers and recycled papers with lower postconsumer content.

I note that there may be speciality papers that are not recycled, such as used for printing banknotes and other values. I also note that there are different mindsets on the two sides of the Atlantic. The daftest thing is that Europe sells recycled pulp to the USA!

[Mehen]

My dad deals with making paper choices every day for different print jobs. He tells me that recycled is more expensive. That's all I know. I'll trust his word.

[TransformX]

Well, as long as Brian chooses to waste his time searching for all kinds of irrelevant sources while ignoring the one readily available in the first post of this threat, I crown him as the current green bigot. Get over yourself Brian, it's not black and white and apparently today, you're sittind in the dark, blaming everybody to be pots and kettles.

[Brian Ellis]

I hardly consider two comedians, no, that's the wrong term, two comics to be a reliable source of real data, any more than I'd consider Borat to be an expert on Kazakhstan.

[James_D]

Well am i not a expert on the field and i havent seen the video in question, (at work and here only remote desktop enables me to surf internet, (secure networking))

But i watched the different quotes and havent seen anything about glassrecycling, or recycling of organic waste. In norway 90% of glass is recycled, 68% of plastic, 85% of metals, 75% of paper, and aprox 50% of organic waste is recycled into compostmaterials. (will increase as more infrastructure is buildt). Also there all electronics shops are also obliged to accept old electronics to recycle when they are selling a new product to a customer. And they are responible to get it recycled.

For the arguments of plastic recycling, i just wondered if it where chemical recycling of the plastic or mechanical recycling? Many plastic types can be recycled mechanical(regranulation)(in average 6 times) this require 20% of the energy required to manufacture new, and transportation may also reduce the reward till 70%, but its still 70%, and it also reduces the need for landfills. As for chemical recycling, there is a less benefit, but it also depends on what kind of plastic you use, as for nylon which is easy to break down into polymer you can save 40% from creating from scratch.

So i wonder what kind of recycling programs that were investigated.

As for my resources i used the 1. Thematic strategy on sustainable use of natural resouces from EU coucil.
2. Assessment of plastic revovery options from the European Enviromental Bureau.
and 3. Plastretur AS. (the company involved in plastic recycling in Norway).

JD.

As for Mordrid. I guess owe you an apology, I am sorry if I where to agressive in the previous argument we had, and I ll try to keep the tone civil in the future.

[TransformX]

I hardly consider two comedians, no, that's the wrong term, two comics to be a reliable source of real data, any more than I'd consider Borat to be an expert on Kazakhstan.

Comedian or not, a man holding a book still has a book in his hand. Those people have experts speaking on their movie and you choose to ignore that. Enjoy your bigotry and excuse me for not taking anything you say about the environment seriously from now on. If you can a fact just because you dislike the messenger, I can't trust any piece of 'evidence' you bring to the table either.

[TransformX]

For the arguments of plastic recycling, i just wondered if it where chemical recycling of the plastic or mechanical recycling? Many plastic types can be recycled mechanical(regranulation)(in average 6 times) this require 20% of the energy required to manufacture new, and transportation may also reduce the reward till 70%, but its still 70%, and it also reduces the need for landfills. As for chemical recycling, there is a less benefit, but it also depends on what kind of plastic you use, as for nylon which is easy to break down into polymer you can save 40% from creating from scratch.

Well, they had one BIG valid point for everybody to think about: When you get paid for 'scrap' plastic and paper / kg, like you get paid for scrap metals (not same price, just getting paid for weight), it'll mean beyond doubt that recycling is economical and works, till that day comes though...

[James_D]

Well, they had one BIG valid point for everybody to think about: When you get paid for 'scrap' plastic and paper / kg, like you get paid for scrap metals (not same price, just getting paid for weight), it'll mean beyond doubt that recycling is economical and works, till that day comes though...

I dont know the detailed economical workings of plastic recycling in Norway, but the firm Plastretur AS is commercial firm, and manage to go with decent profit. Thats why they have ads in local newspaper for increased awareness among the population for increased recycling.

JD.

[TransformX]

Easy, they're getting the material for free, probably even with some government subsidiary. You don't see the population getting any cash back for their plastic, right? Now go get 50kg of aluminum and see how much you'll get paid for that.

[Brian Ellis]

Thanks for this info, JD.

I purposely didn't wish to introduce glass because there are enormous variations of usage between countries. For example, in Switzerland and France and, to a lesser extent, Germany, the wine industry consumes enormous amounts of green and brown bottles, whereas this is not the case in more temperate climes. The economies of scale from this quantity can alter the picture. The downside is that the conversion from heavy to lighter but stronger bottles means that there is a large surplus of glass for recycling. The Vetropack factory near Nyon, for example, has mountains of shards covering hectares of land. This is complicated by the fact that some collection centres didn't differentiate between the colours, so some is mixed (suitable for making only brown bottles, the least popular) whereas some is sorted. Remelting a proportion of glass shards is very energy-friendly, compared to the chemical reaction of making virgin glass, but I understand that the recyclability is limited to about 50-60% (I don't know why). So we have mountains of glass shards. What to do with them? They are broken down to 10 mm pieces and smaller. The <3 mm is used as a 5% additive to concrete and the larger pieces are added to 10% of gravel for tarmac aggregate for roads (good improvement to tyre adherence in icy conditions). I should imagine that this pretty energy-neutral, compared with 100% gravel. I suppose that it is also recycling even if to a totally different end-use.

My previous discussion re plastics was confined to PET, which is re-granulated and used mostly for fibre production (a small quantity for packaging non-food products). HD- and LD-PE are also much recycled. PS is recycled into packing chips, peanuts and moulded items. PC is re-used for such things as plastic casings for CRT and LCD monitors, backs of TVs, office equipment etc. Halogenated polymers (PVC, PTFE etc.) are much more problematic, though. The real problem in the past was where you had mixed plastics, but this has been solved by foam flotation. The granules pass through a series of foam baths of different densities, regulated so that only one type of plastic floats on the foam in each bath, so that each type can be automatically skimmed off, rinsed and dried.

[James_D]

Easy, they're getting the material for free, probably even with some government subsidiary. You don't see the population getting any cash back for their plastic, right? Now go get 50kg of aluminum and see how much you'll get paid for that.

Sure, but as an way of getting rid of a waste product and also reducing the strain on the dwindling natural resources, and at the sametime its possible to make a profit, then i dont see the problem, but then again I havent seen the video so I dont know the questions they raised there.

JD.

[Brian Ellis]

You probably won't believe this, but plastics are now a commodity, just like metals, traded on the London Metal Exchange, the Chicago Plastics Exchange. Scrap merchants will pay you for empty plastic bottles, just like aluminium scrap. OK, they'll probably rip you off at 1/10 the value, just as they do for metals. So, yes, you can get money but remember that it takes 2,000 1½ l water bottles to make up your 50 kg. See http://www.plasticnation.com/wanted.html for an example. And I can even give you an idea of the wholesale price for scrap bottles: USD 0.45/kg as per http://www.recycle.net/Plastic/PET/xv100100.html This is roughly 1/2-1/3 the price you would get for empty aluminium drinks cans, but many make lots of money trading in both commodities.