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The following are criticisms of many popular points used for recycling.
Saves energy
There is controversy on just how much energy is saved through recycling. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) states on its website that "a paper mill uses 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber." Critics often argue that in the overall processes, it can take more energy to produce recycled products than it does to dispose of them in traditional landfill methods. This argument is followed from the curbside collection of recyclables, which critics note is often done by a second waste truck. Recycling proponents point out that a second timber or logging truck is eliminated when paper is collected for recycling.
It is difficult to determine the exact amount of energy consumed or produced in waste disposal processes. How much energy is used in recycling depends largely on the type of material being recycled and the process used to do so. Aluminum is generally agreed to use far less energy when recycled rather than being produced from scratch. The EPA states that "recycling aluminum cans, for example, saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source, bauxite."
Economist Steven Landsburg has suggested that the sole benefit of reducing landfill space is trumped by the energy needed and resulting pollution from the recycling process. Others, however, have calculated through life cycle assessment that producing recycled paper uses less energy and water than harvesting, pulping, processing, and transporting virgin trees. By using less recycled paper, additional energy is needed to create and maintain farmed forests until these forests are as self-sustainable as virgin forests.
Public policy analyst James V. DeLong points out that recycling is a manufacturing process and many of the methods use more energy than they save. In addition to energy usage, he notes that recycling requires capital and labor while producing some waste. These processes need to be more efficient than production from original raw material and/or traditional garbage disposal in order for recycling to be the superior method.
Saves money
The amount of money actually saved through recycling depends on the efficiency of the recycling program used to do it. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance argues that the cost of recycling depends on various factors around a community that recycles, such as landfill fees and the amount of disposal that the community recycles. It states that communities start to save money when they treat recycling as a replacement for their traditional waste system rather than an add-on to it and by "redesigning their collection schedules and/or trucks."
In many cases the cost of recyclable materials also exceeds the cost of raw materials. Virgin plastic resin costs 40% less than recycled resin. Additionally, a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study that tracked the price of clear cullet from July 15 to August 2, 1991, found that the average cost per ton ranged from $40 to $60, while a USGS report shows that the cost per ton of raw silica sand from years 1993 to 1997 fell between $17.33 and $18.10.
In a 1996 article for The New York Times, John Tierney argued that it costs more money to recycle the trash of New York City than it does to dispose of it in a landfill. Tierney argued that the recycling process employs people to do the additional waste disposal, sorting, inspecting, and many fees are often charged because the processing costs used to make the end product are often more than the profit from its sale. Tierney also referenced a study conducted by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) that found in the six communities involved in the study, "all but one of the curbside recycling programs, and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased the cost of waste disposal."
Working conditions
Critics often argue that while recycling may create jobs, they are often jobs with low wages and terrible working conditions. These jobs are sometimes considered to be make-work jobs that don't produce as much as the cost of wages to pay for those jobs. Recycling jobs have seen mention in publications listing the worst jobs to work in. In areas without many environmental regulations and/or worker protections, jobs involved in recycling such as ship breaking can result in deplorable conditions for both workers and the surrounding communities.
Recycling proponents counter that the jobs involved in recovery of an equal amount of virgin material creates worse jobs. Timber harvesting and ore mining are more dangerous than paper recycling and metal recycling.
Saves trees
Economist Steven Landsburg has claimed that paper recycling actually reduces tree populations. He argues that because paper companies have incentives to replenish the forests they own, large demands for paper lead to large forests. Conversely, reduced demand for paper leads to fewer "farmed" forests. Similar arguments were expressed in a 1995 article for The Free Market.
When foresting companies cut down trees, more are planted in their place. Most paper comes from pulp forests grown specifically for paper production. Many environmentalists point out, however, that "farmed" forests are inferior to virgin forests in several ways. Farmed forests are not able to fix the soil as quickly as virgin forests, causing widespread soil erosion and often requiring large amounts of fertilizer to maintain while containing little tree and wild-life biodiversity compared to virgin forests. Also, the new trees planted are not as big as the trees that were cut down, and the argument that there will be "more trees" is not compelling to forestry advocates when they are counting saplings.
The recycling of paper should not be confused with saving the tropical forest. Many people have the misconception that paper-making is what's causing deforestation of tropical rain forests but rarely any tropical wood is harvested for paper. Deforestation is mainly caused by population pressure such as demand of more land for agriculture or construction use. Therefore, the recycling paper, although reduces demand of trees, doesn't greatly benefit the tropical rain forests
Possible income loss and social costs
In some prosperous and many less prosperous countries in the world, the traditional job of recycling is performed by the entrepreneurial poor such as the karung guni, the rag and bone man, waste picker, and junk man. With the creation of large recycling organizations that may be profitable, either by law or economies of scale, the poor are more likely to be driven out of the recycling and the remanufacturing market. To compensate for this loss of income to the poor, a society may need to create additional forms of societal programs to help support the poor. Like the parable of the broken window, there is a net loss to the poor and possibly the whole of a society to make recycling artificially profitable through law.
Because the social support of a country is likely less than the loss of income to the poor doing recycling, there is a greater chance that the poor will come in conflict with the large recycling organizations. This means fewer people can decide if certain waste is more economically reusable in its current form rather than being reprocessed. Contrasted to the recycling poor, the efficiency of their recycling may actually be higher for some materials because individuals have greater control over what is considered “waste.”
One labor-intensive underused waste is electronic and computer waste. Because this waste may still be functional and wanted mostly by the poor, the poor may sell or use it at a greater efficiency than large recyclers. This would result in higher standards of living for the poor, not requiring social programs, and less usable waste transferred to landfills.
Many recycling advocates believe that this laissez-faire individual-based recycling does not cover all of society’s recycling needs. Thus, it does not negate the need for an organized recycling program. Local government often consider the activities of the recycling poor as contributing to property blight. Ecologists see the activities of the recycling poor as a choice between many potentially hazardous individual little dumps (see Goiânia accident and others) versus fewer large dumps that can be monitored.
Sustainability
Newsprint
There are upper limits on the percentage of the world’s newsprint that can be manufactured from recycled fiber. The most obvious upper limit is imposed by the nature of recycling itself. Some of the fiber that enters any recycled pulp mill is lost in pulping, due to inefficiencies inherent in the process. According to the web site of the U.K. chapter of Friends of the Earth wood fiber can normally only be recycled up to five times due to damage experienced to the fiber. Thus, unless the quantity of newsprint used each year worldwide declines to reflect the lost fiber, a certain amount of new (virgin) fiber is required each year globally, even if the individual newsprint mill may continue to use 100% recycled fiber.
Additionally, some old newspapers never make it to a recycling plant, being used for a variety of household and industrial applications or simply ending up in landfill. Recycle rates (the percentage of annual newsprint consumption which is then recycled) vary from country to country and, within countries, from city to rural areas as well as from city to city. The American Forest & Paper Association estimates that more than 72% of newsprint produced in North America in 2006 was recovered for re-use or export, with about 58% of that going back to a paper or paperboard mill for re-use, 16% being used by molded pulp mills (to make products such as egg cartons) and the balance being shipped offshore. Of the percentage that is re-used by a North American paper or paperboard mill, AFPA estimates that about a third goes back into newsprint manufacture. Recycle rates can also vary over time with the price paid by the market for old newspapers, which can be quite volatile. As an example, in recent years, with China growing as a manufacturer of various kinds of paper and packaging – using significant quantities of recycled fiber imported from the U.S. and elsewhere – its demand for old newspapers has at times been strong enough to influence recycled fiber prices worldwide. While high recycled fiber prices are good news for the goal of reducing landfill quantities, they can affect the profitability of newsprint mills using recycled fibers.
An important consideration in fiber selection by newsprint mills aside from cost is the high speeds of both modern newsprint machines and modern newspaper printing presses. There are newsprint machines in the U.S. operating at speeds approaching 1,400 meters per minute, according to industry information group RISI Inc., while the newest machines in the world (including some recently installed in China) can have speeds topping 1,800 meters per minute. Modern newspaper presses can run at speeds of up to 90,000 copies per hour (according to publishing industry association IFRA), with a few approaching 100,000 cph.
Such high speeds place severe demands on the strength of the sheet, both on the paper machine during the manufacturing process and on the press during printing. A number of newsprint mills around the world manufacture commercially acceptable qualities of newsprint using 100% recycled fiber. However, such mill operators must be very selective about the purity of the waste stream, making sure they employ a minimum of contaminants and include as much long-fibered old newsprint as possible. Virgin newsprint is made from long-fibered (softwood) trees such as spruce, fir, balsam and pine, while some paper and paperboard products are manufactured from shorter-fibered hardwood species. Newsprint mills prefer to use old newspapers, or a mix of old newspapers and old magazines, rather than recycling other paper grades. As U.S. municipalities have recently moved toward “single stream” recycling – collecting various waste products in a single compartment of a vehicle – mills have been forced to spend more money to procure a clean, appropriate waste stream for pulping purposes.
Toilet paper
Toilet paper is sometimes made from recycled paper; however, large amounts of virgin tree pulp is still used. Environmentally friendly toilet paper may also be unbleached.
In Feb. '09, Greenpeace issued a guide distinguishing between (a) "soft" brands, which require more long fiber from virgin tree pulp to manufacture, and (b) those which, while less soft and perhaps unbleached, use more or all recycled content and/or use wood pulp from sustainably managed forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Greenpeace also issued guides covering facial tissue, napkins, and paper towels. In an article noting the release of the report, The New York Times said that sales of the soft brands were up by 40 percent in some markets in 2008, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm. However, and possibly aiding the environmental interests, a decline in the past few months in sales of premium toilet paper of 7 percent nationally was reported, citing Ali Dibadj, a senior stock analyst with Sanford Bernstein, a financial management firm.
The article also pointed to the Natural Resources Defense Council as campaigning for more recycled content. "'No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper,' said Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with . ... Dr. Hershkowitz is pushing the high-profile groups he consults with, including Major League Baseball, to use only recycled toilet tissue. At the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday , the gowns were designer originals but the toilet tissue at the Kodak Theater’s restrooms was 100 percent recycled." The article revealed differences between manufacturer's like Kimberly Clark and Proctor & Gamble (Cottonelle/Scott and Charmin brands, respectively) and Greenpeace over relative wood-type inputs (including those from boreal forests, and revealed a variance between the at-home market (more soft) and the institutional (restaurants, offices and schools) markets (more recycled, less bleached). The Times said "nvironmentalists are focusing on tissue products for reasons besides the loss of trees. Turning a tree to paper requires more water than turning paper back into fiber, and many brands that use tree pulp use polluting chlorine-based bleach for greater whiteness. In addition, tissue made from recycled paper produces less waste tonnage — almost equaling its weight — that would otherwise go to a landfill."
Finally, the Times noted that Marcal, the United States' oldest manufacturer of recycled paper, is emerging from bankruptcy and planning to introduce a new brand of tissue in April, 2009, concurrent with Earth Day. It appears the new brand will be called "Small Steps." The brand is not listed by Greenpeace as of Feb. '09.
References
- Energy Information Administration Recycling Paper & Glass Accessed October 18 2006
- Environmental Protection Agency Frequently Asked Questions about Recycling and Waste Management Accessed October 18 2006
- ^ Landsburg, Steven A. The Armchair Economist. p. 86. Cite error: The named reference "landsburg" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- Selke 116
- ^ Regulatory Policy Center WASTING AWAY: Mismanaging Municipal Solid Waste Accessed November 4 2006
- Waste to Wealth The Five Most Dangerous Myths About Recycling Accessed October 18 2006
- United States Department of EnergyConserving Energy - Recycling Plastics Accessed November 10 2006
- Environmental Protection AgencyMarkets for Recovered Glass Accessed November 10 2006
- United States Geological SurveyMineral Commodity Summaries Accessed November 10 2006
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98638760
- ^ New York Times Recycling... Is Garbage (nytimes.com Published June 30 1996) Recycling... Is Garbage (article reproduced) Recycling... Is Garbage (article reproduced) Accessed October 18 2006
- Heartland Institute Recycling: It's a bad idea in New York Accessed October 18 2006
- ^ The Free Market Don't Recycle: Throw It Away! Accessed November 4 2006
- Jewish World Review The waste of recycling Accessed November 4 2006
- Baird, Colin (2004) Environmental Chemistry (3rd ed.) W. H. Freeman ISBN 0-7167-4877-0
- "All About Paper". Paper University. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92705125
- Friends of the Earth
- "Kimberly-Clark 2005 Sustainability Report page 28"
- ^ "Greenpeace Shopper's Guide to Ancient Forest Friendly Tissue" Greenpeace Web site. Retrieved 2-26-09.
- "Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests" by Leslie Kaufman, The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2009; for the per capita figure only. Retrieved 2-26-09.
- Marcal Small Steps Web site. Retrieved 2-26-09.
External links
- Pittsburgh tribune article criticizing curbside recycling
- EPA municipal solid waste-recycling
- 2004 recycling episode of Penn & Teller's Showtime series
- Bluebox recycler cited for abuses