Posts in Recycling

Glass to Cash
Holly Fretwell Monday, 06/18/2012

As a Bozemanite I live 700 miles from the nearest glass remanufacturing center. In Golden, Colorado glass bottles are melted and reused to produce new bottles. That is a lot of miles and gallons of gas away. Not many would argue that it makes economic or even environmental sense to truck the stuff across country. Nonetheless, we still hear that recycling is the right thing to do.

Certainly, glass can be used in other ways. The nearby town of Livingston grinds up bottles to replace gravel to be used in landscaping and bedding materials. A new firm in Bozeman, Ecomatrix Solutions, has advertised its need for recycled glass for manufacturing “sustainable” cement to be used in countertops and architectural panels. The problem they’ve encountered with the Livingston glass is contamination from grime and paper labels. They are setting up a new supply channel to resolve the issue.

Locals that want to recycle glass can remove labels and wash their used bottles. Ecomatrix will pick up the cleaned glass at no charge. They may even provide a product discount or cement pot in return for the efforts.

“If we’re collecting it clean, de-labeled and all we have to do is reduce it to the sizes we need, it’s saving energy, it’s savings all across the board,” says Ecomatrix founder Jon Cross. Energy savings for Ecomatrix, yes, but energy used by others.

The costs and benefits of recycling vary over time and space. Instead of generically teaching kids to recycle more, perhaps it would behoove us to help them question why, where, and how we recycle. This might just encourage new innovations for reuse instead of spending more resources to recycle for the sake of recycling.

Originally posted at Environmental Trends.

Comments
Recycle the Intermountain West
Holly Fretwell Saturday, 11/05/2011

Since 1997, more than 40 million acres of forests across the West have been devastated by pine beetle. The beetle is a natural predator, but historic timber management and climatic conditions have given advantage to the species in current times. The end result is tinderbox forests across the Intermountain region.

Fire is another natural predator in the forest. The increasing kindling in the forest — such as the bug-killed trees — together with growing development in the wildland-urban interface are a dire mix.

Recycling dead and dying trees through harvest and re-use is one method to reduce the problem. Though the timber value of small-diameter wood is low, there are beneficial uses. The wood can be used for firewood, fence posts, and poles, even garden mulch, but these are small players. The real potential is in biomass but existing uncertainties are making investment tenuous.

The inability of the Forest Service to provide a continuous supply of material is troublesome. It is not a lack of biomass material available on National Forest land, nor a question of the benefits from removing the material, rather it is the process of contracting for timber removal that is costly and time consuming. The Forest Service expenditure on procedure to allow timber harvest, even for restoration, is excessive and slow.

Another barrier to investment in biomass is forthcoming regulation on emissions. In spring of last year, the EPA instigated, then suspended, the tailoring rule. The rule would tax emissions from biomass energy production at a rate equal to fossil fuel emissions. The tax would marginalize the profitability of biomass production.

There is a significant difference in the carbon cycle between wood and fossil fuel energies. Wood sequesters carbon from the atmosphere in its living, tree form, then emits it back into the atmosphere when burned for energy. Put simply, it has net zero atmospheric emissions. Fossil fuel moves carbon that is held in the earth and releases it into the atmosphere when burned, causing a net increase in atmospheric carbon.

Recycling small diameter forest products is one answer that could help reduce the risk, and therefore the costs, of catastrophic wildfire in wildland-urban interface, while providing renewable energy. The fight to get there, however, is a battle between enviropreneurs, who see good environmental results from profitable economic activity, and environmental advocacy groups that see profit as evil and exploitive.

Originally posted at Environmental Trends.

Comments
Resources Versus Refuse in Recycling
Holly Fretwell Wednesday, 03/16/2011

Almost every state has a policy to discourage dumping trash, or waste, into the landfill. Reducing waste makes sense and saves resources. But is it logical to reduce the amount of waste put into the landfill when the alternative comes at a higher cost? Some policies encourage exactly that.

Waste is something that is low in value and costly to reuse. A resource, on the other hand, is an item that provides value for use where the costs of reusing the item are less than the value added from its use. Reusing, or recycling, resources makes sense and is a choice that markets help us make. People are willing to pay for a resource which signals to the owner that there is a value for it.

It is a widely held belief that we are running out of landfill space and, hence, should reduce the amount of garbage we dump. As shown by the chart above, the number of landfills has declined over the past two decades. Landfill capacity, however, has increased. According to the EPA, the number of years of remaining available landfill space has increased from about 9.5 years in 1990 to 20 years today. Landfill dumping fees (tipping fees shown on the graph) also demonstrate there is no lack of landfill space available. Tipping fees rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to increased EPA regulations but have declined slightly since.

Recycling resources makes sense. Recycling garbage is a waste of resources.

Originally posted at Environmental Trends

Comments
Rubbish or Resource? Hawaii Recycling
Tuesday, 01/11/2011

by Holly Fretwell

Recycling is the reuse of resources. Resources are inputs used to produce the goods and services we buy. You can reuse a bag to recycle it, or you can take it to the recycling center for remanufacturing into something else, like a fleece jacket. These two very different processes have very different costs associated. We are led to believe that recycling is paramount and necessary to maintain a ‘green’ life style. Yet, recycling uses resources, sometimes more than letting our garbage be the rubbish that it is.

On the Big Island of Hawaii land is extremely valuable, therefore landfill space is costly. Putting less in the trash makes sense. Many people reuse plastic bags (or store them in their cupboards). Others use cloth bags instead of plastic. Plastic bags also end up in the recycling bins. To motivate more recycling of cans and plastic containers, some have a deposit in Hawaii. Five cents is paid upon purchase and refunded when the container is returned.

There are no remanufacturing plants for recyclables in Hawaii because it is not cost effective. There is simply not enough of it. The recyclables must be shipped elsewhere. Many of the fibrous materials, such as cardboard and some plastics, for example, are shipped to Oregon. That is a long way. There, they are manually sorted on a conveyor belt and then remanufactured onsite or shipped elsewhere to create new products that are used in the states and Asia.

A lot of energy goes into the transport and remanufacturing of Hawaii’s rubbish: fossil fuels and manual labor. I am curious what the real environmental tradeoffs are between land filling garbage and sending it across the ocean. Recycling has become so paramount that it is rarely questioned for its own environmental impact. That is a thought to ponder.

Originally posted at Environmental Trends

Comments
Greener Than Thou: Recycling Edition
Shawn Regan Sunday, 09/19/2010

by Shawn Regan

In today's Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby says he's not too excited about a recent household recycling campaign in Brookline, MA. But, he writes, "things could be worse."

Clevelanders will soon have to use recycling carts equipped with radio-frequency ID chips, the Plain Dealer reported last month. These will enable the city to remotely monitor residents’ compliance with recycling regulations. “If a chip shows a recyclable cart hasn’t been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables. Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine.’’ In Britain, where a similar system is already in place, fines can reach as high as $1,500.

San Franciscans, meanwhile, must sort their garbage into three color-coded bins — blue for recycling, green for compost, and black for trash — and scofflaws who pitch teabags or coffee grounds into the wrong bin can be fined. In other cities, residents must bag their trash in clear plastic, lest they be tempted to toss recyclables out with the garbage.

Does any of this make sense? It certainly isn’t economically rational. Unlike commercial and industrial recycling — a thriving voluntary market that annually salvages tens of millions of tons of metal, paper, glass, and plastic — mandatory household recycling is a money loser. Cost studies show that curbside recycling can cost, on average, 60 percent more per ton than conventional garbage disposal.

He concludes with the work of PERC senior fellow Daniel Benjamin on recycling.
But if recycling household trash makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, why does it have to be compulsory? Mandatory recycling programs “force people to squander valuable resources in a quixotic quest to save what they would sensibly discard,’’ writes Clemson University economist Daniel K. Benjamin. “On balance, recycling programs lower our wealth.’’ Now whose idea of exciting is that?
Read Dan's recent Policy Series paper on recycling here or his recent interview on BigThink.com here.

UPDATE: See Part II of Jacoby's recycling column, which discusses more of Dan's findings.

Comments
Crosses, Stars, Moons, and Green Street-Side Bins
Robert McCormick Thursday, 08/19/2010

What do these four symbols have in common? Well, to start with they all cost resources, that is, they are not free. Why in the heck then do practitioners waste their money on them? Why do churches have steeples, and synagogues wonderfully ornate glass windows, and mosques, exquisite wool carpets? Surely the money spent on these trappings could have been used to do missionary work, feed the poor, or heal the sick. What is going on?

For some time, economists have understood that wasting money could pay big dividends, if the money was wasted carefully (see here, here, and here). Ornate signs, symbols, or Super Bowl ads, more than drawing attention, signal commitment. When money is spent on trappings, it will only return if the seller delivers as promised.

So, Christians wear crosses, perhaps for adornment, but also to signal to others that they believe in certain things and might be expected to act in certain ways. Some Jewish merchants close for Sabbath, even while it might appear to cost them money, presumably it pays more in loyalty and customer satisfaction by the symbol of their commitment.

The time that Muslims spend praying each day precludes a lot of production. Yet it remains valuable to them for many reasons, one of which might be external signaling to friends and colleagues of their religious and personal beliefs.

The modern environmental movement is hardly different. People desire to commit to a way of life, to signal their preferences, their values, their beliefs, and they also seek to enlist converts in their cause. Hence, symbols that are otherwise a waste of time and resources, come to play.

As Dan Benjamin at PERC, and others, have noted, a lot of recycling is (directly) wasteful and does not help the environment. Yet recycling remains a mantra of the movement. I offer that it is symbol of commitment, a willingness to waste, that bonds the recycler to a course of action, begs others to join, and creates a sense of community within the movement.

So here’s my prediction. The more people learn from Dan that recycling is wasteful, the more they will recycle. If recycling paid for itself, then it would not serve as a symbol and commitment of heart and soul to the cause. Recycling is good by virtue of the fact that it wastes, and the more that people learn this, the more they will do it. If crosses could heal or feed the masses, churches wouldn’t put them on the top of steeples. Their uselessness is their virtue, their symbol, their commitment.

While I agree with Dan that most street side recyling is an economic waste and environmentally unwise, the green street side recyling bin is a valuable important social sign precisely because it proves a willingness to waste. It says to the person pedaling by, “I am a believer.” The environmental movement would be less without it; that’s why I leave mine on the street for a couple days after the truck comes by and doesn’t empty it (cause it already is).

Bobby McCormick is a senior fellow at PERC and professor emeritus of economics at Clemson University.

Comments
Subscribe to Blog