Video

This is a video about recycle.

Promotional Poster

These are some of the concept arts for promotional poster, regarding the issue of Recycle.


*Click on each picture for bigger size

HOUSEHOLD GARBAGE

As explained earlier, household garbage is waste generated from our daily activities in our home. Everyday, millions of household produces lots of waste through used products. The materials are toxic and damages the environment greatly.

The information below was part of an article;

"The garbage situation has become a big concern in cities all around the country and not only is this a political issue, but it is also a problem that has caught the attention of the general population. We all realize there is a growing problem but nobody likes to admit that their garbage is contributing to the problem."

Many municipalities have already started a recycling program to deal with the growing mountains of paper, plastic, glass, etc. Although it takes a bit of effort on the part of the public to sort and separate their garbage, people are now beginning to realize that the future of our environment is at stake.

One household product that is causing a problem these days is throwaway batteries. Each year, Americans throw away 84.000 tons of alkaline batteries. These AA, C and D cells that power electronic toys and games, portable audio equipment and a widerange of other gadgets comprise 20% of the household hazardous materials present around the country in America's landfills."

Source: http://www.pioneerthinking.com/garbage.html

Basically, after using up a product, people tend to just throw it away without the care to think where will it go or what happens to it. The only thing that came to our mind was buying a new one to replace the old used product and that is how the process repeats itself.

RECYCLING FACTS ~ IMAGINE THAT!

Ø If all our newspapers were recycled, we could saved about 25,000,000 trees a year!

Ø Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year!

Ø A glass bottle would take 4000 years to decompose!

Ø Recycling 1 aluminium can saves enough energy to run a television for 3 hours!

PROCESS

(i) Collection

“A number of different systems have been implemented to collect recyclates from the general waste stream. These systems tend to lie along the spectrum of trade-off between public convenience and government ease and expense. The three main categories of collection are “drop-off centres”, “buy-back centres” and “curb side collection”.

“Drop-off centres” require the waste producer to carry the recyclates to a central location, either an installed or mobile collection station or the reprocessing plant itself. They are the easiest type of collection to establish, but suffer from low and unpredictable throughput. “Buy-back centres” differ in that the cleaned recyclates are purchased, thus providing a clear incentive for use and creating a stable supply. The post-processed material can then be sold on, hopefully creating a profit. Unfortunately government subsidies are necessary to make buy-back centres a viable enterprise, as according to the United States Nation Solid Wastes Management Association, it costs on average US$50 to process a ton of material, which can only be resold for US$30.”

“Curb side” collection encompasses many subtly different systems, which differ mostly on where in the process the recyclates are sorted and cleaned. The main categories are mixed waste collection, commingled recyclables and source separation. A waste collection vehicle generally picks up the waste.

At one end of the spectrum is “mixed waste collection”, in which all recyclates are collected, mixed in with the rest of the waste, and the desired material is then sorted out and cleaned at a central sorting facility. This results in a large amount of recyclable waste, paper especially, being too soiled to reprocess, but has advantages as well: the city need not pay for a separate collection of recyclates and no public education is needed. Any changes to which materials are recyclable is easy to accommodate as all sorting happens in a central location.

In a commingled or single-stream system, all recyclables for collection are mixed but kept separate from other waste. This greatly reduces the need for post-collection cleaning but does require public education on what materials are recyclable.

Source separation is the other extreme, where each material is cleaned and sorted prior to collection. This method requires the least post-collection sorting and produces the purest recyclates, but incurs additional operating costs for collection of each separate material. An extensive public education program is also required, which must be successful if recycled contamination is to be avoided.

Source separation used to be the preferred method due to the high sorting costs incurred by commingled collection. Advances in sorting technology (see sorting below), however, have lowered this overhead substantially, many areas which had developed source separation programs have since switched to comingled collection.”

(ii) Sorting

Once commingled recyclates are collected and delivered to a central collection facility, the different types of materials must be sorted. This is done in a series of stages, many of which involve automated processes such that a truck-load of material can be fully sorted in less than an hour. Some plants can now sort the materials automatically, known as Single Stream. A 30% increase in recycling rates has been seen in the areas where these plants exist.

Initially, the commingled recyclates are removed from the collection vehicle and placed on a conveyor belt spread out in a single layer. Large pieces of cardboard and plastic bags are removed by hand at this stage, as they can cause later machinery to jam.

Next, automated machinery separates the recyclates by weight, splitting lighter paper and plastic from heavier glass and metal. Cardboard is removed from the mixed paper, and the most common types of plastic, PET (#1) and HDPE (#2), are collected. This separation is usually done by hand, but has become automated in some sorting centres: a spectroscopic scanner is used to differentiate between different types of paper and plastic based on the absorbed wavelengths, and subsequently divert each material into the proper collection channel.

Strong magnets are used to separate out ferrous metals, such as iron, steel, and tin-plated steel cans (“tin cans”). Non-ferrous metals are ejected by magnetic eddy currents in which a rotating magnetic field induces an electric current around the aluminium cans, which in turn creates a magnetic eddy current inside the cans. This magnetic eddy current is repulsed by a large magnetic field, and the cans are ejected from the rest of the recycled stream. Finally, glass must be sorted by hand based on its colour: brown, amber, green or clear.

Someone need to invent Wall-E...

IMPORTANCE

WHY IS RECYCLING IMPORTANT

There are many good reasons why we should recycle;

(i) Energy Saving

Conserving energy remains an important issue, especially with increased demand and unpredictable energy markets. Energy savings through recycling are an important environmental benefit. It almost always takes less energy to make a new product from recycled materials than it does to make it from new materials.

(ii) Reduces Gas Emissions

Energy conservation is the key ingredient in the fight against future effects of global warming. By minimizing the energy spent on industrial production, recycling also helps in reducing greenhouse gas emission. Some of the major fossil fuels used in most industries including coal, diesel, gasoline etc, emit harmful gasses such as methane, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide to the environment. By reducing the energy used, recycling also minimizes the amount of fuel usage which in turn reduces the amount of harmful pollutants.

(iii) Reduces Water and Air Pollution

Recycling reduces air and water pollution because the recycling process reduces the amount of air pollution produced by the power plants and the amount of water pollution produced by chemicals used in the manufacturing process. If we can reduce pollution levels from the manufacturing industry by a significant level, this could have a positive impact on our health.

(iv) Conserves Natural Resources

By using materials more than once, we conserve natural resources for future generations. Recycling reduces the need for raw materials thus preserving natural resources for the future. For example, recycling 14 trees worth of paper reduces air pollutants by 165, 142 tons, recycling paper saves trees and water and making a ton of paper from recycled stock saves up to 17 trees and uses 50% less water.

(v) Reduces Landfills

Land filling is the oldest and the crudest way of disposing waste. However, this method of waste disposal has severe negative impacts on the surrounding environment. Recycling reduces the amount of solid waste going into landfills, making each landfill last longer. It also reduces the amount of harmful chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions which are released from rubbish in landfill sites.

METHODS OF WASTE MANAGEMENT

METHODS

Historically, people disposed of their household garbage by burying or burning, but these methods became impractical, resulting in developments of other methods such as:-

(i) Landfill

It is a common practice in most countries and historically known as one of the oldest form of waste management. Landfills are not only used to bury disposed waster but also act as a temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material. For non hazardous waste landfills, three techniques are applied by which waste are:-

Ø Confined to as small an area as possible

Ø Compressed to reduce their volume

Ø Covered with layers of soil (daily)

A by product of this method is gas, mostly composed of methane and carbon dioxide; which resulted from the breakdown of organic waste anaerobically. This gas can create odour problems, kill vegetation, and is a greenhouse gas.

ii) Incineration

This is a disposal method in which solid waste are converted into residue and gaseous products. Incineration and other high temperature waste treatment systems are sometimes described as thermal treatment. Incinerators convert waste materials into heat, gas, steam and ash. Incineration however remains a controversial method of waste disposal, due to issues such as emission of gaseous pollutants. According to Wikipedia; incineration emits flue gas to the atmosphere which may contain significant amounts of particulate matter, heavy metals, dioxins, furans, sulphur dioxide and hydrochloric acid.

In a study carried out in 1994, Delaware Solid Waste Authority discovered, for the same amount of produced energy, incineration plants emitted fewer particles, hydrocarbons and less SO₂, HCl, CO and NO_x than coal-fired power plants, but more than natural gas-fired power plants. According to Germany's Ministry of the Environment, waste incinerators reduce the amount of some of the atmospheric pollutants by substituting power produced by coal-fired plants with power from waste-fired plants.

(iii)

Recycling (History)

The earliest record of recycling activities could be traced as far back as during the time of Plato in 400BC. During periods where natural resources were scarce, archaeological studies of ancient waste dumps shows less household waste, implying that more waste was being recycle in the absence of new raw materials. Recycling of household waste appears to have become more commonly practised since early 1990’s. Household wastes such as glass, paper, plastic, metal, textiles and even electronics are recyclable. However, reuse of biodegradable waste such as food or garden waste does not count as recycling.