Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future. It says, it
Speaker 1: feels just like I'm walking on broken glass. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren WelCom, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the three RS, but mainly recycling.
Speaker 1: That's of course, reducing, reusing and recycling. We were talking
Speaker 1: about the future of trash and is recycling part of
Speaker 1: that future and where does it play it's part and
Speaker 1: how important is it and does it make sense? Uh?
Speaker 1: And some of the answers are are might you know
Speaker 1: they might surprise you. Um, it's not even across the board.
Speaker 1: And also it's something that's constantly changing due to our
Speaker 1: improvements in the technology and processes. Let me guess it's
Speaker 1: for hippies. You shouldn't do it, according to and teller, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you should do is go out consuming. That doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. They had a they had a show. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I can actually say the title
Speaker 1: of the show was was the name? That was the
Speaker 1: name of the show? And um, and they had an
Speaker 1: episode on recycling in which Pen in particular came down
Speaker 1: very harshly on it. Yeah, well, I mean most of it.
Speaker 1: And there there are certain arguments you can make against
Speaker 1: recycling certain products. I think a lot of that again
Speaker 1: will change over time due to improvements in tech and processes.
Speaker 1: But to really, first of all, I mean, let's talk
Speaker 1: about what recycling is. Obviously, it's it's for those who
Speaker 1: just have never heard the term Welcome to Earth. Recycling is,
Speaker 1: of course taking material that you normally would just throw
Speaker 1: away and and uh and breaking it down to be
Speaker 1: reused in some form further down the line, whether it's
Speaker 1: to create more of the same product as what you
Speaker 1: were currently using or something entirely different. I think part
Speaker 1: of the key of understanding recycling is the idea that
Speaker 1: there's some reprocessing involved, right, that it's not just reusing,
Speaker 1: saying right, right, right, It's not taking a jar that
Speaker 1: you've used and putting something different in it, hopefully after
Speaker 1: you've washed it. Um that that would be reusing. By
Speaker 1: the way, if anyone comes over to my house for
Speaker 1: any sort of party or whatever, you're going to be
Speaker 1: drinking out of Mason jars, I'm not a hipster. It's
Speaker 1: not that I think that that's a cool thing. You're
Speaker 1: just Southern and that's what you have. I buy a
Speaker 1: lot of pickled vegetables, and then I think I want
Speaker 1: to keep using these jars, and so that's that's my
Speaker 1: glassware for the most part. I mean it just it is.
Speaker 1: I got to collect your urine for the apocalypse somehow,
Speaker 1: that's right. Well, I'll start on my urine later. I'm
Speaker 1: collecting other people's right now. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to convince people than I first expect,
Speaker 1: like biometric falsification, yeah, or just throwing at aliens just
Speaker 1: in case that happens to be their weakness. So recycling
Speaker 1: has been has it has been used actually for for
Speaker 1: for really for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Um,
Speaker 1: going going back to when people were making metal tools,
Speaker 1: realized I don't really like this one. Let's melt it
Speaker 1: down and make it again. Um, technically is recycling. Got
Speaker 1: that tool or sword or etcetera. Right, Right, So if
Speaker 1: you've if you folded in a thousand times and major
Speaker 1: katana for your end of Days duel against the Kurgan,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, or if you just were, I guess,
Speaker 1: if you were to beat your swords into plashhairs, right, recycling. So,
Speaker 1: but but really that's not you know, that's that's one
Speaker 1: form of recycling, but it's not really what we think
Speaker 1: of when we're talking recycling. It's not the industry level
Speaker 1: thing that we've got going on today. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a I mean, obviously there was a big push to
Speaker 1: recycling back in the thirties and forties, right right, well
Speaker 1: even even before that, around the turn of the century
Speaker 1: is is when a bunch of industries started getting together
Speaker 1: and um processing scraps. World War One was when this
Speaker 1: became much more important because because because materials became so
Speaker 1: scarce due to the global war efforts that uh, some
Speaker 1: companies began rendering garbage to recover grease and make make
Speaker 1: tankage out of the rest of it. Tankage being um
Speaker 1: uh non fat related proteins, usually from from animal parts
Speaker 1: that can be used for fertilizer um and uh. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, the through through the nineteen thirties, during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression here in America certainly, and hard economic times
Speaker 1: in many other places, conservation recycling became so important due
Speaker 1: to I mean a lot of people made most of
Speaker 1: their income by collecting items and selling them for scrap.
Speaker 1: And then you get to World War Two and there's
Speaker 1: more recycling efforts for the war effort. Again, Uh, you
Speaker 1: had fewer people to work on things because you had
Speaker 1: so much of the workforce sent off to war that
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't have as many people to actually
Speaker 1: get the raw materials you usually would need to produce.
Speaker 1: And in wartime production is a big part of it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean everything from the stuff you would think of
Speaker 1: like vehicles and weapons and ammunition that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Two things that you might not necessarily imagine, just to
Speaker 1: keep everyone who's still, you know, away from the fighting
Speaker 1: supplied with the stuff that they need. Boots did you
Speaker 1: need to make in World War two? Lots? Yeah, rubber
Speaker 1: and UH and nylon items that were made that were
Speaker 1: used at the time to make lots of common clothing
Speaker 1: items wound up being used in Uh. Nylon was used
Speaker 1: for parachutes for the war effort, and UH, and of
Speaker 1: course rubber for tires and yeah. Actually, the fact that
Speaker 1: they switched from like DuPont was making nylon stockings, they
Speaker 1: stopped making nylon stockings in order to make materials for
Speaker 1: the war effort, and apparently that caused a bunch of
Speaker 1: um well they were called nylon riots when when DuPont
Speaker 1: went back to creating nylon stockings, there was apparently a
Speaker 1: run on stores because I rum didn't mean to make
Speaker 1: a run joke. Boy, that was a pun. That was
Speaker 1: complete puns. We're so yeah, that was that again, And
Speaker 1: that was sort of changing gears for production. But it
Speaker 1: also meant that repurposing this material for something else. Repurposing
Speaker 1: and recycling was so big during the wars. It was
Speaker 1: more far reaching than than most people today really realize. UM.
Speaker 1: For for example, during the UH during the Victorian era,
Speaker 1: fancy cemeteries, UM every cemetery plot would have these gorgeous
Speaker 1: wrought iron fencings around them. And during the Two World Wars,
Speaker 1: you won't find those today basically anywhere because all of
Speaker 1: them were melted down during the wars. And so you
Speaker 1: know it's its People would picnic there. It was very nice,
Speaker 1: you know, cemetery, that's what you do. Yeah, sure, but
Speaker 1: doing yere in Atlanta to Oakland Cemetery does it all
Speaker 1: the time. That is where I learned about this. By
Speaker 1: the way, visit Oakland there you go. Also, so you
Speaker 1: get up to like the nineteen seventies, that's really when
Speaker 1: we got into the environmentalism movement. So recycling up until
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies was more about conserving resources for use
Speaker 1: for particular efforts, like the World War effort. When you
Speaker 1: say resources, you mean the raw materials themselves, like the
Speaker 1: thing that's being reprocessed. Right, it was. It was recycling
Speaker 1: because in order for us to meet our needs to
Speaker 1: do them. Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't you know. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a save the environment kind of thing. It was
Speaker 1: we need more X. The best way to do it
Speaker 1: is to pull up a bunch of Y, melt it
Speaker 1: down and turn them into X. Right. Right. And in fact,
Speaker 1: immediately after the war, especially here in the States, we
Speaker 1: went through that economic boom where people were very um
Speaker 1: conspicuously consuming, and it became argue, we're still there, are
Speaker 1: more conspicuous than others, especially at the time, by pair
Speaker 1: of glasses buying new stuff. Jonathan just got his Google glass.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting, um or our Google glass. It's all
Speaker 1: of ours, you can share, come on over. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until the first Earth Day in nine seventy
Speaker 1: and um in three was when the first curb side
Speaker 1: recycling program got off the ground here in the States.
Speaker 1: Um and and then through through the nineties, I think
Speaker 1: is when it started really picking up, you know, due
Speaker 1: to a Captain, Planet and Gully. Tim Curry played the
Speaker 1: bad guy in that he did you know? I laughed?
Speaker 1: But Captain and Planet made an impression on me, did he?
Speaker 1: I think? So? Were you? Were you a planet tier?
Speaker 1: I guess you know, I never got a ring. But see,
Speaker 1: for me, it's always I just go back to the
Speaker 1: image of the Native American with the one tear going
Speaker 1: down the cheek to avoid littering. That's that's where my
Speaker 1: environmentalism comes from. Isn't it funny All these issues kind
Speaker 1: of get blurred together, like waste waste management, littering, landfills, recycling.
Speaker 1: But it'll be worth us talking about exactly what the
Speaker 1: real benefits of recycling are. Well, first I kind of curious,
Speaker 1: like how does it happen? Like how does recycling work? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So there are um okay, well let's start
Speaker 1: at your house. I guess. Okay, so you've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of recyclables and they'll be say glass bottles and uh,
Speaker 1: plastic containers, paper products like cardboard and newspaper, and cans,
Speaker 1: aluminum cans, steel cans, tin um. And you want to
Speaker 1: get all this stuff recycled, Well there are two. There's
Speaker 1: a big distinction you want to make right at the beginning,
Speaker 1: which is sorted versus unsorted um, And different municipalities I
Speaker 1: think will deal with that in different ways. Like some
Speaker 1: people require sorted, and that makes sense because it's much
Speaker 1: easier to process when the recycling a drives pre sorted
Speaker 1: to the processing facility. But what I've read is that
Speaker 1: that also lowers participation because you're putting the burden on
Speaker 1: the person and for some people that's just too much trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't they don't want to go through the effort
Speaker 1: of sorting through the stuff that they want to recycle
Speaker 1: and put it into one of five different bins or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: So it also just makes it it makes it less
Speaker 1: convenient for the person. And the sad fact is is
Speaker 1: the more inconvenient it is, the lower the participation is
Speaker 1: going to be. Yeah, So these facilities get more materials
Speaker 1: overall if they allow mixed mixed mixed materials material Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then that makes it more difficult to actually to
Speaker 1: actually recycle the stuff, right, and they sort it. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: we're getting a lot better at that. Um. So, the
Speaker 1: so you put you take these mixed materials and you
Speaker 1: have say curb curbside pickup, so a tryan spur truck
Speaker 1: comes along along a route and and picks up all
Speaker 1: the materials and takes them to a place called materials
Speaker 1: recovery facility. And from there you essentially put all your
Speaker 1: materials on a conveyor belt and from here. It's not
Speaker 1: the same at every facility. Um But so I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna give kind of a standard view of some things
Speaker 1: I've seen. Um One thing that's going to vary between
Speaker 1: all these facilities is the level of automation versus manual sorting.
Speaker 1: Um So, more advanced facilities have fewer human workers working
Speaker 1: to take these things out and have better processes for
Speaker 1: sorting automatically. But so, usually the first thing will happen
Speaker 1: is there's some kind of initial purge where obvious trash
Speaker 1: is removed because you know, what, do you know, people
Speaker 1: put pizza in their recycling and stuff that they can't take.
Speaker 1: Um So you try to remove that at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and then usually after that, one of the first things
Speaker 1: they want to do is remove glass, because glass is
Speaker 1: kind of a different animal than most of these other
Speaker 1: things we recycle, and so glass will be moving along
Speaker 1: conveyor belt, and if it's not removed manually, it can
Speaker 1: be removed automatically by like a raking mechanism that separates
Speaker 1: based on weight and shape, or there can be gravity sorting,
Speaker 1: so that there's a conveyor belt moving sort of upward
Speaker 1: at an angle with enough friction to carry up plastic
Speaker 1: and paper products, right, but glass rolls down off of it.
Speaker 1: And so once the glass is separated, that's usually crushed
Speaker 1: up into a constituency of shards called cullet, and that
Speaker 1: that can be used for all kinds of different things.
Speaker 1: But most of the rest of the products apart from glass,
Speaker 1: eventually what the goal is to bail them, like hey, um,
Speaker 1: And so after glass is removed, they'll usually sort out
Speaker 1: paper products and they can do that by mechanical action
Speaker 1: or by hand. Um. And you separate those out and
Speaker 1: take them to a fiber bailer and bail them up together. Uh.
Speaker 1: Steel cans are often separated by magnets and that's interested.
Speaker 1: The UH conveyor belt will just pass under a very
Speaker 1: powerful magnet just sucks them straight up. But then you've
Speaker 1: got a problem that you've got all these aluminum cans
Speaker 1: and these other alloys that aren't their non ferrest materials,
Speaker 1: so they're not attracted to magnets. So one of the
Speaker 1: popular ways of dealing with that these days is you
Speaker 1: have something called an eddy current separator, and that's this
Speaker 1: powerful magnetic rotor that generates a field that blasts non
Speaker 1: ferrost metals off in some direction. It creates a separate
Speaker 1: magnetic field within the can itself, and UH and and
Speaker 1: and that magnetic field will be at at odds with
Speaker 1: with the field being generated by the device. We'll just
Speaker 1: pop it right off the belt. Interesting, so you've got
Speaker 1: so say you've separated everything else by now, and you've
Speaker 1: got non ferros metals, and you've got plastic and they're
Speaker 1: rolling along. The plastic will just sit there. But when
Speaker 1: the the aluminum cans pass over this thing, they shoot, shoot,
Speaker 1: you know, fly away, I guess into a big basket
Speaker 1: or whatever you use, take them to the bailor smash
Speaker 1: them down into a cube. Um, those will be ready
Speaker 1: and then finally, usually you're gonna have plastic, and that's
Speaker 1: sort of according to type. So you've probably seen like
Speaker 1: number one plastic, number two plastics, like type two plastics
Speaker 1: like milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs, that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And those things are separated into different groups for ease
Speaker 1: of reprocessing um and uh. And that can be done
Speaker 1: by hand or automatically by things like they're sort of
Speaker 1: optical field separators. So they shoot out some beam of
Speaker 1: light that penetrates a different plastics in different ways and
Speaker 1: use a sensor to to figure out what bits uh
Speaker 1: exactly which. Yeah, as it passes over like a like
Speaker 1: a gap in the conveyor um or or something like that,
Speaker 1: it will use air jets to to to shoot out
Speaker 1: the ones that it wants to. Yeah. So then at
Speaker 1: the end, and so you got your plastic leftover and
Speaker 1: smash that into bales, and then at the end, your
Speaker 1: final product is you've got glass color, bales of plastic,
Speaker 1: bales of paper products, bales of aluminum, bales of steel
Speaker 1: um and all of these things are then sold to
Speaker 1: manufacturers or I guess really whoever wants them, and you
Speaker 1: can buy recycled materials and just go pay for a
Speaker 1: bale of steel. Yeah, and in fact, um, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the stuff that can be made from
Speaker 1: recycled materials. Now, there's some stuff that you know, is
Speaker 1: you've probably heard of things like you know, made tires
Speaker 1: made out of recycled materials, even pavement made from recycled materials. Uh.
Speaker 1: Typically a lot of the stuff ends up making more
Speaker 1: of whatever it was before. So, for example, a lot
Speaker 1: of paper, recycled paper ends up going into things like
Speaker 1: paper plates, napkins, paper towels, uh, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So a lot of that reclaimed paper just becomes more
Speaker 1: paper products. Same thing with aluminium, a lot of like
Speaker 1: you know, the odds of an aluminium can becoming something
Speaker 1: like a car frame are low. It can happen. There
Speaker 1: are manufacturers out there that will use recycled aluminum as
Speaker 1: part of their materials for designing this stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: far more likely that the aluminium can you tossing the
Speaker 1: recycling is going to become a new aluminium can. Glass
Speaker 1: some glass depending. Glass is tricky because glass comes in
Speaker 1: a lot of different kinds as well, Like you can
Speaker 1: have glass that's and colors or you can have clear
Speaker 1: glass that can change things up. Often glass will get
Speaker 1: down cycled. Now, down cycle means that you convert this
Speaker 1: into material that is slightly less valuable than what the
Speaker 1: raw material was or what the original product was. So,
Speaker 1: for example, a glass jar, you might throw that out
Speaker 1: in in recycling or whatever, and it gets re cycled
Speaker 1: as part of uh something that's made out of fiberglass,
Speaker 1: and by weight, it's less valuable. That's why we call
Speaker 1: it down cycling, because it's moved down a level. Um,
Speaker 1: So that will uh, that's fairly common to for a
Speaker 1: glass to go into things like fiberglass. But then there's
Speaker 1: some kind of cool stuff. I'm going to mention some
Speaker 1: specific companies too, just for some sort of nifty products
Speaker 1: that are made of recycled materials. For example, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a group called Keens Harvest Bags. They make like messenger bags, okay,
Speaker 1: but they make them out of recycled air bags from cars.
Speaker 1: Are actually really cool. Uh, you know, they just kind
Speaker 1: of a nifty way of reusing this material that otherwise
Speaker 1: might not ever be used. There's violence, what's that I
Speaker 1: just imagined getting a messenger bag that had like blood
Speaker 1: or I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen. I think that
Speaker 1: might be bad press for the company. Um, I appalled
Speaker 1: gized to Keene's harvest bill. No, I'm not that would happen.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, it's just the first know, I'm
Speaker 1: right there with you. U. There's vinyl luxe. Vinyl Luxe
Speaker 1: uses uh something that has beloved to me old vinyl records.
Speaker 1: So some old vinyl records are beyond the uh they've
Speaker 1: just they've passed their prime right there. There might be scratches,
Speaker 1: there might be some sort of warping, and anyway, it
Speaker 1: makes the music less than or whatever was recorded on
Speaker 1: them less than interesting or pleasurable to listen to. And
Speaker 1: so what vinyl X does is it takes old vinyl
Speaker 1: records that are you know, kind of messed up and
Speaker 1: then creates things like bowls or clocks, uh, ornaments and
Speaker 1: other stuff and uh, anything that they don't use, like
Speaker 1: any scraps that are left over from their their projects
Speaker 1: gets sent to a plant in Nashville actually, and all
Speaker 1: of that those scraps are melted down to create new
Speaker 1: vinyl records, to help to be the material for new
Speaker 1: vinyl records, so nothing gets wasted There is another company
Speaker 1: called Looped Works, and they have used recycled neoprene, nylon,
Speaker 1: vinyl polyester leather to create all sorts of different products,
Speaker 1: like like electronics covers, like a cover case for you know,
Speaker 1: a tablet or something. Uh, some really cool designs coming
Speaker 1: out of them. And then there's a company called Moving
Speaker 1: Comfort like this one a lot. They remove chemicals from
Speaker 1: coffee grounds and turn it into yarn and then we've
Speaker 1: cloth out of this stuffy fibrous shirts. It's actually the
Speaker 1: chemicals from coffee grounds. So they're making a synthetic yarn
Speaker 1: from various chemicals they extract from coffee grounds and they
Speaker 1: turn that into yarn and they use that to make clothing.
Speaker 1: So companies called Moving Comfort, you can look them up.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool stuff. It's pretty pretty Eight. There's a there's
Speaker 1: recycled Bikes, which is out of here's a here's a shocker.
Speaker 1: I know you guys are gonna be amazed when you
Speaker 1: hear this. Portland, Oregon Recycled Bikes which make bikes out
Speaker 1: of recycled aluminum um. Their seats are made out of
Speaker 1: renewable cork. Uh right now. They also are belt driven bikes,
Speaker 1: not chain driven because they said that the belt driven
Speaker 1: ones are easier to maintain. Um. They say that their
Speaker 1: goal is one day to have a recycled materials bike.
Speaker 1: Right now it's not quite there, but that's their goal,
Speaker 1: is to to just make bikes that are completely made
Speaker 1: out of recycled materials. Up in Vancouver, the city is
Speaker 1: experimenting on creating new types of pavement that is made
Speaker 1: up of wax partially from recycled plastic. So they're taking
Speaker 1: this plastic in and they're processing it into this wax
Speaker 1: to go into new pavement production, which is kind of
Speaker 1: neat um. So, yeah, that's just some examples. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there are tons of different examples of ways to
Speaker 1: use recycled materials. Uh. And you know what new products
Speaker 1: you can make from recycled materials. So let's kind of
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some statistics like what is
Speaker 1: actually getting recycled and how much is being recycled. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: we're going to be citing some factors from a report
Speaker 1: done by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is which is
Speaker 1: here in the United States, and we should also mention
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of the stuff we're talking about is
Speaker 1: very US centric because that's where we are located. There
Speaker 1: are obviously lots of different recycling companies and facilities around
Speaker 1: the entire world, but we we are focusing mainly on
Speaker 1: the US because that's really where we can get the
Speaker 1: most recent information, uh, the in a very easy way
Speaker 1: since we happen to live here, it makes it pretty convenient.
Speaker 1: But the report we're looking at is citing statistics from
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, which was the most recent information that
Speaker 1: we could find. And according to that report, of all
Speaker 1: UH newspaper slash mechanical papers were recovered meaning recycled, fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of yard trimmings were recovered. Thirty of metals
Speaker 1: were were recycled. Uh so you know, you see that
Speaker 1: this number is going down. Glass there was even less
Speaker 1: um and and plastic is a little weird too. But
Speaker 1: by recycling the metals, there was actually seven point five
Speaker 1: million tons of metal recycled in two thousand eleven. According
Speaker 1: to the e p A, we eliminated twenty million tons
Speaker 1: of greenhouse gas emissions, which totals more than twenty metric
Speaker 1: tons of carbon dioxide. And again according to them, they
Speaker 1: say that that's about equivalent to removing four million cars
Speaker 1: from the road. For an entire year. So, I mean
Speaker 1: this is showing that there can be a real impact
Speaker 1: these programs. If you participate, you can actually really help
Speaker 1: to reduce in greenhouse gasses because the amount of energy
Speaker 1: needed to go into recycling some of these materials, not
Speaker 1: all of them, but some of them is so much
Speaker 1: less than what it would take for you to create
Speaker 1: a new product from raw virgin material that you are
Speaker 1: saving quite a bit of energy and as a result,
Speaker 1: emitting fewer carbon carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. UM.
Speaker 1: So you're doing lots of good work all along the way.
Speaker 1: But that's that's kind of like the basic lowdown on recycling.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a big deal. It's very
Speaker 1: much down to individual participation as well as community participation. Clearly,
Speaker 1: if you live someplace that doesn't have a recycling program,
Speaker 1: it makes it much more difficult to be part of this. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: the I think that report said that that overall, UM
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, Americans generated about two and fifty
Speaker 1: million tons of trash, and UM recycled about thirty four
Speaker 1: point seven percent of that. Yeah. Yeah, out of all
Speaker 1: of the trash that was generated. Uh, usually we were
Speaker 1: referred to it as a municipal solid waste or msw uh,
Speaker 1: and it's a very it kind of excludes other types
Speaker 1: of of trash, things like industrial waste or construction waste
Speaker 1: that's toxic waste, this sewage. Yeah, these are not included
Speaker 1: in municipal solids, the kind of stuff that you would
Speaker 1: see ending up in a typical landfill. And I think
Speaker 1: that especially in Europe, a lot of other places do
Speaker 1: a little bit better than that. But but but again,
Speaker 1: like Jonathan said, it really depends on the resources here
Speaker 1: in the States, in your specific community. Of course, it
Speaker 1: matters vastly by region and what what kind of what
Speaker 1: kind of plants, what kind of processing plants you have,
Speaker 1: and whether or not people find it um I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, fortunately or unfortunately it's it's monetarily based a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. Well, you know how how worth
Speaker 1: it is? Right, if it's cheaper to throw something in
Speaker 1: a landfill than it is to recycle it, or if
Speaker 1: it's cheaper to build new products out virgin material than
Speaker 1: it is to take old material and repurpose it to
Speaker 1: make this stuff, then from an economic standpoint, you can
Speaker 1: see why people, companies, organizations pick the landfill option because
Speaker 1: it means that they save money in the long run. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of us, especially for those of us who
Speaker 1: feel very environmentally conscious, kind of cringe at that the
Speaker 1: idea that somehow money can dictate this when you know,
Speaker 1: you might say, but in the long run, it's much
Speaker 1: much better for us to do this. That's easy to say.
Speaker 1: But if if you have to have money to create
Speaker 1: these systems so that everything works, it's hard. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't just you can't just wave it away. I mean
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to put forth that investment.
Speaker 1: And either that means you know, uh, starting up a
Speaker 1: private company and trying to make recycling work for you
Speaker 1: as a business. Uh. And we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in kind of a waste disposal podcast that we'll be
Speaker 1: doing a little bit later. Or you know, you have
Speaker 1: to be a government that's willing to go to the
Speaker 1: citizens and say, you're telling us, you want us to
Speaker 1: deal with this this problem. We can do that, but
Speaker 1: it's going to require this much money. So that means
Speaker 1: we're going to have to either raise taxes or repurpose
Speaker 1: money for meant for other products projects or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the sad fact of it is that economics are
Speaker 1: going to play a role, and it really depends from
Speaker 1: from item to item. Um. That's true. Yeah, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. You know, I think that that's a
Speaker 1: good way of finishing this up. But before we do,
Speaker 1: I want to mention one other thing about recycling, one
Speaker 1: other type of recycling, which is e waste, electronic waste,
Speaker 1: things like computers, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, all this stuff
Speaker 1: that we use, these electronics that we use. You know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of uh encouraged to go through these things
Speaker 1: at a rate that is pretty steep steep. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: so are you saying we shouldn't just throw an old
Speaker 1: computer in the dumpster? I'm getting there. I will, I
Speaker 1: will say that. I will say that, But I was
Speaker 1: going to say at first that, you know, we we
Speaker 1: here in the United States in particular, we live in
Speaker 1: a society where we are encouraged to update our electronics
Speaker 1: on a frantic basis. For instance, if you are an
Speaker 1: iPhone user, and you know, if you're an iPhone user,
Speaker 1: then essentially once a year, you're showing off the brand
Speaker 1: new version of the iPhone that is clearly superior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is designed to get you to buy iPhones,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. That's the business, right, So I mean,
Speaker 1: but you know, if, especially in the US, the way
Speaker 1: that the contract system works for our phones, often those
Speaker 1: contracts lock you in for two years. So you've got
Speaker 1: this this level of consumer frustration where I want the
Speaker 1: new iPhone, but I'm locked into this contract. I'll just
Speaker 1: pay to get out of it, or whatever it's. It's
Speaker 1: it feels like you are obligated to upgrade on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. I don't mean to pick on Apple. If
Speaker 1: you're an Android user, that's more like every couple of months,
Speaker 1: because there's a new Android phone coming from various manufact
Speaker 1: acturers every few months that is obviously better than the
Speaker 1: one you bought last week. And there's that old joke
Speaker 1: about computers that by the time you get at home,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely obsolutely yeah exactly, which really isn't that much
Speaker 1: of a joke. It's pretty true. So we've got so
Speaker 1: let's let's say that even if you are being as
Speaker 1: responsible as possible, where you are not buying the newest
Speaker 1: electronic device every time it comes out, eventually you're going
Speaker 1: to get to a point where you're going to need
Speaker 1: to get rid of some of your electronics. Either they
Speaker 1: stop working or you've replaced them with something else and
Speaker 1: you need to remove it from your life. Created an
Speaker 1: entire wall of dead computers just for example. I'm not
Speaker 1: that I know anyone. I've got a corner of the
Speaker 1: garage that is the monitor graveyard. Yeah, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about monitors. I'm not talking about displays. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: those huge monitors. But yeah, so eventually gonna need to
Speaker 1: get rid of some of these electronics, right, So what
Speaker 1: do you do, well, Joe, like you were saying, you
Speaker 1: don't want to throw them in the trash out. A
Speaker 1: lot of these electronics have some pretty nasty stuff in them,
Speaker 1: some toxic materials. I mean things like lead, which is
Speaker 1: obviously toxic. Yeah, not not not the music, but like mercury,
Speaker 1: which is toxic, berylli um, cadmium, other things from the
Speaker 1: Table of Elements song that Daniel Radcliffe can sing for
Speaker 1: some reason anyway, Uh yeah, this is this is dangerous
Speaker 1: stuff and if you threw it away, there's a chance,
Speaker 1: depending upon where you live, there's a chance that could
Speaker 1: end up going to an incinerator. There aren't that many
Speaker 1: in the United States but in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: incinerators are big business, and it would release this stuff
Speaker 1: in and you would have to deal with it then,
Speaker 1: because if it went out into the environment, it could
Speaker 1: cause some real health hazards. In fact, in China that's
Speaker 1: a huge problem because there are some major uh E
Speaker 1: waste reclamation centers in China, and reclamation by that, I
Speaker 1: mean they're trying to get anything useful out of these
Speaker 1: uh these electronic devices that they can, and then they
Speaker 1: burn everything else and it tends to release lots of
Speaker 1: toxic materials that can go on to create severe health
Speaker 1: hazards and a really negative environmental impact in the surrounding area.
Speaker 1: So E waste is one of those things that needs
Speaker 1: to be handled very carefully. There are actually quite a
Speaker 1: few programs out there that allow you to donate your
Speaker 1: device so that can then be refurbished and sold again.
Speaker 1: So that means it extends the lifetime of that device
Speaker 1: and give someone else who wants it that opportunity to
Speaker 1: own it. Now. In that case, one thing I would
Speaker 1: stress to everybody is if it's any sort of device
Speaker 1: that contains personal information, you want to make certain that
Speaker 1: you wipe all that personal information off before you donate it.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of organizations out there that will
Speaker 1: do this, or at least they say that they do that,
Speaker 1: that that's one of their their standards operating juice. It's
Speaker 1: obviously an important part. Personally, I would never hand over
Speaker 1: anything unless I was relatively certain that I had wiped
Speaker 1: it clean. Uh. Just as an aside, I bought my
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty refurbished and it had the the gamer
Speaker 1: tag information of the previous owner still on there because
Speaker 1: he or she had never bothered to wipe that from
Speaker 1: the Xbox. Uh. Not to say that I would necessarily
Speaker 1: have done anything about that, like logged in as that
Speaker 1: person and done something nefarious. But if I had been
Speaker 1: someone else, maybe I would have. I'm not that kind
Speaker 1: of guy. So what I did was the first thing
Speaker 1: I did, was I wiped it clean so that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have any of that access to that person's account
Speaker 1: at all. Reformatting the driver is the really important thing
Speaker 1: to do there because a lot of the especially um services,
Speaker 1: like if you have Netflix or something on your Xbox,
Speaker 1: will retain your information for a shocking period of time
Speaker 1: after you've contacted the company about your stolen Xbox to
Speaker 1: tell them to take down that bit from any previous machines. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so just word of warning, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: do some research. If you're going to donate some of
Speaker 1: your or or if you want to recycle some of
Speaker 1: your electronics, do some research out there and make sure
Speaker 1: that whatever outlet you're going to use as a reputable one. Um,
Speaker 1: that's always a good thing. They're they're more and more
Speaker 1: of those rising up because people are trying to be
Speaker 1: more responsible with this sort of approach, which is that's admirable.
Speaker 1: Just make sure that you know the one that you're
Speaker 1: going to go with is in fact a responsible organization.
Speaker 1: So now let's get into this whole idea about does
Speaker 1: recycling makes sense? Does it make sense from an economic
Speaker 1: standpoint and an environmental standpoint? And the reason why we
Speaker 1: even have this question is because there are certain materials
Speaker 1: where you could possibly make an argument that it really
Speaker 1: doesn't make a whole lot of sense to recycle. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we should be using it like crazy
Speaker 1: and throwing it out the window, but rather that there
Speaker 1: may be other alternatives to recycling that we should consider. So,
Speaker 1: for example, uh, one thing that does make perfect sense
Speaker 1: to recycle is aluminum is incredibly efficient form of recycling.
Speaker 1: There's very little processing that you need to make uh
Speaker 1: some aluminium reusable. Uh yeah, recycling I can, I think
Speaker 1: saves of the energy it would have required to make
Speaker 1: a new one. Right, it only takes five percent of
Speaker 1: that energy you would take. Like if you were to
Speaker 1: take the virgin material and then turn that into an
Speaker 1: aluminium can, and then you were to recycle an old
Speaker 1: aluminum can into aluminium can, the recycle can would take
Speaker 1: only five percent of the energy that you needed to
Speaker 1: make the brand new can. So clearly they're recycling makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense as long as you have a way of
Speaker 1: sorting the the the trash, the recyclables in such a
Speaker 1: way that you can get at that aluminium. It makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense that sorting might be what holds you up,
Speaker 1: depending upon what technology you're using. By uh, if you're
Speaker 1: using pre sorted recyclables, then it's a no brainer. Plastics
Speaker 1: a little tricky. It does only require one tenth of
Speaker 1: the energy to recycle plastic than it would to produce
Speaker 1: plastic from new material that you raw material that you've
Speaker 1: just managed to get. But again sorting is the big
Speaker 1: problem there and sorting between plastics can be such a
Speaker 1: huge issue that some recycling facilities will end up sending
Speaker 1: much or even all of the plastics they received to
Speaker 1: a landfill. So even though you are putting your stuff
Speaker 1: in a recycling bin and a recycling truck is picking
Speaker 1: it up, it doesn't necessarily mean that that is going
Speaker 1: to be recycled. Some of that or maybe even all
Speaker 1: of it might end up in a landfill, depending upon
Speaker 1: where you are. Now, don't hear this and say well,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't recycle plastic anymore. I mean, your local facility
Speaker 1: maybe doing well, but and especially with that with that
Speaker 1: technology that I was talking about, the optical sorting, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that it's made that process a lot more efficient. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's not that you shouldn't bother recycling. Maybe that your
Speaker 1: facility is lagging behind the others, but I hope that
Speaker 1: most of them are working toward improving those those processes
Speaker 1: so that they can recapture more of the plastic. It
Speaker 1: it makes sense, uh, financially, you know, economically as well
Speaker 1: as environmentally. It's just for some facilities they have to
Speaker 1: catch up a little more than others, and so um,
Speaker 1: it's important to continue to recycle even with plastic. But
Speaker 1: just know that we're you know, the level of sophistication
Speaker 1: technologically speaking, when we get to sorting is not so
Speaker 1: widespread as to be infallible by any means. Uh, paper,
Speaker 1: about six the energy you would need to make a
Speaker 1: new piece of paper from raw materials is what is
Speaker 1: what you would need to make a piece of paper
Speaker 1: from recycled materials, So a little over half the amount
Speaker 1: of energy you would normally need. So, as you see,
Speaker 1: we're moving further away from that that five percent that
Speaker 1: aluminum has and now with paper it's more like six. However,
Speaker 1: paper is a lot easier to sort, So it turns
Speaker 1: out that you know, a lot of paper tends to
Speaker 1: get recycled. And if you recycle about let's see, I
Speaker 1: think a ton of paper ends up being about seventeen trees.
Speaker 1: So if you think about that, you know you're you're
Speaker 1: actually saving forests from getting cut down because you're reducing
Speaker 1: the need for new paper. And and furthermore, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, trees are renewable resource, but um but those
Speaker 1: old growth forests, um that that really provide a better
Speaker 1: environmental habitat are frequently torn down. For for pulp wood trees,
Speaker 1: which grow much more quickly and are much more useful
Speaker 1: for the creation of paper. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: not really, it's not really the ecological equivalent, right, And
Speaker 1: that that kind of brings us up to glass, which
Speaker 1: is a problem child really Uh so glass, glass is
Speaker 1: not made from a precious material. Essentially made from sand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: take sand, apply heat, you eventually get glass. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that, but not by a
Speaker 1: whole lot. And it's basically quartz, right, Well, it's silicate silicon,
Speaker 1: you know, it's and and it's a bunch of stuff. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Okay, I was just guessing. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's talcum powder, right. Yeah. So recycling glass only saves
Speaker 1: about thirty percent of the energy that you would need
Speaker 1: to create a new piece of glass from raw material.
Speaker 1: So it's you're not saving that much more energy by
Speaker 1: recycling than you would be by producing something new. The
Speaker 1: raw material itself is not a precious material. It's not
Speaker 1: something that's incredibly valuable on its own. It's not like
Speaker 1: taking more sand is really affecting the vironment in a
Speaker 1: terrible way. So there are a lot of reasons why
Speaker 1: recycling is it makes less sense with glass. It's not
Speaker 1: that it's ineffective. It's not that you shouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: it's that it's just not from an economic and environmental
Speaker 1: standpoint as important. What I would suggest is instead of recycling,
Speaker 1: you reuse, just like I do with my Mason jars
Speaker 1: that you'll be drinking out of if you come visit
Speaker 1: me in my house, assuming I offer you something to drink.
Speaker 1: Who knows, I'm not the most hospitable guy. Um say
Speaker 1: that's if you if you have bread and salt, you
Speaker 1: know you're safe. If not, it's a nice day for
Speaker 1: a red wedding, all right. So yeah, so recycling glass
Speaker 1: maybe not as as big a deal comparatively speaking, but
Speaker 1: reusing is very important. Um. If you if you are
Speaker 1: able to reuse, that's the best thing to do. If not,
Speaker 1: recycling is perfectly line. It's not like it's bad. It's
Speaker 1: just not as efficient as some of the other materials.
Speaker 1: And I mean, eventually I'm going to reach a point
Speaker 1: where I don't need more Mason jars because I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna have four and fifty people in my house. And
Speaker 1: while making forts of it is fun, it's also really
Speaker 1: dangerous with the Jack Russell in the house. So I
Speaker 1: will eventually be recycling Mason jars as opposed to reusing
Speaker 1: them over and over again. But uh uh that's that's
Speaker 1: really you know, the end story there and and again
Speaker 1: recycling for all of these materials is just going to
Speaker 1: improve over time as uh it becomes more economically feasible. Uh.
Speaker 1: In our next podcast, we'll be talking about waste disposal
Speaker 1: in general, and we'll talk about the economics of that
Speaker 1: and how just throwing stuff away costs money. It's not
Speaker 1: like throwing something away is free. It's actually there is
Speaker 1: an expense to it. And if recycling ends up being
Speaker 1: economically more uh advantageous and just throwing it into a landfill,
Speaker 1: you can bet that that will take off, and that
Speaker 1: means the technologies will improve that much more quickly and
Speaker 1: the environment, the environmental factors will improve as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's again depending upon your point of view, and maybe
Speaker 1: a little sad to say, this is all kind of
Speaker 1: dictated ultimately by a price tag, but that's kind of
Speaker 1: the world we live in until we reach that Star
Speaker 1: Trek future where we don't need cash anymore, in which
Speaker 1: case we'll be replicating everything we need anyway and using
Speaker 1: cold fusion to power all of our everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we'll create some sort of what was it? It
Speaker 1: was a cold fusion bomb and the first Star Trek,
Speaker 1: wasn't it the reboot that was? Yeah, I don't understand
Speaker 1: how that works. I'll get on that, I'll get on
Speaker 1: the I'll get on the communicator with Spock and we'll
Speaker 1: find out anything else about recycling. Guys, that's what I got.
Speaker 1: All right. That was an emphatic note from Joe. So
Speaker 1: with that in mind, we're going to wrap this up. Guys.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us and let us know what you
Speaker 1: would like to hear on future episodes of Forward Thinking.
Speaker 1: Our email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com.
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