RECYCLING

Recycling



Recycling

History of recycling

During the early 1970s, as groups over the United States glimpsed their landfills filling up, vigilance turned to alternate methods of rubbish disposal, such as incineration and recycling. While incineration verified to be a thorny topic due to its toxic ash byproduct, recycling was adopted by Americans as an effective way to counteract increasing rubbish output rates.

Today, demand for recycled goods is beginning to agree supply, and the percentage of waste going into landfills and incinerators is declining steadily. In 1970, when Americans made 121 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW), three-quarters went exactly into landfills, one-fifth was incinerated, and less than one-sixteenth was recycled. Now, with almost double the MSW (more than 210 million tons per year), recycling anecdotes for nearly one-quarter and incineration for a little over one-sixth. Indeed, widespread application of recycling throughout American communities has proven to be one of the great environmental success stories of the last quarter century(Porter, 2002, P23)

Accordingly, the trend toward fewer landfills continues. In 1988, for example, 8,000 landfills were scattered across the US; today little more than 3,000 remain. Meanwhile, almost fifty percent of all Americans now have access to curbside recycling programs, while others, mostly in country areas, can drop recyclables off at one of the nation's 2,600 transfer positions for recovery and diversion. And an expanding number of financial and developed operations are finding that recycling as much of their waste as possible keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on waste hauling and landfilling(Vigso, 2004, P22 ).

Types of recycling

Glass Recycling

Glass is collected from the container banks and kerbside scheme providers, holding the clear, dark and green glass separate. The glass is conveyed to the processing vegetation where the bottles and jars are cleaned and contaminants like artificial sleeves are removed. Magnets are used to eliminate any steel contaminants such as caps or collars. It is then trampled into little parts called cullet and conveyed to the glass factory.

At the manufacturer the cullet is blended with the other raw materials required to make glass (sand, limestone and soda ash) and dissolved into a large furnace. Molten glass from the furnace is poured out through channels, and cut into pieces called gobs, each of which is the right size to make a bottle or jar. The molten glass is blown into moulds and then cooled to make new containers and jars(Ackerman, 1997, P66).

Glass has the smallest volatile charge of all the post buyer recycling commodities. Composed of sand and potash; container glass is made from readily accessible and inexpensive raw materials. To be comparable, recycled glass should sustain a price that strives against with these abundant raw materials. Traded as flint (clear), amber (brown), emerald (green) or mixed colour broken glass.

 

Plastics

The term “plastics” is utilised to recount a broad variety of resins or polymers with distinct characteristics and uses. Polymers are long chains of substances, a assembly of many flats, taking its name from the Greek “poly” (meaning “many”) and “meros” (meaning “parts” or ...