The big nationwide push in the United States for the past 2 decades for recycling has been a huge success, reducing the amount of materials that enter the waste stream. Now, to discuss the reson why recycling is so useful might seem basic. But bear with me for a second.
The waste stream being the flow of things that end up in a landfill. At first, the idea of having people organize their waste into recyclable - and not was likely preposterous. Its quite remarkable that it is now normal - and commonplace for people to at least separate their glass, paper, and aluminum from the trash. That is a significant volume of things that had once entered the landfills, that doesn't. At the same time that the trash in landfills are reduced - the energy needed to get useful materials from recycling is far less than getting it from raw materials.
Now, what is this collapse of the recycling economy? From the recent economic downturn, many of the factories that make use of the materials are reducing output, and thus demand for raw materials. As many of the industrial factories and manufacturing capability has moved away from the United States and to far flung locations as China, South East Asia, and India. As the demand for materials is dropping, the value of the mountains of soda cans have also dropped. This means that it just isn't worth it to ship the tons of soda cans to China, where they may be smelted into aluminum again, then shipped across the world again as a car. Recycleable material is now showing a glut - piling up at collection centers.
This idea of a recycling economy is also a heavily idealized one, where the material that once sat in a dump now becomes beautiful and new again. The reality is that much of the material, such as plastics just cannot be recycled without a massive use of energy, and toxic waste run off. Modern electronics is part of this. heavy metals such as lead and cadmium are in electronics. Batteries contain lithium, lead, and other metals and toxic materials. This e-Waste issue is well documented, but may not be well known. All the old computers and cellphones, TVs and whatever else gets shipped to China. Recycling the material to reclaim the gold, tin, lead and copper is a dangerous, dirty, and often times - only choice as an job. The work is poisonous, toxic, and damages the surrounding environment.
Environmentally, this is a disaster. Getting a new phone every other year (to coincide with 2 year contract renewals) generates waste that is far more damaging in the long term. The environmental costs are simply hidden, never to be seen by the consumer. Recycling, as it is now, is a fractured and incomplete picture - one that is often painted in a far better light than how it actually is.
There is a movement by electronics producers, as a Social Responsibility to address this issue. e-Waste tax, or charges to recover and responsibly dispose of the materials is now being included into the cost of purchase - much like the Redemption value on a beverage container. And really, thats the most amazing thing - that environmental responsibility is become a corporate social responsibility. It still is quite insufficient - and the appalling human conditions at these e-Waste villages are not going to be immediately remedied by this work. It is a small step, and shows that there is chance that good environmental sense also works out to be good business sense.
So we started with separating out the can and bottles and paper from the trash can. It simply isn't possible to do the same thing with electronics - the bits that are recycleable and the ones that aren't are too intertwined. Still - more and more products are showing that they can be recycled - and made better. Both better for people and the environment.
To this end, I point to Brita, the water filter manufacturer's new pledge to recycle their filter cartridges. Partnering with a plastic recycling company, they are collecting brita filters, recycling the plastic into new products. The filtering material is to be used in "alternate uses", whatever that means. Brita has made a huge push as the green alternative to the common bottled water sale. A favourite of environmentalists with their Sigg, Kleen Kanteen, and Nalgene bottles, Brita has just made their supporters a little bit happier.
The need to think of what happens to the product after it is used and spent - is now entering the corporate mind. Making the process easier for the consumer to do the better option requires some thought and clever design. Actually implementing a process that does all the above - is impressive.
A similar scenario is playing out for printer manufactuers. It has been long known that refilling ink cartridges or toner cartridges for printer is a better value for the consumer. Much to the chagrin of printer companies, the quality of refilled units have been growing to where the difference of a brand new unit and a refilled one is often difficult to find - besides the price. Now, the printer companies actually collect the old cartridges - and recycle them. The refilling is actually the most environmentally friendly option - as no new plastic is needed, or used. But this is still a step forward.
Now only if there was a way to only change the filtering material in the plastic Brita filter cartridge. The old filtering material - activated carbon - could easily be disposed of in a compost pile. Of course, only in a magical imaginary world would everyone have a compost pile to take care of such waste - but there is a potential danger here. If the filter is doing its job - the carbon would have collected mercury from tap water - concentrating it in the filter material. This would be dangerous to use in a compost pile - as it would continue the accumulation of mercury into the plants that grow using the compost. Realistically though, the amount of mercury in tap water is highly regulated in the United States, preventing significant accumulation.
It would be pretty swanky, where brita would sell the filtering carbon material. In Japan, they do already sell bamboo charcoal to drop into a kettle to make the water allegedly taste better. It isn't too far fetched to envision an active use for a fast growing bamboo charcoal as a environmentally friendly water filtering material that can be composted after use. Have the material in a teabag like bamboo fiber bag, what you drop into the filtering spout. Once in a while, you fish out the charcoal filter bag, toss it into the compost pile. Pull out a new one - and toss it in.
That, would be really recycling - a cradle to cradle solution for a guilty pleasure of using a brita water pitcher. Recycling isn't quite a sham - but is disappointing in comparison to the promises. Its still up to us to develop and build a more complete cycle of material and resource usage.
