Recycling or collection? Both.

When we say "recycle", we typically talk about "collection effort" -- putting things in recycling bins. This is confusing because "collecting recyclables" and "remanufacturing recyclables" are very different two processes.

The effort to increase collection rate is one thing, effort to increase good quality recyclables is another thing, then improving remanufacturing process and marketing secondary products are yet another thing.

Interesting story about Japanese plastic bottle recycling. (leftt: EoL plastic bottle collection rate)




1) Collection rate has been increasing and coming close to 70%. (I guess simple strategy to install recycling box exclusively for plastic bottles everywhere really helps.)
2) The quality of feedstock is improving. (Consumer awareness matters: they are educated and increasingly source-separate recyclables, therefore plastic bottles are not comingled with other plastics, making feedstock more heterogeneous)
3) Technology for remanufacturing is improving, helped by heterogeneous feedstock. (even different kind of plastic is considered contaminants that deteriorates the quality of secondary material)
4) Secondary products are increasingly with good quality, finding them suitable for different kinds of uses. (combination of 1, 2 and 3)


source: http://www.petbottle-rec.gr.jp/nenji/2006/index.html

I won't compost biodegradable utensils

Very interesting story from one of the major composting operators.
He says he doesn't compost biodegradable plastics at the moment.
Here are some reasons:

1) Plastic utensils are contaminants that are needed to be removed from feedstock before composting. Removing is done manually. Currently there is no way to distinguish biodegradable utensils from plastic ones. To make the operations economically viable, they have to either take all the utensils out or leave them all. His facility takes all out because they can't leave plastic in.
2) It is uncertain how long and to what extent the polymers will biodegrade. I think it means there is no classification on "how biodegradable" the products are. (I need to research this further) Composting is extremely experience/knowledge/skill intensive operation. People working on composting site really know what is the proper temperature/moisture/aeration for what material. It seems like there is not enough information/experience accumulated for biodegradable plastic to make sure the final product is marketable and of good quality.

Well, then if biodegradable utensils end up in landfills, they will produce methane, GHG much more powerful than CO2. (composting produce some methane too, but much less compared to landfill)

There should be pros and cons for these arguments. But anyway, for now, I would need more information to determine that biodegradable plastic is really good for environment.

In the meantime, this solution is definitely environmentally-beneficial: BYOU (bring your own utensil).

Babies have these; why not adults? It shouldn't take much to market them.








Japan's version of BYOU - BYOC (chopstick!).

Best recycled paper product.....what could it be?

I took a training a couple of days ago, and really liked the recycled cardboard binder for the training materials.

It's not bleached, it touched rough on surface, it got slightly fluffy easily when in contact with table or other objects.

Yes again, like Whole Foods paper bag, it has an apparent quality of recycled product - not as good as new one.

That's exactly what I like with this binder. This is for training material. I don't care if the edges get bent or the surface get fluffy. As long as it can keep the papers together, I have no complaints at all.

According to my "recycling-is-not-alchemy" theory, contaminated post-consumer paper shouldn't be able to produce something of high quality unless you add more virgin material or more energy input to offset the bad quality of the feedstock.
Based on that, this binder could look like above. Ratio of post-consumer product in feedstock is probably high, energy or chemical input required for process is low, but the product is not as good as new product. (it's totally acceptable in this situation) I doubt it might not be recycled again. Maybe egg case?

On the other hand, if you try to make copy paper from recycled paper, it could be like this.

This is an unproven theory. I identified the maker for the binder and asked about the material, but the answer was "We know it's made of recycled paper, but we are not sure about the details."

I will investigate more even though not much information is available out there.

I really think the information will help to determine what to make out of recycled paper and what not to, to make paper recycling truly environmentally beneficial.

Palo Alto marchants: just banning plastic bag is not enough

Palo Alto merchants, faced with a proposed new regulation, come back with more sweeping alternative!

Local grocery stores and pharmacies are claiming that just banning plastic bag is not enough.

Instead, the comprehensive program should charge paper bags and an include intense effort to shift people to cloth or other reusable bags.

They also suggest that the program would also apply to all retail businesses in town, not just the 13 groceries and pharmacies affected by the current plan.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/story.php?story_id=8225

As a reusable bag user, I have always been worried about increased paper bag consumption due to the skepticism for the plastic bag. Too much paper bag is also waste of our precious resources (even recycling requires energy and other input). I totally agree with Palo Alto marchants!

Whole Foods paper bag: 100% recycled and recyclable

I usually use reusable bag for grocery shopping, but I had to get this one.


Whole Foods' paper bag. It says: "This bag is made of 100% recycled paper (40% post-consumer recycled fiber and the remainder is post-industrial recycled fiber, excluding handles).


Sounds cool.

But this brought me back to my lingering question: "is recycling that environmentally beneficial?"

I wrote about Japanese recycled paper scandal the other day. What happened is that Japanese major paper companies lied about mixture ratio of recycled material and virgin material.

If what Nippon Paper Group argues is true, using recycled material (contaminated) requires more energy compared to using virgin material which leads to higher cost (and more additives or chemical input?). Plus, paper can be recycled max 4-5 times. The more time the material is recycled, the less yield the secondary product will achieve.

Whole Foods paper bag is made of 100% recycled paper. Obviously, it's not bleached. It touches pretty rough....not smooth. Yes it feels like "recycled" paper. Interestingly, the handle is not made of recycled materials. I assume that it's because recycled materials can not achieve the strength that is required for a handle.

Going back to Japan's recycled paper scandal, I think what Japanese companies were lying about was paper product such as copy paper. It will require more quality compared to a grocery bag.

Here is my question: shouldn't recycled paper focus on certain products that would require less quality?

Recycling is not alchemy. You cannot make super-quality product from bad quality material unless you use more input during the process. If that's the case, instead of trying to make everything from recycled paper, isn't it better to decide what to make from virgin materials and what from recycled materials?

I find LCA for recycled paper....recycled vs incinerated vs landfill.

I want see the environmental impact of the paper made of virgin material vs different mixture ratio of virgin and recycled, and vs 100% recycled. More preferable, different recycled materials scenario: homogeneous, heterogeneous, contamination level.....

Otherwise I can't decide which solution is most environmentally beneficial.

What to do with used vegetable oil? - Bring it to gas station!

What is the best way to get rid of used vegetable oil (cooking oil)? I am having hard time finding oil straightener/container to reuse vegetable oil, or oil-solidifier (I don't know what to call it) to toss in a garbage bin. I really don't know what to do. So my solution to address this issue right now is.......don't fry at home!

Well, can I bring it to gas station for recycling????:

Yes you can, if you live in this little town of Toyosato, Shiga, Japan.
Here is how the business works.

1) Gas station collects used vegetable oil (pick-up and drop-off) from households and restaurants

2) Gas station refines collected oil on-site

3) Refined diesel is sold to contracted businesses (bus services for elderly day care, package delivery company....)

This project turned to be effective in many ways.
* Gas station generated more customers because of the variety of collection boxes available on-site, including vegetable oils (in Japan, garbage source-separation is strictly enforced).

* One of the first users of refined diesel, bus services for elderly day care, placed a "eco-friendly energy" sticker on a bus, which worked as an ad and generated more diesel-users.

* Gas station got an offer from a major electronics factory (2500 employees)
-- it is to collect and refine used vegetable oil that comes from factory's cafeteria, and then deliver it back to the factory. Factory will use the oil for their trucks.

Previously, the owner of the station had been struggling to survive the price war, but now found the way to add value, differentiate his station from competitors making it so unique, and run a business sustainably.

Now that the gas price is so high, used vegetable oil can possibly charge so many cars I guess!

What is "recycled paper" exactly?

I wrote about Japanese recycled paper scandal. Ever since, I've been thinking what could be the most feasible recycled paper product considering the whole system. Possible elements;
* quality of post-consumer materials (feedstock): homogeneous versus heterogeneous, paint on the paper, new versus already recycled....
* mixture ratio of virgin material versus post-consumer material
* employed process and its input (energy, chemicals, water....)
* quality of the final product (recycled paper)

LCA (life cycle assessment), in principle, is a tool to compare environmental impacts of two or more different methods that achieve the same goal. For example, you can compare cloths diaper and disposable diaper to assess which has less environmental impact. What I want to know here, is the comparison of arrays of "recycled paper products" that employ different system.


In this picture it is very hard to tell the difference, but the left hand side is the recycled paper used at the university in the Netherlands. Right hand side is the recycled paper used here in US. Netherlands version is with lower quality. It's not pure white, thin, and weak. After some years, the color already changed a bit. But I assume that it is with less environmental/economic impact compared to the right hand side paper, if you look at the whole system. Am I right?

The specs for "recycled paper" is different from place to place. I would like to find which one is the best.....if you know anything about recycled paper, please help me.

They lied about recycled paper!

Back in January, Japanese paper industry got involved in dishonourable "recycled paper scandal". Major paper manufacturers were all lying about the mixture ratio of post-consumer paper in their products - "recycled paper".

I have no intention to support those companies that betrayed the consumers. But this case reminded me of my lingering question again: Honestly, is recycling so environmentally beneficial and economically feasible?

Well before it's been found that these companies were cheating, one of them, Nippon Paper Group had posted their policy on recycled paper on the website. According to that information,

1) Nippon Paper found that post-consumer paper that has been mixed was affecting the yield of final product (recycled paper) because of its deteriorated quality. As they mixed more post consumer paper, they got lower yield.

2) Due to the quality, using post-consumer paper could result in increased amount of energy use during manufacturing process, thus leading to more CO2 emission.

I interpret this to: Post-consumer paper is of low quality. You cannot really produce good quality stuff from bad quality stuff. If you want to do this, you will have to: 1) dilute bad quality material with virgin material so as it's not a problem anymore (which will inevitably lower the mixture ratio of post-consumer paper!) 2) use more energy along the process to compensate the low quality (more costly and bigger carbon footprints!), or 3) lie and cheat! (worst solution you could ever think of!!!)

Is my interpretation true? Were the companies not creative enough to overcome those obstacles? If not, why did so many companies have to lie?

In 2005, I did short-term research in Netherlands. Their recycled paper was not pure-white and much thinner than normal paper. (I mean, looked like of"recycled" quality!) But it is totally acceptable with me. I have no problem in using those papers......a bit worse quality than that is still okay, as long as it is environmentally beneficial!

I really want to define "recycled paper". What is the input to the system, what is added (virgin material, energy, chemicals.....compared to using 100% virgin material), and what is the output. If the output is much worse than normal paper, what is the acceptable level?

Unfortunately, when we say promote "recycling", it's moslty about how to raise collection rate. Not much discussion is made about the recycling process itself among consumers. This is one part because recycling process is highly technical, and part because recycling often happens in the third countries where you cannot really track the final destination.

But I am very interested in knowing what's actually going on. I am curious to know more about the recycle paper in the Netherlands.

Recycling alminum cans - and a lot of them!

Aluminum is one of the most "recyclable" materials and aluminum cans are the most recycled consumer products in US. Used cans still have some economic value, and they can be recycled over and over again. There are economic and environmental benefits. In 2003, 54 billion cans were recycled in US.

But still, residual value per can is small. If you want to bring used cans to recycling center to get some money, or if you were to collect them for charity or fundraising, you would want to collect as many cans as possible - and effectively.

Storing as many cans as you can in a small space will really help, since it will increase the value per cubic yard and makes transportation a lot easier.

Aluminum cans can easily be smashed to almost flat. There are many "can smasher" offered in Japan.




Small tip to make small aluminum cans even smaller and increase their value.

Reducing plastic bottles.

Slowly but steadily, "Paper or plastic?" at the grocery stores is being replaced by "BYOB. (bring your own bag).

Plastic bag is being worked on, so now it's turn for plastic bottles to be looked at.


Rather than trying to collect/recycle used bottles, I have an easy solution to reduce the number of End-of-Life plastic bottles that is generated on a daily basis: Replace soda/water in a plastic bottle with a tea in a cup.

I won't go over the health benefits of drinking tea, because you can browse a lot of information on the Internet. As to me, I grew up drinking tea; I am just used to it. I like taking warm fluid in my body. Once you are used to it, it is relaxing and soothing. Of course, you could eliminate the intake of excess sugar!

So, I drink tea more often than soda.....but it's primarily because I prefer tea to soda. But tea seems to be much greener than bottled bevarages. Imagine how much we have to invest to buy bottles of water or sodas and then keep them cool. Liquid is pretty heavy and not compactable. It takes space/energy/labor to ship, transport, sell and buy. Then, it takes a lot of room in your fridge to cool, especially if you have multiple kids! Last but not least, at the end of the day, we have to do something with piles and piles of plactic bottles.

Tea can eliminate all of them! All you need is tap water, a kettle, a cup and bags of tea. Indeed, tea revives tap water. When it's purified and boiled, it's not bad at all (at least my tap water is good for tea).

photo by: Al- Fassam

Recycling: where to bring your source-separated items?

Here in California, waste management is moving toward single-stream collection. You put all the recyclables in a signle bin, then they are collected and transported to transfer stations or material recovery facilities, where they are separated.

It could be a lot more work to separate already mixed recyclables. Plus, the recyclables could get contaminated on the way. There are the advantages to separate the materials as early as possible. But I know we only have one single recycling bin at home. Where to bring source separated items then?

Grocery stores could be the place.

Grocery stores in Japan has source separated collection box for plastic trays, PET bottles, milk cartons, alminum cans etc.

People usually clean those recycables before bringing in.

Recycling industry is sort of difficult to track (it could be happening in the third country), so I am looking for the information regarding the relationship between "purity" of the feedstock and the quality of secondary materials to demonstrate the benefit of early source separation.

photo source http://www.city.kawasaki.jp/30/30genryo/home/index/honbun/koudou.htm

Recycling: Source separation helps!

There is no single "recycling".

The success of recycling really depends on what you put in the recycling stream - the quality of feedstock.

If the feedstock is contaminated or heterogeneous (as opposed to homogeneous), chances are low that what you recycle will produce the secondary product with marketable quality.

Take paper. There are different kinds/quality of paper and different kinds of inks on them. Glue or food waste might be sticking. If it's plastic, there are even more variety of plastic product out there with different types of color/prints in/on them. There are dirty ones, clean ones, new ones or worn ones, depending on what they are used for.

If everything gets commingled, it is more likely that the feedstock is contaminated and heterogeneous. It won't help recycling at all.

Just one PET beverage bottle has at least three different plastic products: bottle, cap, and the film.

The effort is going on in Japan to separate all three of them from PET bottle. The film has the perforations so as it is easy to tear off from the body. Cap also has some trick to make it easier to source separate.

Source separation matters!



Photo http://www.suntory.co.jp/softdrink/alex/