Fact findings of Global Waste Management and Disposal(2)

Recycling conserves natural resources

Throwaway society: disposable cutlery, disposable towels, disposable napkins, diapers, packaging, cameras…. There is no limit to let us feel good by inventing new kind of disposable products. "Throw away is liberating" claims the advertising. The future is bright in that sense. We already hear about disposable watches and mobile phones.

On the contrary, extending the lifetime of a product makes sense. Recycling contributes to increase resource efficiency in production and consumption.The Wuppertal Institute, for instance, estimated the total amount of materials recycled in the United Kingdom at around 54 million tones in 1996. The minimum of resource savings this way was about 167 million tones or about 3.1 tons saved per ton recycled. This was about 8 % of the total material requirement of the country.

Recycling aluminum saves resources

The Wuppertal Institute calculated the inputs from the environment ( resource extraction ) as well as the outputs to the environment ( disposal, emissions ) of 1 kg of primary and of 1 kg of secondary (recycled) aluminum.

	INPUT				OUTPUT
	scrap aluminum	Raw material	O2 ( for combustion)		Aluminum	waste	emission to air
Primary Aluminum	-	74t	11t		1t	65t	20t
Secondary Aluminum	1.2t	3t	0.65t		1t	2.8t	1.02t

Source: Wuppertal Institute, Material Flow Accounts - Aluminium

Aluminium is used in many packaging applications such as beverage cans, foils and laminates and represent 20% of aluminium waste in Europe. Consumption of aluminium packaging increased by more than 4% per year from 1980.
About 1 million tons of Aluminium is used for packaging each year in Europe:

• 40% for packaging foils
• 60% for rigid and semi-rigid packaging: cans, containers, sprays. = 32 Billion cans sold in Europe per year, 

Source:European Aluminium Association, Environment & Recycling

The European champions for recycling cans are Sweden with 92% and Switzerland 88%.
For the EU, the recycling targets for aluminium beverage cans set in the European directive on Packaging and Waste are met.
40% aluminium cans are recycled on the average (+ 10% since 1994) in Europe, worldwide over 50% of aluminium cans are recycled.
Aluminium has a high value as a scrap metal and can be recycled economically.

Source:European Aluminium Association, Aluminium in packaging

Recycling paper saves resources

Forests are cut primarily to produce paper products and lumber in roughly equal volumes, although the former is growing faster. The world consumes five times more paper now than in 1950. US offices' paper use soared from 0.85 to 1.4 trillion sheets (about 4.2 to 7 million tons) just between 1981 and 1984, as early desktop computers and laser printers were being introduced. Other countries did not lag far behind. From 1970 to 1990, paper production rose 4 % a year in Japan and in Southeast Asia, 8 %, compared with 2.5 % in the US.

Paper accounts for about 2 % of world trade and 2.5 % of world industrial production. Yet much of the paper produced is used only for a short time and then discarded. Only about a tenth of the paper stream goes into durable storage in such form as files, records and books. Much of the rest of printing and writing paper, which represented 28% of 1992 paper and paperboard consumption, find its way into the office. This paper accounts for as much as 70 % of typical office waste. During the years 1972-1987, America's discarded office printing and writing paper grew almost five times as fast as the human population, office paper over five times and copier paper almost ten times.

Source: Natural Capitalism

Recycling glass saves resources

Glass itself, as a material, is considered environmentally friendly since it has almost recyclability and it can be reused many times.

When recycled it saves greatly on raw materials and energy. Each ton of cullet used to manufacture glass saves on 1.2 tons of virgin raw materials (sand, limestone and soda ash). The substitution of each 10% of virgin raw materials in the furnace saves about 2% of the energy required for melting.

Source: Fédération Européenne de Verre d'Emballage

The US EPA estimates that the recycling of one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100 Watt bulb for 4 hours.
Recycling obviously also diverts materials from landfill and it also significantly reduces the amount of waste from mining that would otherwise be produced

Recycling plastics saves resources

The development of plastic materials has exploded in the second half of the XXth century.
Production of plastic materials in the world rose from less than 5 million tons in the 1950s to some 80 million tonnes in 1997. Consumption of plastics in Western Europe was about 28 million tons in 1997 (35% of world production).

Plastic packaging waste represents about 60% of the total plastic waste.
The distribution and industry sectors generate some 2,6 million tons out of the 9.8 million tons of post-user packaging waste produced in Western Europe. Household waste represent more than 70% of the overall plastic packaging waste. 

Source: European Directive on packaging and packaging waste