Recycling: yes or not?

An introductive chat

It has been a while since I’ve post a new piece of writing so today I want to keep talking about the issues I left in ice at the end of “Digging the Topic – part 3”. Basically, I want to understand whether or not the recycling process is important and, if yes, why. I am aware that the answers can be easily taken for granted, but the aim is to tackle this topic with a scientific approach. Then, considering that it will be probably a long discussion, I am going to split it in different posts. "Recycling: yes or not?" will be the title of every post while the subheading will address every single post.

I believe that the right starting point consists in talking about the disposal method that do not include energy recovery. Why? Because landfilling and incineration are widely evaluated as the worst existing waste disposal options and, at the same time, they represent the most widespread waste treatment. Figure 1, taken from the 2011 EU’s publication "Generation and treatment of municipal solid waste", refers to the European situation and it schematically shows how much common landfilling and incineration are when compared to all the other main waste disposal. Indeed, in 2009, these two treatments were used to treat more than half of the total amount of European waste (278 on a total of 492 kg for each inhabitant).

 Figure 1: schematic waste treatments usage according to the EU's website

(y=kg procapita; x=years). Click to enlarge.

Surely, the image shows also how that landfilling operations decreased between 1995 and 2012 as well as recycling increased but, according the Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, this positive trend must be only a starting point. As I mentioned in the previous post called “2020 is getting closer and closer” the European Community advised both that landfilling must be further reduced and that, by 2020, the recycling ratio needs to reach the 50% in weight (nowadays England is at 43%).

Giving this discussion a worldwide perspective, a huge challenge is for the developing countries. An example comes from an interesting work about the waste typology and disposal methods in 6 Asian country. Indris et al. (2004) explain how important is the waste debate in those countries where the amount of rubbish is prominently growing together with the population. Ignoring the discussion about the different kind of waste, the authors show striking data like China’s landfilling percentage, which reached 96% in 2011. In other countries, like Taiwan and Malaysia, is also highlighted how landfilling and incineration are the most common used methods for getting rid of most of the rubbish. Summarizing, this paper is highly useful because it tells us the importance of gaining a wider knowledge about waste disposal in those countries where the amount of waste is getting higher and higher. The concern is aimed to prevent environmental and health issue that frequently arise from a bad waste management know-how.

I think that this sounds as a good introduction post to the following discussion. My aim consists in exploring the advantages of the recycling by understanding first all the concerns and limitations related to the other disposal methods. I will start thus from the bottom of the “Waste Hierarchy” (click here to refresh your mind about it) and, through the less favourite disposal methods, I will hopefully show why the “RE-RE-RE” are located at the top of the triangle. Hence, the next posts will be dealing with few considerations about landfilling and incineration.

See you soon on RE-cycling!