Turning Garbage into Gold

bart_scriv writes "Entrepreneurs are creating companies that exploit the creative opportunities in other people's junk, sparing the environment in the process. The article looks at green entrepreneurship in general and profiles some specific companies, whose products range from recycled printer cartridges to rubber sidewalks. It also includes a slideshow on the process of making rubber sidewalks. From the article: 'While innovation has always been the entrepreneur's trademark, a growing interest in the green movement is propelling small business owners to create new products and services that also happen to be inventive recycling solutions for the country's vast waste heaps. 'The sustainability and restoring of our environment are providing opportunities in many fields of small business,' says John Stayton, co-founder and director of the Green MBA program at San Francisco's New College of California.'"

Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very little of recycling is anything but very wasteful. Penn and Teller did an episode of their show "Bullshit!" about it and it was quite illuminating. In terms of energy costs and such, the only time recycling ever turns a benefit is in the case of aluminum cans. Everything else is a huge waste. Especially paper, since all of our paper comes from tree farms specifically grown to supply paper. You're not killing acres of forest when you throw out paper, you're probably planting a new tree.

And don't get me started on the fact that plastics only last 1000 years in a dump if you bury it like an idiot. Plastics are photosensitive and will decay rapidly if just left where they can get sunlight.

Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially paper, since all of our paper comes from tree farms specifically grown to supply paper. You're not killing acres of forest when you throw out paper, you're probably planting a new tree.

Not true. From our experience (in Brazil), this monoculture aproach using non-native species leads to as much wildlife wipeout and soil/underground water spoiling as the damned "Queimadas", wich is the practice of burning the forest to give way to soybean crops and/or bovine pasture.

Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap.

[Mydron]

tree farms

With a few exceptions there are no such things as "tree farms". There are forests. Some of them are managed and some of them are not.

The problem with your logic is that the tree you just "planted" by throwing out paper (wtf?), is not going to provide: shade or habitat or prevent erosion or breathe in a comparable amount of carbon dioxide. There are lots of other externalities you've neglected to account for, such as the chemical treatment it takes to produce paper pulp from wood (more so than recycled pulp). Nobody counts that because it gets dumped into the air, oceans and rivers.

According to some reports, many of North America's largest catalogs and tissue product manufacturers use virgin boreal pulp [nrdc.org].

Often in managed forests, where, as you triumphantly declare: trees are "specifically grown to supply paper", the trees that have been planted are not indigenous to the region. This endangers native plant and animal species, such as in Chile [panda.org].

Re:eWaste is ready to kill us, so it's better to m

[ozbird]

I suppose they could be lead crystal glass tubes ...

Bingo [wikipedia.org]. It's heavily leaded glass to absorb X-rays generated by the electron beams smashing into the aperture grille etc.

Recycled rubber sidewalks? Bad idea.

[sakusha]

This silly idea for recycled sidewalks is totally stupid, it completely ignores the basic facts: you're not taking garbage out of the environment, you're just distributing it in different spots, like EVERYWHERE. So instead of old rubber rotting away in a massive pile in a dump, it's rotting away in everyone's front yard. I think this is infinitely LESS preferable to concrete, at least you can rip up old concrete, break it down into gravel, and use it to make NEW concrete, and even in a dump, concrete is totally inert. But a recycled rubber sidewalk is just going to decompose and end up as hydrocarbon pollution that enters the ground and groundwater. If you dispose of tires in a dump, maybe you can put it in a clay-lined dig, where the decomposition products won't run into the ground water, but if it's in everyone's front yard, it won't take long before the pollution ends up in the land, water, and in our bodies.

Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap.

[Mydron]

Nice try, perhaps you missed: "more so than recycled pulp".

You can read more here: a report from NH Dept of Environmental Services [state.nh.us].

I have taken the liberty of copying a few salient points:

"The majority of environmental releases in the pulp and paper industry come from pulping. The environmental impacts of papermaking are much smaller, and it is impossible to distinguish between the impacts from virgin and recycled papermaking. In pulpmaking, however, the differences are large. Compared to virgin pulping, recycled pulping consumes much less energy and generates smaller releases to air, water, and solid and hazardous waste streams."

Not really related to what you said, but since I found it: here's something from Ohio State [osu.edu]:

Making paper from recycled stock requires 64 percent less energy than using wood pulp

What the EPA says about recycling

[ssrs396]

From http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/recycle. htm [epa.gov]

"In 1999, recycling and composting kept ~64 million tons of material from landfills and incinerators. Today, this country recycles 28 percent of its waste...

... 42 percent of paper, 40 percent of plastic drink bottles, 55 percent of aluminum cans, 57 percent of steel packaging, and 52 percent of appliances are now recycled."

It seems like the Baby Boom consumer generation has left us with a legacy of trash we are continuing to produce, and we should invest in the infrastructure to mine it. Sort of high-end dumpster diving. But there are problems:
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/paper.ht m [epa.gov]
Paper - "challenges facing recovered paper processors and manufacturers are: 1) contamination, 2) sorting, and 3) fiber degradation... inks, adhesives, food, and broken glass affect the quality of recycled paper... Office paper cannot be recycled with newspaper and maintain its fiber integrity." And then the EPA website lists nice benefits of recycled paper as well.

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/tires/in dex.htm [epa.gov]
Tires: "There are at least 275 million scrap tires in stockpiles in the U.S. In addition, approximately 290 million scrap tires were generated in 2003. Markets now exist for about 80 percent of scrap tires--up from 17 percent in 1990."
Doing anything with tires other than puting them in a big pile is a good idea. Tire piles are a fire hazard and are a great place for culturing things like mosquitos, rats, and skunks. In addition, tires have a very poor packing efficiency and just take up a lot of space.