I've had some requests to talk more specifically about recycling, and what makes sense and what doesn't.
The basic idea is that when you are deciding what should be recycled, you have to take a bunch of things into account:
1) how much raw materials are required to make the product in the first place?
2) how much energy is required to make the product in the first place?
3) what (if any) are the industrial by-products of the virgin product's manufacture?
4) how much landfill space would this product take up?
And then, for a recycled product you need to ask:
1) how much energy does it take to convert the product back into a usable form?
2) how efficient is the collection process?
3) how easily does the product get contaminated in the recycling process?
4) are there uses for the recycled product?
You get the idea about all the questions that go into recycling (I'm sure many more could be added to these lists).
The answers to some of these questions depends on where you live. If your locality gets power from coal-fired power plants grandfathered into the Clean Air Act, the extra energy required for recycling could have way more of a negative impact environmentally than if you're in a community that is purchasing energy from a better source.
Also, when you are comparing the environmental effects of recycling versus garbage disposal, you're really comparing a bundle of different types of effects and you are then in a position of comparing apples and oranges. So you need to balance the energy cost of recycling versus the landfill space issues and the raw material issues of virgin products.
So, even in recycling it becomes a values dilemma... what do you care about more, landfills or energy consumption?
Here's a real world example:
"Yet Stonyfield sells yogurt in containers that aren’t recyclable – for a surprisingly green reason. Instead of using recyclable High Density Polyethylene (HDPE; #2 plastic) for its containers, Stonyfield uses hard-to-recycle Polypropylene (#5). The company’s life cycle analysis study indicated that the vast majority of a plastic container’s environmental impact occurs in the manufacture and transportation stages, and polypropylene's structure produces a container with thinner and lighter walls that still hold the same volume of yogurt. The seemingly intuitive notion that recycling always is best for the environment turned out not to be true. Indeed, Stonyfield discovered a fact that would shock many a would-be recycler: Because wide-mouthed HDPE containers like yogurt pots have a higher melting point than more common HDPE products like milk containers, trash haulers usually route those yogurt pots not to recycling facilities but to trash dumps, and only accept them as recyclable to reduce consumer confusion. Had Stonyfield not conducted an LCA [Life Cycle Analysis], it would not have been able to make its informed decision to prioritize genuine waste reduction over recycling practices that only seemed ‘green’."
Source: http://www.awarenessintoaction.com/whitepapers/Life-Cycle-Analysis-Data-Environmental-Business-sustainability.html
To be continued....
