Is recycling plastic and cans a waste of energy?

jblack_2

Hello All,

I was doing the usual washing and squashing of the plastic bottles and cans and I got to thinking is it a waste of time?

The amount of energy used to heat the water used to wash these items must be substantial over the course of a year. Then you have the 4 different rubbish trucks to collect the garden, landfill, paper and recycled items.

Then of course the recycling process has takes place with trucks driving all over the place etc. I looked on our local Council website and it says that the paper is sent to Sweden, processed and sent back. That must take a lot of time and energy?

I'm all for 'doing our bit' but when it's all added up is it worth it?

rogerblack

It may be.
In some cases, it's probably rather questionable.
For example - a 2l coke bottle weighs 50g or so.
http://iasks.org/sites/default/files/ijtee20120402117128.pdf gives CO2 production for plastic bottles as 3kg/kg of bottle, so that'd be 150g of CO2 per bottle.
(this is only counting the manufacture cost).
As a comparator - gas fired electricity makes 500g/kWh of CO2.
To add 10% to the production CO2 you need to use only 33 watt-hours of electricity.
This is enough to heat a litre of water by 33C.
Clearly - if you wash bottles one by one, this is going to have a really, really significant effect.
(this neglects the fact that it will take a lot more water than a litre runoff in most cases to get warm)
In short - wash bottles only in cold water, wash several at a time, in the same water, and ideally in water left over from other uses.
For example, I soak my dishes, then scrub lightly most of the remaining debris off, change the water, then rinse in a seprate lot of water.
Rinsing the accumulated bottles and cans afterwards would be a saving.

(In practice, I use cold water, which is not metered in scotland)

Cardew

If you Google 'economics of recyling' you will find hundreds of articles addressing the subject.

It seems that there is a concensus that recycling isn't justified on a purely cost/benefit analysis,(and that excludes any costs you incur in washing etc) but of course there are many other considerations.

Norman_Castle

The amount of energy used to heat the water used to wash these items

My recycling is the last thing when washing up. They don't need to be very clean. Just remove any food etc.

GlynD

One of the reasons these things get recycled is to save non-biodegradable objects going into landfill.

Ectophile

Don't waste good clean hot water rinsing things that are just going to be chucked into the recycling bin.

I just rinse them last, after I've done the washing up. So long as you get most of the food residue off, they won't go smelly, and they will be cleaned up as part of the recycling process anyway.

cepheus

jblack wrote: »

Hello All,

I was doing the usual washing and squashing of the plastic bottles and cans and I got to thinking is it a waste of time?

..... is it worth it?

Environmentally yes, economically it is more debatable. It depends on what value you place on emissions and energy. Since carbon is still cheap to burn and emit, probably not at present prices, but environmentalists would claim these costs don't fully represent the externalities and future costs.

in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.............Recycling has many other benefits, too. It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is buried or burnt, hardly ideal ways to get rid of the stuff. (Landfills take up valuable space and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and although incinerators are not as polluting as they once were, they still produce noxious emissions, so people dislike having them around.) But perhaps the most valuable benefit of recycling is the saving in energy and the reduction in greenhouse gases and pollution that result when scrap materials are substituted for virgin feedstock........

Even so, most kerbside recycling programmes are not financially self-sustaining. The cost of collecting, transporting and sorting materials generally exceeds the revenues generated by selling the recyclables, and is also greater than the disposal costs. Exceptions do exist, says Dr Morris, largely near ports in dense urban areas that charge high fees for landfill disposal and enjoy good market conditions for the sale of recyclables

http://www.economist.com/node/9249262

theseeker1

Cardew wrote: »

If you Google 'economics of recyling' you will find hundreds of articles addressing the subject.

It seems that there is a concensus that recycling isn't justified on a purely cost/benefit analysis,(and that excludes any costs you incur in washing etc) but of course there are many other considerations.

This is interesting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Because I myself is a lil confuse about the recycling thingy.

Ben84

This is similar to the thinking I had one day, after years of just recycling because it seemed like the right thing to do. After that day, I really changed how I view it and don't recycle much any more. However, I also stopped buying the majority of the stuff I used to buy that ended up as rubbish to throw out. Reduction is a better option in so many ways, and the benefits are much easier for me to measure, so that's what I spend the effort on now.

Hapshade

The mantra of 'reduce, re-use, recycle' certainly seems to apply. I'd say it's worth recycling them any way you can, and like others have suggested wash them in waste water from the washing up rather than specially heating water.

pawsies

my friend uses some packaging for fuel. her fireplace is kind of like her bin, but it keeps her warm and she would still have a fire anyway so it's not creating any excess carbon that wouldn't otherwise be there.

Whether it's safe I have no idea lol