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RE: Recycling - 3/4/2008 6:35:42 AM

petdave

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quote:

ORIGINAL: NeedToUseYou
Well, our entire business is recycling consumer items.

Are you actually converting bulk amounts of recyclables into new goods, or are you a secondhand store or similar?

quote:

But most of the plastic I'm speaking of is the type of plastic your monitor is wrapped in, but I 99% sure it holds true for plastic bottles to. As in pollution created by recycling it is greater than that created by making a new bottle. As they have to use a lot of energy and different chemicals to break it down to a usable form, and they have to pay workers to sort it, and they have to transport it.

Are you dealing with PVC or something similarly nasty? Transporting, sorting, and cleaning, applies for consumer recycleables, but they're thermoplastics... You don't break down PET (shiny drink bottles) or HDPE (milk jugs, laundry detergent, etc) chemically when you recycle them- it just goes through an industrial shredder and fed back into the machines as tiny pellets, which is the same way that virgin plastic stock is handled. Clean, homogenous regrind has a not insignificant market value, but the question is how efficiently you can get it to that point. i assume LDPE (grocery bags) is the same way, but nobody was working with them when i was in the industry (geez, 15 years ago now).

If you could shred the plastics on-site you would dramatically decrease the volume and thus the shipping costs... but if you can't sort it and clean it there the end result will have little value.

quote:

I went so far as to look into ways of cleanly burning it as fuel(as it's just oil, and chemical added, basicly oil)

Sorry, but as you've discovered, it's just not that simple!

One thing to consider as far as the transportation cost- the raw materials for new production don't just magically appear at a factory either. It all has to come from *somewhere*. Certainly, the extraction of virgin materials gets economy of scale in its favor, but it all comes down to how far away the stuff has to be trucked to get it recycled. Nobody wants a paper plant in their backyard. The problem comes when politics dictate recycling as a knee-jerk "solution" without taking these issues into consideration. So it's a very good question to ask, but the answer is going to be entirely local.

Trust me on the metals, though... local waste disposal has to screw up really badly to turn a loss on aluminum. Smelting it out of bauxite takes a LOT of energy.

< Message edited by petdave -- 3/4/2008 6:47:56 AM >

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RE: Recycling - 3/4/2008 7:17:13 AM

Lucylastic

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Toronto has a pretty intensive recycling system in effect, they did provide a blue box for metal cans/glass/plastic and a grey bin for papers/cardboard/boxes, a green bin for compostable material which is picked up bi weekly, they also provided small kitchen pails to collect food waste to empty into said green bin.
They have a tree pick up after christmas, garden waste pick up during summer and for leaves in the autumn.
Just at the beginning of the year they changed our part of the city to a single (HUGE) bin(per house) for alll metal/glass/plastic/paper.
Plus regular pickup of generalised garbage altho I think they cut the allowable number of bags. As a house of five we produce a fair amount of stuff, but 75% of it seems to go in the recycling bins
Im enclosing a link just for anyone who is interested....while I know it exists and I do it, I dont know what happens to it afterwards, have to admit, it hasnt been high on my priority list
http://www.toronto.ca/garbage/single/index.htm

Lucy

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RE: Recycling - 3/4/2008 7:41:20 AM

RCdc

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Yes, I recycle everything possible.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Depending on the area you live and the country, the carbon footprint will be different, but regardless - reusing old waste is better IMO than not.

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 1:19:32 AM

Rayne58

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Forgot to add that I take the empty printer ink cartridges to the local Officeworks store (they have a bin to put them in and they get sent away and re-filled).

There are also recycling places at some of the mobile phone stores where you can drop off your old and broken cellphones where they are re-used for parts.

There's a kerbside collection twice a year in our suburb for old whiteware, home appliances, mattresses, furniture etc. A lot of it is taken away by other people before it even gets collected - the rest I'm sure just gets taken to the tip, but in the couple of weeks the stuff is allowed to be put out, about half of it goes

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 5:17:09 AM

sub4hire

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Rayne58

There are also recycling places at some of the mobile phone stores where you can drop off your old and broken cellphones where they are re-used for parts.

Actually they sell them back to China by the pound. Our old cell phones are what the people of China use.

Our biggest recycling here is Nucor, a local steel plant. One day a year they have a day where they take in metal..appliances, scrap. Recycle it.

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 10:23:28 AM

pahunkboy

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I know a guy that re-uses things he insulated his house this way. early on- i was gung ho- but then got ants!!! i wont scrape a lable off a jar- $0.03-$0.05 in dish soap, $0.03-$0.10 hot water... so that is $0.06 to $0.15 and we havent even transported it yet.

an elderly frail cant scrape em off and often has a tuff time simply running a household. luckily the recyle center doesnt require labels of. tho i do rinse the cans and jars. i go there anyway since it is $2.00 for 1 grabage bag disposal- the cheaqpest in the area.

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 10:30:15 AM

DomMeinCT

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I recycle anything I can (corrugated cardboard, plastic types 1 and 2, cans). For other things that might still have use to others, I post them on www.freecycle.org. There are local groups worldwide.

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 11:31:26 AM

Aneirin

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Just to add, I also recycle. I refuse to buy something if I can find another way of doing the job in hand. I also look out for discarded machines, petrol lawn mowers, brush cutters and chainsaws, things normally skipped in the spring or beginning of summer, the fault normally being stale fuel in the tank, fuel lines and carb. An easy job to repair, a clean out ,new carb seals and diaphragms, service and then I pass them on either by sale or just give them away.

Electrical power tools are also a good one, normally it is the power lead that is broken internally,or if the machine is older, carbon brushes are worn, a new lead, perhaps new brushes and safety test, and I have yet another drill or other to give away.

What it is, that with the throw away society in which we live, people seem not bothered with fault finding and rectification, as basic power tools are fairly cheap, so in the past a tool would be put in for repair, now it is skipped and another bought. I do know repairman fees are expensive, I know this as I used to be one, but the fault of it all is as I see it, and this has affected my past profession, cheap imported goods, they work just until the guarantee runs out then fail. They basically cause waste,(no wonder copper is getting expensive)

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RE: Recycling - 3/5/2008 4:24:25 PM

petdave

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Just to add, I also recycle. I refuse to buy something if I can find another way of doing the job in hand. I also look out for discarded machines, petrol lawn mowers, brush cutters and chainsaws, things normally skipped in the spring or beginning of summer, the fault normally being stale fuel in the tank, fuel lines and carb. An easy job to repair, a clean out ,new carb seals and diaphragms, service and then I pass them on either by sale or just give them away.

Electrical power tools are also a good one, normally it is the power lead that is broken internally,or if the machine is older, carbon brushes are worn, a new lead, perhaps new brushes and safety test, and I have yet another drill or other to give away.

Gotta do that while you can... more and more of the electric tool market is going to cordless, and once those batteries give up the ghost (at which point they're no longer available from the manufacturer, and the old stock is almost as degraded as the used ones), they're not good for much more than the screws and gears.

i got a bit distracted by the household waste recycling, but i do similar things... any machines that can't be repaired get stripped for spare parts; i accumulate boxes and discarded bubble wrap from the buildings near my office for shipping stuff on ebay... i've got bins full of motors, screws, bearings, side cases off of old computers (you'd be surprised by how many parts on my chopper are made out of that