Date published: 2006/09/18
Cambridge City Council publises a regular magazine about recycling called "Cambridge Matters". Issue 7 (Autumn 2006) has arrived. Most of it is the usual patronising cheerleading beloved of government bureaucrats. As part of the pro-recycling propaganda they state (page 5):
Everyone knows that recycling and reducing waste is better than throwing things away, but did you know that they also help to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the following ways?
- Organic waste decomposing without oxygen in landfill releases methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas.
- Recycling a tonne of paper saves about 24 trees, which absorb 114kg of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air each year. Trees take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their tissues for long periods.
- Manufacturing goods from recycled materials typically requires less energy than producing goods from virgin materials. Lower energy demands means fewer fossil fuels are burned and less carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately this is mostly the usual pro-recycling narrow focus on only one part of the picture instead of looking at the whole system. It is hardly a great victory for the world if less energy is required in one part of a process and more energy is required in another part. In particular, the statements above completely ignore the cost of collecting and processing the material. For example, Cambridge City Council has a special collection (every two weeks) just for plastic bottles. This involves a huge amount of energy expenditure. The bottles then get shipped to China. What happens to them there is anybody's guess. Whether the total energy (and emission) balance sheet is positive relative to just putting plastic bottles in the ordinary waste (also collected every two weeks) is never stated. Even with glass and tin cans it is not obvious whether recycling is good or bad. (If it was such a great idea then a private company could make good money running the scheme.)
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").