1. Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine: Sorting Out the Recycling System
This book attempts to answer the question of why the recycling system in the United States sucks (in comparison to some other countries). The author believes that the reason is the lack of a central coordinating body and unified standards. Organizations across the country, from schools to municipalities and amusement parks, create their own recycling programs, each with its own resources and goals. The result is thousands of different recycling rules and practices. With such diversity, it becomes clear that recycling is driven not only by the sustainability goals of waste management companies, but also by society demand. People love to recycle and are proud of it, but everyone has their own schedule and daily tasks and most people live in a constant rush. If a system requires too much effort and is not essential for survival, it is likely to have a low priority. To increase participation, a system must be simple, with clear steps that do not change too often. Then people will be able to integrate it into their daily habits. For example, in the 1990s, California introduced a single-stream recycling system. Its goal was for residents to throw all recyclable waste into one container and specialized companies should sort it. This did increase public participation, but it also increased the risk of contamination of materials. When different waste-materials end up in the same container, they can spoil each other. For example, a plastic bottle with soda residue thrown away with old magazines can wet and spoil the paper. Such contaminated materials lose value and are more likely to end up in landfills, rather than being recycled.
2. Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade
One of the book’s central ideas is that for most Americans and other people living in wealthy, developed countries - recycling is an environmental imperative, not a business. From this point of view, recycling allows to cut down fewer trees, dig fewer holes and use less energy than production (recycling of aluminum can, for example, requires 92 percent less energy than making a new one from ore). But without financial incentives, no ethical system will turn old beer into new beer. The global recycling business, no matter how “green” it may be, depends 100 percent on consumers buying products made from recycled materials. Yet despite the claims of some recycling companies, many products—such as smartphones—are only partially recyclable and some—such as paper—can only be recycled a limited number of times. In this sense, recycling is just a way to delay the garbage’s visit a little longer. If your primary goal is ecology, recycling is only the third most important option in the famous 3R pyramid: reduce, reuse, recycle. Unfortunately, most people show little interest in reducing their consumption or reusing things. So recycling is the worst of the best solutions.
3. Handbook of Recycling: State-of-the-art for Practitioners, Analysts and Scientists
This book shows how countries can create a cost-effective recycling system. Cost-effective recycling is only possible if losses are minimal. The energy costs of recycling are usually lower than those of extracting primary resources, however, not all materials are recycled equally: multi-component products (such as electronics) can contain dozens of elements and not all of them can be separated. For example, the share of rare earth metals that are actually returned to production is currently less than 1%. Recyclable waste is usually collected by cities and then sold to recyclers, that (after processing) sell materials to manufacturers. Recycled material prices fluctuate depending on the balance of supply and demand, the price primary resources and political interventions. US and European countries establish mandatory recycling levels for vehicles, electronics and packaging. Besides, the international market for recycled materials has recently emerged because of the growing resource appetite of rapidly developing countries such as China and India. As a result, recycling has become both a strategic and a geopolitical issue. This book provides a framework – from fundamental theories of recycling, waste collection systems, sorting technologies, recycling facility design, consumer behaviour, material efficiency and policy – to understand the current state and challenges of recycling in a broad context. It is intended for practitioners, analysts and decision makers.
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