"Recycling: yes or not?"

Final post.

Hi everyone!

It is definitely time to give an end to the “Recycling: yes or not?” discussion. I closed the last post shortly introducing the food waste and its related disposal methods. Hence, today I get start from there and afterwards I will briefly write about glass and textile treatment. Also this post will be principally based on the WRAP report “Environmental benefits of recycling – 2010 update”.

So: food waste. Anaerobic digestion (AD) and composting are the two most common ways to treat organic food waste. Basically, there is no chance to literally recycle food waste. The most favored procedure is probably the AD: a study conducted by Finnveden et al. (2005) listed the advantages as the production of biogas, used for both electricity and heat, as well as fuel for vehicles. Moreover, the WRAP report explains that AD is a powerful option also in terms of global warming impact: the biogas produced is mainly composed by CO2 and CH4 and, rather than being released in the atmosphere, they are exactly collected and used for energy purposes. Precisely, the less global warming impact marks the difference between composting and AD: in fact, the former shows here more influence compared to AD. Moreover, AD allows also a higher energy recovery than composing (Mata-Alvarez et al. 2000). A confirm comes also from the WRAP report, which exactly list composting as second preferred option after AD. However, composting represents, for instance, one of the easiest and most immediate techniques to domestically well treat our food waste. Finally, WRAP shows also that incineration (with energy recovery) could give good results when organic waste is involved: this is the specific case of garden waste, which obviously guarantees a remarkable heating value.

Chynoweth et al. (2001) edited another significant AD-related work: here, the authors strongly emphasized the key role of the AD, explaining how the society would gain considerable advantages using natural-methane instead of the traditional fossil fuel and, at the same time, that would mean a further action against global warming and acid rains.

Glass. Finding scientific and complete information about glass treatment has not been that accessible. However, I managed to find few useful papers about recycling and landfilling glass waste. The main disposal methods about glass waste are exactly the two just listed (Sahyan and Xu 2004). Moreover, this paper explains also what the main “second-live” of the glass is. In fact, the authors give evidence that the glass is an important ingredient for the formation of concrete aggregate and, noticeably, they explain this reusing technique as a key tool to reduce landfilling. Shao et al. (2000) have been even more specific: indeed, they assert how glass is non-biodegradable and, therefore, totally non-adapts to landfilling. In addiction, this paper shows again the important role that glass covers concerning concrete production as well as mention recycling as other alternative destiny for glass waste.

Concluding as the WRAP report does, I wish to say something about textiles, a quite common component of MSW. The document displays the end-of-life of clothes as second-hand stuff, recycling (mainly referred to a reusing concept) and waste, which ends up in incineration or landfilling. Predictably, there are a lot of ways to prevent the incineration/landfilling of textile waste and this is exactly the main evidence of the report, which lists a quite long series of second-life possibility for this kind of rubbish. More specifically, Woolridge et al. gave, in terms of energy saved, some precise number when analysing donated clothes: “for every kilogram of virgin cotton displaced by second hand clothing approximately 65 kWh is saved, and for every kilogram of polyester around 90 kWh is saved. Therefore, the reuse and recycling of the donated clothing results in a reduction in the environmental burden compared to purchasing new clothing made from virgin materials” (Woolridge et al. 2006: 94).

Obviously our homes and flats are not well equipped for collecting textile but, in London as anywhere else, there is a bunch of Oxfam and similar charity shops.

Briefly concluding with gasification, not mentioned so far. As explained in this post, we can consider gasification as a well-improved incineration. Malkow (2004) developed a very articulated work about the different kinds of gasification (and pyrolysis), explaining how it leads the way to a high energy saving and less environmental impact compared to incineration. Moreover he pointed out the benefits considering the less amount of emissions released in the atmosphere. Its position in the Waste Hierarchy is thus quite well positioned.

Well, it ended up a massive post. I tried to summarize the big amount of information of the remaining issues and I am aware that there would be a lot more bits to talk about. Anyway, I hope that I gave a quite fair and scientific idea about why recycling is up there in the Waste Hierarchy: it generally represents the best compromise between energy demand, environmental and healthy impacts. Moreover, leaving the science for a moment, I personally find so ridiculous just bin our waste when it could have such a considerable number of second uses and second life.

Importantly, recycling is not the highest position in the Waste Hierarchy. The following posts will be thus dealing with the remaining two RE: reusing and reducing. Finally there will be space for some more posts regarding recycling@UCL, few initiatives and a future work discussion.

See you soon on RE-cycling!

Recycling: yes or not?

Incineration

Back again on RE-cycling!
Let's restart the debate that I started few posts ago. Today it is time to talk about the incinerations’ impact.

Incineration consequences are involved in two main fields: global warming and human health. In both cases, the original factor that needs an accurate analysis is the gas emissions. Despite the combustion of waste does not release methane, in terms of global warming incineration is problematic because of the amount of CO2, N2O and NH3 emitted ("Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories" IPCC 2000, page 455). Instead, considering humankind health, Daskalopoulos et al. (1997) explain how municipal waste combustion released "polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF)" (Daskalopoulos et al. 1997: 226). These are generally known as toxins and they are considered causes of skin and liver diseases as well as cancer. Moreover, the same authors say that also metal compounds, heavy metals and acids gases are a result of waste incineration and also involved in the human health concerns.

However, comparing incineration to landfilling, it is easily noticeable that:
1. gaining and using energy from incineration is easier rather that from landfilling. Indeed, as highlighted in “Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste” report (DEFRA 2013), from incineration there is a substantial gain of usable energy in terms of heat and electricity.
Even though successful attempts have been done, energy recovery from landfilling is in fact a quite expensive procedure and it is mainly discussed as a possibility rather than a convenient and actual opportunity (Lombardi et al. 2006).
2. intuitively, incineration reduces the volume of waste. This means that less rubbish is thus dispatched to the land. Moreover, the residual bottom ash can also be reused in other engineering fields like road building (Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste, DEFRA 2013).
3. as explained in the UK Government report “Waste GHG Inventory Summary Factsheet”, the emissions from landfill represent the biggest amount of Green House Gases concerning the waste management (incineration does not produce CH4). In 2010, 89% of UK waste disposal gases came from land and just a minor part from incineration.
4. finally, another evidence is that water and soil pollution are mainly related to the leachate derived from the landfilled waste. Water contamination coming from incineration is minimal (Daskalopoulos et al. 1997).

Keeping in mind the energy recovery concept, I would say that with this post we have learnt why landfilling is at the bottom of the “Waste Hierarchy” and why the incineration is located in a slightly better position.
At this stage, we have to keep climbing the hierarchy as well as keep comparing the different disposal method each other. In the next few posts I should be able to conclude the current discussion and hopefully I will have fully explained the RE-RE-RE importance.

So...see you soon on RE-cycling!

Time Out: news and activities

America Recycles Day, Guardian Big Energy Debate & Manchester United

I decided to start the week with something that looks more relaxing compared to the lists of concepts highlighted in the previous posts. Hence, browsing the Internet, I found three nice bits related to the recycling process and, more generically, to the energy debate.

1. America Recycles Day
In 2012, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), US produced 251 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste. I think that this data is the right point to start talking about the "America Recycles Day", an initiative promoted by the non-profit Keep America Beautiful with the aim to encourage the communities increasing their recycling actions.
The official day is on November 15th of each year but it actually lasts longer than a single day. In the last few months 1053 events were planned throughout the US territory: “Plastic Bag Recycling & Household Hazardous Waste” (Hickory, North Carolina), “Recycle Cloths for the Planet” (Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey), “Stock the Pantry” (Steubenville, Ohio), “Recycled Art Contest” (Hogansville, Georgia) and many more.
Obviously, there is an online side of this initiative that runs on all social media and involves things like #RecyclingSelfie (see figures below).
Links: www.kab.org, www.americarecyclesday.org. Twitter: @kabtweet, @recyclesday

  

America Recycles Day: screenshots from my twitter account

2. Guardian Big Energy Debate
We are still on time to sign up for the “Guardian Big Energy Debate”, event scheduled for Wednesday 21st January 2015. Organized by the Guardian, the meeting represents the end of a 12-months project that has involved policy makers, industry and academics. The aim of the debate is an update on the energy situation in UK and understanding how to better address future approaches in terms of supply, costs and emissions.
Together with the Guardian’s energy editor Terry Macalister, there will be talks held by MPs as Tim Yeo and Caroline Flint.
Links: Guardian Big Energy Debate Twitter: @guardianeco (#bigenergydebate)

3. Manchester United
MNU is aware of the energy issues and realizes that its worldwide popularity could be a fundamental action to help tackling the environmental debate. The project seems to be still embryonic, but the idea would consist in spreading the environmental voice taking advantages of the huge amount of people linked with the media of the club: MUTV (Manchester United Television), Twitter (3.8 Mln followers), Facebook (62 Mln likes) and 70k people at “Old Trafford” each match-day. Another strategy would trace the basic element of the sport: competition. Promotion of green challenges, (already devised by “Fans Without Footprints”) like recycling contests, with a lists of awards.
Take 2 minutes to watch this funny video: "If we cared about the environment like we care about sports" shows perfectly the foundation of MNU project.
Source: Oliver Balch - The Guardian

Have a good week and see you soon on RE-cycling!

2020 is getting closer and closer

Alarm bell from new Defra's report

Hi again!

Before starting out, I want to introduce this post with an apology: I realized that I haven't encouraged the discussion so far! Nothing dramatic, but obviously any comment, opinion and remark is more than welcome in RE-cycling!

Anyway, I was going to post the ending post of the "Digging the topic" series but, slightly late, I came across an important update about the recycling situation within the UK. I merely thought it was more appropriate to give fresh information rather then keep writing about definition and numbers.

On October 22nd, Adam Vaughan, the editor of environmentguardian.co.uk, published a piece of writing focused on the grade of recycled waste in England. Overlooking the debate between MPs the CEO stepped in, the article is mainly based on the recently released Defra's report "Waste Management in England".
It basically spins around the quantity of waste that has been recycled in recent years: even though the recycling rate had arose prominently between 2001 and 2007 (from 11% to 34%), it had then weakened (only 34% to 39% during the gap 2007 - 2010) and has ended up to an alarming stable value of 43% in the last years (table 1).

Table 1. Recycling rate (%) according to Defra's data (click to enlarge).

Why is this alarming? Well, here is the problem! Taking into account the "Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council", we must be able to achieve a recycling ratio of 50% no later than 2020. Article 11,2a (page 312/13):

"by 2020, the preparing for re-use and the recycling of waste materials such as at least paper, metal, plastic and glass from households and possibly from other origins as far as these waste streams are similar of waste from households, shall be increased to a minimum of overall 50 % by weight;"

Moral: we will never reach that ratio if we keep following the recent trend.

At this stage the consequent issues is: why has the recycling ratio stopped growing? Vaughan moves then across the possible causes that lead at this point, considering both the many different in-force recycling procedures in England (there are 400 of them out there!) and also the related government action, probably not strong enough anymore. Indeed, related to this aspect the MPs asserted that the Government has to lead a stronger promotion of recycling in order to redo the recycling rate rise again and match the EU target.

Thereafter, disclosing few information that I will broadly explore in future posts, Adam Vaughan touches upon two of the reasons why recycling is an important process. Following the guidelines outlined by the EU and the MPs, recycling is needed in order to:

1. reduce landfilling. Article 4,1 (L 312/10) of the Directive 2008/98 mentioned before says "the following waste hierarchy shall apply as a priority order in waste prevention and management legislation and policy: (a) prevention; (b) preparing for re-use; (c) recycling; (d) other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and (e) disposal". Reducing disposal means reducing (also) landfilling, which thus represents the last option in terms of waste management (as we will see, landfilling causes emissions of methane and higher ground pollution hazards besides taking up huge areas of land).

2. waste as a energy resource. Quite meaningful is what the MP Anne McIntosh released discussing the Defra's report: "How are we going to get rid of our waste? How are we going to find alternative sources of energy? What would you prefer – unsightly fracking wells with thousands of lorries trundling around with waste water or would you prefer to take energy from waste, where you’re both disposing of the waste and you’re both fuelling and heating". It looks like that a lot of stuff has to be done. The challenge consists in bringing England where Wales already is: Cymru recycling rate is at 54%...they can wait 2020 chilling out. See you soon on RE-cycling!

Introducing recycling, introducing this blog

A brief welcoming post about all these green bins

Starting for now with a simple description, we can define the concept of recycling as a process that consists in three main steps: waste collection, waste sorting and production of new items. This set of actions can be applied to a wide range of recycling products. If we mention, for instance, paper, plastic or glass we probably all think about the garbage subdivision that we should do everyday at home and, therefore, we can easily infer what the process means. However, if we take into account also food wasting, we need to extend the concept to other directions that can be less straightforward compared to the general idea of recycling that most of us have in mind. Furthermore, when we include in the process other environmental components like water resources and several types of energy the concept of recycling assumes an even broader meaning and needs a more careful approach.
The word "recycling" is often linked to two other words, “reuse” and “reduce”, and the three terms together give a wider sense to all the implications involved in this issue. Reusing wasted food to produce energy or reducing our own water usage in order to prevent water scarcity or, more simply, reusing shopping bags rather than getting a new one every time are only three of a variety of actions that we mention that give a general idea of what we intend for the recycling-reusing-reducing concept. These three “re”-actions rarely can be separated from each other in this context. To demonstrate this connection, I report the idea of Adam Vaughan that "manufacturing new products from recycled material rather than new virgin material almost always results in lower CO2 emissions". In this particular example, it is shown how the “reducing” action could be interpreted in two ways: as a tool related to “reusing” action (i.e., use again shopping bags reduces the waste production) or as an improving consequence of “recycling” process.

Through "RE-cycling towards an eco friendly society" I wish to explore more in detail the three steps listed at the beginning of this post, focusing on the recycling and waste process and on potential benefits derived from it. Is this fundamental in our society? Do we have to care about it? What does the process involve? How long does it take? How much does it cost?

Beyond these questions, I wish to present few practical cases (as the recycling method within our university and how the recycling in London is regulated), I will write about recycling initiatives and about any other related story.

See you soon on RE-cycling!