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[greenyes] Fwd: Re: [greenyes] The big picture on glass
What cost is it to the environment to extract the
materials to make new glass????? How come this is not
part of your equations to figure out
cost-effectiveness?
  That seems to me the 'hole' in the big picture of
any cost analysis of raw materials versus recyclables.
Just because creation does not present us with a
dollar amount cost does not mean it costs us
something. And in reality, that is what the recycling
movement is about: cutting down waste, and the need to
continue the antiquated, and very environmetally
unfriendly, sourcing of raw materials.
  There are people out there, with running businesses,
trying to take recycling one step further, and
assisting companies like Nike, Ford, and Volvo(just to
name a few) who want to redesign, step by step, the
manufacturing process to the point where what comes
out the other end of an assembly line will be able to
be either: broken down for biological uses, or put
back into maufacturing as a high quality 'technical
nutrient', as they have labelled it.
As of now, recycling is something that has the
possibility of growing into soemthing bigger than it
is, with much economic import and environmental
friendliness. Please don't douse the flame just yet,
brothers!
Salaam! Scott 
--- SPENDELOW Peter H
<SPENDELOW.Peter@no.address> wrote:
> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 17:08:20 -0700
> From: "SPENDELOW Peter H"
> <SPENDELOW.Peter@no.address>
> To: <greenyes@no.address>
> Subject: Re: [greenyes] The big picture on glass
> 
> This glass discussion seems to have touched a few
> nerves.  The emails
> have been flying fast on this listserv.
> 
> I do have a couple of things to add though.  The
> first concerns the
> energy costs of using glass vs. recycling glass. 
> The answer is that
> there is very little net energy savings from
> recycling glass.  It takes
> almost as much energy to melt glass cullet as it
> does to melt sand and
> the other raw material components of glass.  Cullet
> glass does melt at a
> slightly lower temperature, so there are some
> savings in the manufacture
> itself, but if you add in the cost of collecting and
> processing the
> glass curbside and getting it ready to go to the
> glass plant, the
> savings are not that great.  Of course it takes more
> energy to make an
> aluminum can from raw materials, but at least in
> bottle bill states
> where cans are recycled at fairly high levels,
> aluminum comes out a
> little better.  In non-bottle-bill states, aluminum
> is probably worse
> because of the high energy cost of making new
> aluminum as opposed to
> recycling old aluminum.
> 
> Glass only comes out as a clear energy winner when
> glass bottles are
> washed and refilled many times.  Plastic PET bottles
> can also be washed
> and refilled, with good energy savings, although
> nobody is doing so in
> the US.
> 
> As far as Pat Franklin's comment that glass is the
> most benign material
> in the waste stream, this is true for glass that is
> going to disposal,
> but it clearly isn't true for glass that is
> littered.  Broken beer
> bottles on the roadside are no fun, and broken glass
> in paper is much
> more of a problem than other beverage containers in
> paper, since the
> other containers are relatively easy to separate
> out.
> 
> Metropolitan Portland, and pretty much the state of
> Oregon as a whole,
> is moving to keep glass out of paper in the curbside
> programs.  Glass is
> usually collected separately.  It does keep our
> paper much cleaner, and
> our residue levels in Oregon are much lower than the
> levels at MRFs in
> other states.  However, a recent study conducted by
> Metro shows that we
> do still have problems with nonrecyclables that end
> up in the paper
> bales at the mills.
> 
> Peter Spendelow
> Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 14:09:46 -0700
> To: Andy Telfer <cwma@no.address>
> From: Sharon_Gates@no.address
> Cc: greenyes@no.address
> Subject: Re: [greenyes] The big picture on glass
> Message-ID:
>
<OFF18F3309.7505B7AB-ON88256D05.0072B4E6@no.address>
> 
> --=_alternative 0074404A88256D05_=
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> There is a piece of the "big picture" that nobody
> has mentioned in this 
> recent discussion of glass:  energy costs/savings. 
> While I don't have 
> percentages handy of the energy used to produce
> virgin glass vs recycled
> 
> glass, it is my understanding that the difference is
> substantial.  The 
> issue is not "to recycle glass, or not to recycle
> glass."  The issue is 
> how to recycle glass in such a way that it doesn't
> contaminate other 
> materials in the recycling stream.  I have heard of
> places that have 
> single-stream-except-glass collection and have
> drop-off locations for 
> glass.  This sounds difficult, but possibly worth
> the effort.  Does
> anyone 
> have experience with keeping glass out of their
> otherwise-mixed 
> collection, but still including glass in their
> program?
> 
> Sharon Gates
> Recycling Specialist
> City of Long Beach, California
> 562/570-4694
> 
> 
>
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