Recycled reborn - recycle your waste - Wiki Thing

Carbon saved by recycling your waste

Each year the UK produces around 434 million tonnes of waste, with 30 million tonnes of it coming out of our homes, and the cost of managing all this comes to about £1.6 billion. ¹ In the course of our daily lives we throw away vast quantities of food, packaging, electronic goods, furniture, the list is endless. 220 billion cans, bottles, plastic cartons and paper cups, are disposed of each year in the developed world, and we throw out our own body weight in rubbish every 7 weeks.

These huge volumes of waste end up clogging landfill sites and releasing harmful greenhouse gases, as well as leaching toxic chemicals, dyes and heavy metals that pollute our soil and groundwater. Or if it's something that can't easily breakdown, like glass or metal, it'll be sitting in the ground for thousands of years to come. Some of our waste is incinerated, polluting the air with toxic particulates and gases that are responsible for acid rain. About 70% of the world's dioxins (toxic particles linked to cancer, poor reproductive health amongst others) are emitted by incinerators.

Sometimes, when we throw something 'away', it can end up in the most unlikely places, polluting rivers and seas on the other side of the planet. An area of the Pacific Ocean, twice the size of Texas, contains on average 6 times more plastic than it does zooplankton, the most basic element in the food chain, posing hazards to birds and marine life that mistake the plastic debris for food. Synthetic materials like plastics do not biodegrade, instead they photodegrade into their smaller toxic components, a process that can take up to 1000 years and means that, unlike biodegradable materials, the particulates will always remain in the environment however microscopic. The so-called plastic island is thought by oceanographers to be around 3.5 million tonnes in weight.

As well as being less polluting for the environment, using recycled materials conserves the planet's resources by saving on the consumption of virgin materials, and the vast amounts of energy and environmental degradation that go into obtaining them.

Carbon saved by recycling your waste:

According to a household waste study by the Open University for DEFRA, ²the average household produces 18.6 kg of waste per week made up of the following:

Cardboard & paper 3.8 kg
Dense plastic packaging 0.7 kg
Ferrous packaging (steel & tin cans) 0.4 kg
Aluminium packaging 0.2 kg
Miscellaneous metal (ferrous and non-ferrous) 0.6 kg
Glass packaging 1.7 kg
Textiles 0.3 kg
Putrescible kitchen waste 3.1 kg
Garden waste 2.9 kg
Misc. combustible waste (DIY combustibles) 3.3 kg

Miscellaneous plastic (e.g. plastic coat-hangers, plastic film) 0.6 kg
Sanitary wastes 0.3 kg
Misc. non-combustible waste (brick, rubble) 0.6 kg
Dust & ash 0.1 kg

The vast majority of this waste (all except for the last four items on the list) can be recycled. The following shows how much CO2 can be saved if each is recycled rather than landfilled.

Carbon emissions for each waste type (in tonnes of CO2e per tonne of material): ³

Cardboard & paper (1.5 tonnes CO2e) = 5.7 kg CO2 for 3.8 kg
Dense plastic packaging (2 tonnes CO2e) = 1.4 kg CO2 for 0.7 kg
Ferrous packaging (1.5 tonnes CO2e) = 1.05 kg CO2 for 0.7 kg ⁴
Aluminium packaging (10 tonnes CO2e) = 5 kg CO2 for 0.5 kg ⁵
Glass packaging (0.5 tonnes CO2e) = 0.85 kg CO2 for 1.7 kg
Textiles (8 tonnes CO2e) = 2.4 kg CO2 for 0.3 kg
Putrescible kitchen waste (4.5 tonnes CO2e) = 13.95 kg CO2 for 3.1 kg
Garden waste (1 tonne CO2e) = 2.9 kg CO2 for 2.9 kg
Misc. combustible waste (take as wood - 1.5 tonne CO2e) = 4.95 kg CO2 for 3.3 kg

This comes to a total of 38.2 kg CO2 per household per week, or 16.6 kg CO2 per person per week. ⁶

One type of waste not mentioned in the Open University study is Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). According to DEFRA figures, white goods make up 5% of household waste. ⁷ WEEE analysis shows that the average person will consume 3.3 tonnes of electronic waste in their lifetime, or on average around 0.016 tonnes (16 kg) per year. ⁸Most of the components of electronic waste are recyclable, a fridge may contain as much as 95% recoverable material, whereas 96% of an old television could be made into new televisions. ⁹

This saves considerable resources; a UN study ¹⁰found that a desktop computer and CRT screen (weighing 24kg) uses ten times its weight in fossil fuels during its manufacture, whereas a car or fridge may only use 1-2 times its weight in fossil fuels. Some electronic items are replaced more frequently than others; a fridge might be replaced after 10 years, whereas a computer is typically replaced every 2 years, and mobile phones every 18 months. Recovery of the metals means energy-expensive mining is reduced - recycling aluminium uses just 5% of the energy it would take to mine it from bauxite; recycling steel saves 75% of the energy it would take to make it anew.

As a conservative estimate, let's assume that 16 kg of electronics would use twice its own weight in fossil fuels during manufacture, so 32 kg fossil fuels. This is equivalent to approximately 96 kg CO2. ¹¹ Assuming that the process of recycling saves 75% of the energy required to make a new electronic item, this will result in emissions of 72 kg over the year or 1.4 kg CO2 per week due to electronic waste. Adding this to our household waste figure above:

16.6 + 1.4 = 18.0 kg CO2 saved per week per person

or = 2.6 kg CO2 per day saved by recycling everything you can.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Reference Notes

1 According to Waste Online: http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/beyondrecycling.htm

2 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/research/download/ou-rpt-200802.pdf

3 Most data has been drawn from 'Environmental benefits of recycling' Executive Summary by WRAP, and cross-referenced with the Finnish study 'Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Recycling Plastics and Textiles into Products'

4 Assumed that 'Miscellaneous metal' of 0.6 kg is half-ferrous, so added 0.3 kg to total

5 Assumed that 'Miscellaneous metal' of 0.6 kg is half aluminium, so added 0.3 kg to total

6 Using National Statistics average figure of 2.3 people per household in the UK.

7 http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/waste/kf/wrkf18.htm

8 http://www.weeeman.org/html/impact/couple.html

9 http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/internet/attachments/internet/environment/rubbish_waste_and_recycling/rubbish_and_waste/waste_aware_edinburgh/ FS%2017%20Electrical%20and%20Electronic%20Goods%20Recycling.pdf

10 http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue31_5.htm

11 According to DEFRA figures in envrpgas-annexes_July2005.pdf, 1 tonne of fossil fuel emits approximately 3 tonnes of CO2 emissions