Recycling! Recycling!

What is recycling?

Here's how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines recycling:

"Recycling is the separation and collection of materials that otherwise would be considered waste, the processing and remanufacturing of these items into new products, and the use of the recycled products to complete the cycle."

From this definition, recycling is described as a process - from collection of materials, to segregation, to the return of these materials to the production stream, to the sale, purchase, and use of the new product by consumers. After that, the recycling loop begins again. It isn't recycling if one component of the recycling cycle is missing like, for example, the end product is not reused by consumers.

Resources:

Pacebutler Recycling Blog: "What is Recycling: 7 Benefits of Recycling"

What is cradle-to-cradle recycling?

Recycling today, as proposed by most, is based on the premises that: 1) most industrial activity and the by-products created are harmful to the environment; and 2) the only way to minimize the damage is to practice "reduce, reuse, recycle" or "doing more with less."

In their 2002 seminal book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough and Michael Braungart challenged the way we think about industrial production and recycling. They contend that recycling, as it is practiced today, is actually "downcycling." We try to reduce, reuse, recycle things to reduce their impact on the environment but the products we create from original products are either inferior in quality (because of materials degradation) or use only a fraction of the original material (with the rest thrown away as toxic waste).

Cradle to cradle recycling is a sustainable concept that's actually based on nature. A tree produces a thousand flowers in one season, but only one of those flowers would probably result in another tree. And yet, we don't condemn this inefficiency because the 999 other blooms are returned to the earth as nutrients.

Cradle to cradle recycling proposes to overhaul our very own understanding of industrial production. It calls for the integration of sustainability from the cradle (conceptualization and design), producing things and their components in such a way that will make them absolutely recyclable or reusable, with no material wasted.

In our current paradigm, we tend to choose products with lesser impact on the environment. Like paper bags over plastic bags. Why not "edible paper bags?" Cradle-to-cradle recycling is being billed as the next industrial revolution and it just very well might be. It's an 'outside of the box' framework that is doable and sustainable more than anything we've ever practiced, to date.

This is the Mobius Loop, perhaps the most common of all the recycling symbols. This symbol is not copyrighted and can be used in your materials like posters, papers, organization logos, etc., to encourage recycling. However, the use of recycling symbols are regulated in most countries, if you make the claim on a product you are marketing, as recyclable or made from recycled material.

More information and symbols at the Recycling Symbols lens.

Did you know that...

...in the United States, we discard more than 80,000,000 aluminum cans every year from the beverages that we consume?

...there's no limit to recycling aluminum cans? This means that these can be recycled repeatedly without any changes in the metal composition or integrity.

...aluminum can recycling is the perfect model for a closed-loop recycling model? The aluminum material recycled from an old can is back in the grocery shelf, as a brand new can, in as short as 60 days!

...the amount of aluminum we THROW AWAY is enough to rebuild the US commercial air fleet very 3 months?

More interesting and amazing facts at the Recycling Facts lens.

Do we need to recycle cell phones? The resounding answer is yes.

We discard about half a million cell phones every year, and most of these either get stashed to gather dust in our drawers, or are deposited in our landfills leaking dangerous chemicals to the surrounding areas and water systems.

The very same chemicals and metals that command a good price in the market when recycled (like gold, silver, coltan, lead, etc.) are the same chemicals that could pose serious health risks to us when we discard our used cell phones carelessly.

For more information on how to recycle your old cell phones, please visit my Cell Phone Recycling lens in Squidoo.

Pacebutler Corporation of Edmond, Oklahoma is one of the companies in the US that buy used phones directly from US cell phone users. They are also working with several non-profit organizations to facilitate cell phone collection to benefit these charities. You can donate cell phones to you favorite non-profit at the "Donate to Charity" page at Pacebutler.

Expanded Polysterene (EPS) or styrofoam is a most common material we use for packaging, food containers, and a variety of other applications. It's bulky and hard to recycle and constitutes 30% of the total plastic dumped in the landfills or polluting the oceans.

The Top Styrofoam Recycling Tips lens is an excellent resource for those who want to reuse or recycle this material.

Computer recycling is a costly undertaking since it requires trained personnel and specialized equipment to extract hazardous materials like lead from the computer. This is why some recycling companies charge an average of $20 to process your PC for recycling. There are, however, several manufacturers that have take-back programs for equipment that were purchased from them, and some organizations like FreeGeek.org refurbish old computers for distribution and reuse by communities and individuals who need computing equipment but can't afford these.

There are several ways to recycle your old computer, and these are detailed in the computer recycling lens linked below. Manufacturers and companies with take-back programs are also listed in this lens. Don't forget to check out the tips on how to recycle your computers safely and not be a victim to fraudsters who are after the sensitive information in your hard disk.

For more information about this subject, please visit my Recycle Your Computer lens.

Here's also an article on computer recycling security at the Pacebutler Recycling blog.

Electronic waste or e-waste disposal is a major concern in the US and western countries, in general. Having pioneered the "Information Age," we're also the first ones to deal with massive amounts of obsolete electronics equipment for proper disposal. That these equipment should be discarded and processed responsibly due to the dangerous chemicals and metals they contain, is a most basic need for us. Our recycling plants are a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material, but some developing countries, like China have stepped up in recent years to pick up the slack.

Still, exporting or smuggling of e-waste to countries that are ill-equipped to deal with these is a rampant problem. There are well-documented cases of e-waste coming from the US, that were collected ostensibly for recycling by unscrupulous individuals. and were simply shipped out to places like Guiyo in China (see picture) where people break up these items, by hand!

Resources:

Basel Action Network (BAN): DO THE RIGHT THING: Use Only E-Stewards in recycling your computers and other electronic equipment.

Environmental Protection Agency: eCycling

Mentor Green: Still Feeling at Ease with E-waste?

BBC: New e-waste recycling laws begin

Kids are very important in the recycling movement. They are the next generation who will not only continue the advocacy for recycling and environmental protection, they are also the ones who stand to inherit the kind of environment our present generation is currently shaping.

What is your vision for our kids' future. Will they have an earth drowning in trash and ravaged by the effects of global warming or will they have a world that's clean, safe, life-sustaining?

Teaching our kids, at a young age, the value of recycling and environmental protection, will not only ensure the likelihood of them choosing and doing the right thing as they grow up, it will also instill in them a deep and abiding concern for nature and all creatures that inhabit this planet.

For more recycling projects, games, and activities for kids, please check out the Recycling For Kids lens.

Al Gore (born Albert Arnold Gore Jr), forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, star of the highly-acclaimed documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" which warns against man-hastened climate change, is one of our featured celebrities in this lens. A crusading environmentalist, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Al Gore Biographies:
Al Gore in Wikipedia
Al Gore White House Biography
The American Presidency in the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

More about earth-friendly personalities at Celebrity-Friends of the Earth lens.

"Scientific consensus is that we are causing global warming..."This is really not a political issue, so much as a moral issue...Our ability to live is what is at stake"

Al Gore

"Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.

"If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it."

Climate Crisis.net Review of An Inconvenient Truth
Read the the rest of the review now

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) at IMDB
Watch An Inconvenient Truth Trailer

When is trash fashionable?

It never is.

But, recycling trash is fashionable. And, so is designing chic evening wear from materials rescued at the local dumpster. Ever seen corsets made of melted vinyl record disks? How about a hoop skirt fashioned out of "old longshoreman's raingear, bright orange construction fencing and a cascading tier of fans folded from broken blinds?"

High fashion has come to the recycling movement and HauteTrash.org is dedicated to featuring the many innovative and brilliant creations of the leading Haute Trash designers of today.

The Haute Trash

Haute Trash Events at Haute Trash.org

Check out the amazing creations here, you'll never look at trash the same way again.