Right through history, recycling has been around in some guise or another. Even as long ago as 400 BC indications of earlier recycling are recognized to have occurred. Archaeological reports show that ancient waste dumps contained fewer of what is known nowadays as household waste, including pots, utensils and ash, which demonstrates that individuals were, even in those days, keen to reuse products at a time when natural resources weren’t so freely available. Little did they know that the things they were starting would play a huge role in shaping the world for future generations
Indeed it could be argued how the old ‘rag-and-bone’ man was just an early recycler collecting unwanted goods on his horse and cart, before reusing or converting the accumulated items into new stuff. The 60’s TV series, Steptoe and Son, brought this very much in to the public eye and greater attention.
During periods like the World War Years, recycling and re-use were common place as natural resources became much more difficult to get. Along with food being rationed, certain materials like metal and fibre were largely allowed just for use by the government in support of military operations, to fulfill manufacturing requirements often in the production of weaponry.
Because of rising power costs, the demand to recycle aluminium increased in the 1970’s.. As a material aluminium utilises significantly less energy during the production process than various other materials. Also it was much prized on account of its non rusting properties. The need for aluminium saw the emergence of scrap metal dealers who were prepared to pay cash in exchange for good quality metal. Additionally, in the seventies in parts of the USA, the first trucks were seen to be collecting waste with a separate trailer for recovery of recyclable items being towed behind the vehicle.
Into the late 1980’s, early nineties and as the awareness of handling the global environmental state increased amongst global governing bodies, the focus on recycling really began to gather impetus. In the United Kingdom, the authorities imposed recycling targets upon Local Authorities along with the introduction of fresh legal guidelines upon the waste materials market, recycling programmes really started to take off. The once commonly knownwaste disposal businesses, began to call themselves waste management providers and demonstrated with the offer of waste collection and recyclable materials collection that waste needed to be handled more effectively. Local skip companies needed to become better at what they did.
Currently, many hundreds of materials and products may be recycled, including paper, card, glass and plastics, to mobile phones, electrical items, printer cartridges, textiles, clothing and concrete. The demand for different types of collection receptacles has increased dramatically.
What is Recycling?
The term recycling identifies the operation of reprocessing second-hand materials into new or nearly new materials to avoid the need for potentially useable materials or products to be dumped. Essentially it is diverting waste material away from landfill.
Recycling takes on an important role in a world where climate change is high on the green agenda. It reduces the requirement to avoidably send waste material and products to landfill or other waste disposal options. This in turn lessens the need and the reliance upon consuming fresh or new natural resources, decreases energy usage and air and water supply pollution, all of which contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Recycling would probably be mostnoticeable through the recycling solutions now provided by local councils for domestic refuse and recycling collections and also modern waste management firms who generally offer a full range of waste and recycling collection services.
Some factories will develop hazardous waste, so visit www.biffa.co.uk and hire the professionals to be certain of safe disposal and compliance with the regulations.
In the waste material market, the normal advertising activity surrounds the waste materials hierarchy - ‘reduce, reuse, recycle and recover’. This four R slogan is a straightforward message devised for a far reaching target audience. Look at ways to reduce your waste material. Could the waste products or materials be reused? Could the waste product or material be recycled or retrieved? Many questions to think about.
The waste hierarchy is a strategy that various waste material management organisations and local authorities think about when creating new waste management schemes. The strategy is meant to concentrate the thought process around avoiding waste materials being produced to begin with. Think about the options for reuse and recycling but ultimately minimise the amount of waste produced at the end of the cycle.
And so the focus is very much on the entire production process. The waste materials hierarchy stretches much wider than to waste material management companies and local authorities. Working groups have been established to bring many sectors together to consider the entire waste cycle. By way of example, the producer of a product must take into account how the product is to be made. Can components be used that can later be recycled or reused? Can the amount of packaging which often surrounds the item be reduced? When the item gets to the retailer, is it essential for the product to be placed inside an outer package? If the retailer sells the merchandise, what will the purchaser do with the unwanted elements of the acquisition, i.e. the packaging? How will the packaging be collected and where will it go? Should it go back to a recycling plant, for onward shipment to a reprocessing facility, where the cycle begins once again?
How are Materials Collected for Recycling?
Legislation now dictates that all waste should be processed to reduce the quantity of recyclables and unnecessary waste heading direct to landfill. Since 1996, the UK government has applied a landfill tax on all waste dumped within landfill. The rate of duty has increased considerably in recent years rising from the original level of £8 per ton, to the current rate of £40 per ton. The UK government has previously declared that this will increase further to £48 per ton by the end of 2010/11. This rate applies to all general waste materials streams, although there’s a reduced rate for inert materials. Delivering waste materials straight to landfill is an expensive course of action and selecting appropriate processes to divert waste out of landfill has become important. For inert materials the rate is £2.50 per ton.
Thus, the message to everybody is crystal clear, sort your waste materials to cut back the volume of waste going to landfill. In the past, both at home and in the office, as soon as you place waste in the dustbin , it is forgotten about. Somebody else will collect it and take it away. Nowadays, in the home and at work, recycling is being stimulated with the provision of containers in which to place specific recyclable materials. At home, the children are often the keen recyclers.
Perhaps the most common products to be seen being recovered for recycling are paper, card, glass, metals and plastics. Even so the opportunity to recycle a large amount of materials or products keeps growing. Although technically not seen as recycling, food waste and garden waste collections are increasing, where the food or garden waste is taken back to a plant for processing into a reusable or saleable compost product.
Companies like ours are fast supplying environmental waste disposal to sustain the continuous difficulty of what to do with all the level of waste we, as a country, generate.
The means of collecting materials or waste to be recycled is also escalating and becoming more noticeable within local communities. Dedicated collection sites, often referred to as bring bank sites, are springing up in supermarket car parks to encourage customers of the supermarket to return such items as bottles, newspapers or cardboard to the bins on their way into the store. Shoppers are therefore encouraged to bring back their recyclables.
Local Authority waste material collection crews or their appointed personnel will collect refuse and recyclables from the kerbside usually at the front of your home. Collection from domestic premises normally continues to be the responsibility of the local council and several have now employed the provision of boxes in which to collect specified recyclable materials or products. The services do vary from council to council.
In the business and commercial field, waste material management businesses offer different storage containers in which the customer deposits the correct waste stream or recyclable resources ready for collection. The containers will often be clearly branded as to which recyclable materials ought to be put inside that container or bin. Otherwise, the bins will probably be colour coded to distinguish which recyclable materials ought to be placed within which bins. Waste management companies also may have to deal with special requests from the customer.
One of the keys to a successful recycling initiative is informing the public about what can be recycled and how. In the commercial world getting the co-operation of factory employees is crucial. The introduction of any recycling scheme must ensure that in asking staff to separate waste for recycling, it does not become time consuming and affect the productivity of what employees should be doing in their work.
The Recycling Process
Several collection systems exist for the collection of the recyclable products . Whichever collection system is used , the materials are taken to a drop off point where they’ll be segregated from other waste items. This could be done by hand or by making use of mechanical separators.
To start the recycling process from a collection viewpoint, the more recyclable material that can be separated at source, i.e. at home or in the work place, the more efficient it will be for the waste collector. That is why individual storage units are supplied to the waste producer to promote segregation at source. If card could be collected using a vehicle, that will collect no other waste material, the card is going to be kept uncontaminated and as a consequence could have a greater value when it reaches the processing plant. In the same way, dedicated glass collection vehicles are used to collect just glass. In addition to the obvious health and safety factors and the weight of collected glass, it’ll have a greater value if the collected glass load is not contaminated with other waste. Uncontaminated recyclables will have a better value than contaminated materials.
When collected, the recyclable resources may be taken direct to the reprocessing plant, if the load contains only that particular type of material. So a dedicated glass collection vehicle could take the load straight to a glass processing plant. It is more likely that the glass will have to be bulked up for onward shipment to the processor.
If blended recyclables are being collected like paper and card within the same container, it could be a necessity for the collector to take the load to a recycling centre to unload and permit the load to be sorted into individual paper and card bundles for onward transfer to a paper or card processing plant. No matter which technique is used, the recyclable material obtained will most likely be sorted or washed before traveling through to a reprocessing facility to be processed to a new useful resource and ultimately used as a new product or in manufacturing. Inert materials can be a useful by product at landfill, such as shredded old tyres to aid traction on access roadways.
Most big supermarkets have now introduced waste recycling systems as an solution to the huge volume of packaging material used on merchandise.
The Increasing Significance of Recycling
In the UK around 35% of waste materials collected from homes is recycled or composted. Whilst in the commercial and industrial market, the quantity of waste delivered to landfill has declined considerably recently and the volume of waste material now being diverted for recycling or reuse by this market has increased over the quantities going to landfill.
Landfill continues to play a significant role in the management of waste throughout the UK as not all wastes can be recycled and several are more suited to landfill disposal than by any other method. However, it’s not just the increasing costs of disposing of waste directly in landfill that is making recycling an even more appealing option for businesses. Landfill is starting to become scarce, with some experts indicating that the quantity of space readily available across all UK landfill sites, has under 10 years existence remaining before all sites are considered to be full.
In recent times, waste materials management companies have had to vary their focal point, and start to take into account and invest in technology, such as energy from waste plants, anaerobic digestion facilities and mechanised biological treatment plants, as alternatives to landfill. Local Authorities have changed their approaches by undertaking detailed strategic reviews as to how waste material under their jurisdiction needs to be handled. In some cases this means unitary authorities are implementing plans to introduce long term contracts, usually around 25 years long, through which to control their waste material management requirements. These deals will often include the need to create a facility through which to take care of all waste material generated across the county by segregating all waste materials streams. The contracts could also incorporate the collection of all waste and recyclables from households across the region. So the face of waste management is changing rapidly. The times of simply throwing every little thing in the dustbin have gone and the development of new technologies are upon us.
Summary
Recycling is now a lifestyle and is maturing all the time. It has evolved over the years from a thing that was undertaken without any real thought behind it. The trusty rag and bone man was just trying to make a living. Today, many blue chip companies are setting out plans for a ‘zero to landfill’ waste strategy, where the objective is very clear - reduce waste, reuse waste and recycle waste, but no waste must wind up in landfill. Some companies have announced ambitious target dates by which to attain such plans.
Many households across the country now have some type of bin in which to isolate waste materials for recycling. The decision to separate newspapers, aluminium cans and plastic bottles are almost common place. Whilst in industrial and commercial areas, there is an increasing list of items to consider for recycling like printer cartridges, office paper, metal and electrical equipment. Even on street corners and airports you see bins to recycle such items as newspapers and drink cans.
Ideally the whole process would be a complete cycle such as it was in the time of the horse. However the advent of new technologies will accelerate further the way in which our waste is to be managed in the future, but it is highly unlikely that we will ever reach the ultimate waste free society.