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March 9, 2007

Recycling ()

by fluffy at 10:10 PM
If one of the biggest environmental concerns is to reduce the amount of carbon in the ecosystem, doesn't recycling only make sense if the total carbon emissions of the recycling process were less than the amount of carbon which would otherwise go to a landfill?

How does the amount of carbon emission created by, say, paper recycling (which is a huge positive amount) compare with the amount of carbon emission created by, say, growing new forests (which is a huge negative amount) and processing it into paper (which is a positive amount, but ostensibly less than the amount of recycling alone)? That's also assuming that recycled paper were perfect (which it isn't) and that the use of recycled paper completely removed the need to make new paper (which it doesn't).

Also, looking at the really long haul, doesn't it make more sense to bury stuff in the ground where it'll be slowly transmogrified to new crude energy sources for future generations/species (via the very same processes which gave us the energy to begin with)? Biomass is biomass, and I bet after a few million years, that buried non-recyclable plastic garbage bag will have been broken down into its component C/H/O and eventually reform back into the exact same chemical slurry that it was when we found it.

Comments

#8697 03/09/2007 11:30 pm From Googling: carbon emissions paper recycling
Why bother?:


  • The nature of forests and where they are situated. As the demand for paper has increased, more timber has been needed to meet the demand for wood pulp. In some cases this has meant the loss of valuable wildlife habitats and ecosystems, as old forests have been replaced by managed plantations, usually of fast-growing conifers. The lack of tree species diversity in managed forests has a direct impact on the biodiversity of the whole forest.
  • By using waste paper to produce new paper disposal problems are reduced.
  • Producing recycled paper involves between 28 - 70% less energy consumption than virgin paper and uses less water. This is because most of the energy used in papermaking is the pulping needed to turn wood into paper.
  • Recycled paper produces fewer polluting emissions to air (95% of air pollution) and water. Recycled paper is not usually re-bleached and where it is, oxygen rather than chlorine is usually used. This reduces the amount of dioxins which are released into the environment as a by-product of the chlorine bleaching processes.
  • Paper is a biodegradable material. This means that when it goes to landfill, as it rots, it produces methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas (20 times more potent than carbon dioxide).


For every tonne of paper used for recycling the savings are:
at least 30000litres of water
3000 - 4000 KWh electricity (enough for an average 3 bedroom house for one year)
95% of air pollution.
#8698 03/10/2007 11:50 am Weak counterpoint
Penn and Teller had an episode of Bullshit (Recycling is a Grigri: Just Plain Bullshit) which criticized recycling and specifically paper recycling. It was at one point online (google video) but is no longer. One of the main things I remember them pointing at was the fact that it is clearly not (very) economically viable to recycle paper relative to things like aluminum cans. They roundly criticize recycling subsidies. They say paper is a sustainable resource, just plant trees. The wikipedia article points out that recycled plastic resin is 40% more expensive than virgin stuff. Oops. I found it a bit annoying that they didn't acknowledge that for things besides paper we're going to use it up.

Theo has dug up some more concrete justifications.

More devils advocate concerns: a significant number of recycling plants are receiving recyclables far past their capacity so a lot of materials end up in landfills anyway (albeit presumably more organized portions of them which might be okay to mine somehow). Is the gas burnt collecting and moving the recyclables counted into the energy cost (even if it doesn't compare with the methane)? To 3000KWh I'd guess it'd be negligible but sometimes recycling centers are quite dispersed.
#8699 03/11/2007 12:29 am
Well, the economics of recycling depend on the negative externalities of not recycling.

Suppose I make a deal with my local nuclear power station to store nuclear waste in my closet. Economically, that might be the best solution for both parties in the deal. However, there are negative externalities which cost other parties money: like everyone else in my apartment block having to buy radiation suits.

So, we might choose to distort that particular market with subsidies, sin taxes or regulations.

If Penn and Teller have worked out the negative externalities of increased air pollution, increased river pollution, increased landfill space, and reduced biodiversity in a farmed-forest rather than an old growth forest; and decided they outweigh the subsidies, then that's a reasonable argument.

I suspect it's more likely that they decided in advance that recycling was bad; then either ignored the externalities or just picked one or two in order to bolster their opinion.