Take Los Angeles county, the most populous in America. Los Angeles county public works estimates that in , the county sent more than half a million tons of plastic to four different landfills, and nearly 20, tons of plastic to its waste-to-energy incinerator.
And it appears that many other recyclers are doing exactly the same thing. The recycling business depends on someone being willing to buy the materials that recyclers are selling. Every plastic item is given a number from to signify the kind of plastic it is made from. The category of "mixed plastics" sometimes also called "mixed rigid plastic" in the recycling industry includes virtually everything except for plastic jugs and bottles labeled No 1 and No 2, which retain a high value. A lot of mixed plastics are items that consumers encounter every day, such as clamshell-style containers, salad and berry tubs, meat trays, cold beverage cups and lids, plastic cutlery, or dairy tubs and lids.
Items made of plastic that is rigid and bulky — crates, coolers, buckets, lawn furniture or play structures — are also defined by the recycling industry as mixed plastics.
Sometimes yogurt tubs and lids, labelled No 5, are pulled from other mixed plastics to be recycled separately, as there is a growing, but limited, US market for recycling them.
Bags and plastic wrap, known in the industry as "film wrap", are not regarded as mixed plastics but are still extremely problematic.
There's little market for them, and they can cause operational problems at recycling facilities when they get caught in machinery, requiring removal and repairs. Since China stopped accepting most bales of mixed plastics in , most US cities have been left with little choice but to landfill or incinerate them.
Then China put a stop to those mixed plastic bales. Essentially, they labeled those bales garbage that they were no longer going to purchase at any price. The China ban revealed an uncomfortable truth about plastic recycling, Skye said: much of this plastic was never possible to recycle at all. With virtually no domestic recycling options for a sizable portion of the plastic the public tries to recycle, those watching closely speak of an industry in crisis.
We have a huge problem. In some rural communities, where city budgets are tight and transportation costs high, the shift in market forces has been too much to bear. Once, they could make money selling recycling. Now they have to pay people to take it off their hands.
As a result, the county is now landfilling all of its plastic waste, even opening a new section in its landfill to handle more. Nearby Nogales, Arizona, is not having much luck either. He said he had tried to find another local contractor to take the recycling but had received an exorbitant quote. Monterey County and the city of El Cerrito, both in California, have stopped accepting mixed plastics, local officials said.
The hierarchy places emphasis on reducing, reusing, and recycling as key to sustainable materials management. The total generation of MSW in was This is an increase from the Per capita MSW generation increased from 4. See Food: Material-Specific Data. Paper and paperboard products made up the largest percentage of all the materials in MSW, at Generation of paper and paperboard products declined from Generation of newspapers has been declining since , and this trend is expected to continue, partly due to decreased page size, but mainly due to the increased digitization of news.
The generation of office-type high grade papers also has been in decline, due at least partially to activities such as the increased use of the electronic transmission of reports. Paper and paperboard products have ranged between Food waste comprised the fourth largest material category, estimated at Yard trimmings comprised the next largest material category, estimated at This compares to 35 million tons The decline in yard trimmings generation since is largely due to state legislation discouraging yard trimmings disposal in landfills, including source reduction measures such as backyard composting and leaving grass trimmings on the yard.
In , plastic products generation was This was an increase of 4. Plastics generation has grown from 8. Plastics generation as a percent of total generation has varied from In , 2. The total MSW recycled was more than 69 million tons, with paper and paperboard accounting for approximately 67 percent of that amount. Metals comprised about 13 percent, while glass, plastic and wood made up between 4 and 5 percent.
Measured by tonnage, the most-recycled products and materials in were corrugated boxes Collectively, these products accounted for 90 percent of total MSW recycling in Check out our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle web area for more information on recycling. The total MSW composted was 25 million tons.
This included approximately Other methods of food management were estimated for the first time in In , Food made up the largest component of MSW combusted at approximately 22 percent. Rubber, leather and textiles accounted for over 16 percent of MSW combustion. Plastics comprised about 16 percent, and paper and paperboard made up about 12 percent.
The other materials accounted for less than 10 percent each. Sign In. The average American uses pounds of paper each year - million tons of wood could be saved each year if all that paper was recycled.
Recycling 1 ton about 2, pounds of paper saves 17 trees, 2 barrels of oil enough to run the average car for 1, miles , 4, kilowatts of energy enough power for the average home for 6 months , 3. The 17 trees saved by recycling 1 ton of paper can absorb a total of pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air each year. However, burning that same ton of paper would create 1, pounds of carbon dioxide.
If all of our newspapers were recycled, we could save about million trees each year! Every month Americans throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper think: Empire State Building , but all of these jars are recyclable! Recycling 1 aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours.
In spite of this, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months! An aluminum can may be recycled and put back on the grocery shelf as a new can in as little as 60 days, but an aluminum can that is thrown away today will still be a can years from now! A watt light bulb can be run for more than 24 hours on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel.
In 1 year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18 million homes! Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75, trees. If all our newspaper distributed was recycled, we could save approximately million trees each year!
The average American uses 7 trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2 billion trees per year!
The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50, homes for 20 years.
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