Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

Second, recovering individual plastic resins doesnot yield much material because only small amountsof any given resin are used per product. Third, the priceof oil used to produce petrochemicals for making plasticresins is so low that the cost of virgin plastic resins ismuch lower than that of recycled resins. An exceptionis PET (polyethylene terephthalate), used mostly inplastic drink bottles. It can be melted and remanufacturedinto products such as fleece, clothing, carpet, andnonfood packaging. However, the PET collected for recyclingmust not have other plastics mixed with it. Forexample, a single PVC (polyvinyl chloride) bottle in atruckload of PET can render it useless for recycling.Thus, mandating that plastic products contain acertain amount of recycled plastic resins is unlikely towork. It could also hinder the use of recycled plasticsin reducing the resource content and weight of manywidely used items such as plastic bags and bottles.Cargill Dow, a joint venture by a giant agriculturalcompany (Cargill) and a chemical company (Dow), ismanufacturing biodegradable and recyclable plasticcontainers made from a polymer called polyactide(ACT) made from the sugar in corn syrup. Instead of beingsent to landfills, containers made from this bio-plasticcould be composted to produce a soil conditioner.Toyota, the world’s No. 2 automaker is investing$38 billion in a process that makes plastics from plants.By 2020, it expects to control two-thirds of the world’ssupply of such bioplastics.Does Recycling Make Economic Sense? Yesfor Many MaterialsRecycling materials such as paper and metalshas important economic and environmentalbenefits.Whether recycling makes monetary sense depends onhow you look at the economic and environmental benefitsand costs of recycling. Critics say recycling doesnot make sense if it costs more to recycle materialsthan to send them to a landfill or incinerator. They alsopoint out that recycling is often not needed to savelandfill space because many areas are not running outof space.Critics concede that recycling may make economicsense for valuable and easy-to-recycle materials (suchas aluminum, paper, and steel), but not for cheap orplentiful resources such as glass from silica and mostplastics that are expensive to recycle.Critics of recycling also argue that it should payfor itself. But proponents of recycling point out thatconventional garbage disposal systems are paid formostly by charges to households and businesses. Sowhy should recycling be held to a different standardand forced to compete on an uneven playing field?Proponents also point out that the primary benefitof recycling is not reducing the use of landfills and incineratorsbut the other important benefits it providesfor people and the environment (Figure 24-8). Theypoint to studies showing that the net economic, health,and environmental benefits of recycling far outweighthe costs. Also, they remind us that the recycling industryis an important part of the U.S. economy. It employsabout 1.1 million people and its annual incomeis much larger than both the mining and the wastemanagement industries together.Cities that make money by recycling and havehigher recycling rates tend to use a single-pickup systemfor materials to be recycled and garbage that cannot berecycled instead of a more expensive dual-pickup system.In single-pickup systems, dealing with recyclablescosts about half as much per metric ton as disposingthe same amount of waste in most modernlandfills.Successful systems also tend to use a pay-as-youthrowsystem. San Francisco, California, uses such asystem to recycle almost half of its MSW.xHOW WOULD YOU VOTE? Do the advantages of recyclingmaterials such as paper and metals outweigh the disadvantages?Cast your vote online at http://biology.brookscole.com/miller14.Why Do We Not Have More Reuse andRecycling? Faulty Accounting and anUneven Economic Playing FieldPrices of goods that do not tell the ecological truth,too few government subsidies and tax breaks, lowlandfill dumping costs, and price fluctuations hinderreuse and recycling.Four factors hinder reuse and recycling. First is afaulty accounting system in which the market price ofa product does not include the harmful environmentalhealth costs associated with the product during its lifecycle (Figure 24-11). Many scientists and economistsbelieve that a life-cycle analysis should be made andpublished for products.Second, there is an uneven economic playing fieldbecause in most countries resource-extracting industriesreceive more government tax breaks and subsidiesthan recycling and reuse industries. We get moreof what we reward.Third, charges for depositing wastes in landfills(called tipping fees) in the United States are lower thanthose in most of Europe. Fourth, the demand and thusthe price paid for recycled materials fluctuate mostlybecause buying goods made with recycled materials isnot a priority for most governments, businesses, andindividuals.544 CHAPTER 24 Solid and Hazardous Waste