Re: [GreenYes]British Single-Source Collection System

[Susan Kinsella <seek@susankinsella.com>]

Title: Re: [GreenYes]British Single-Source Collection System

My main concern is how much of the materials collected in an everything-collected-together system can be used for "highest and best" recycling uses. For example, some reps from printing and writing paper mills are starting to say that they're having trouble getting wastepaper clean enough to use for their products. This, in turn, limits their willingness to consider expanding their recycled paper lines or increasing postconsumer contents. I think that a part of the problem is the move to more single-source recycling collection systems, where the wastepaper gets mixed with bottles, cans, and food. This drastically limits how much clean wastepaper can be pulled out. A much larger percentage (than in source-separated systems) ends up only able to be used for low-end products (e.g. animal bedding, shingles) or those which will not be recycled after use (e.g.  tissue paper, although a lot is not even clean enough for that). Countries other than the U.S. and Canada do not track and focus on postconsumer content, relying more on mill scraps, but postconsumer is an essential  category here.

While one could argue that it's good to recycle the wastepaper into SOMETHING, it's short-sighted if we're not organizing our systems to use materials for the greatest resource conservation technically and economically feasible. In the case of printing and writing paper, we have the opportunity to reuse fibers over and over, providing resource savings many times over from the same fibers, but they have to be very clean and separated from newsprint and other unacceptable paper sources. So if we collect wastepaper in ways that produce so much contamination that the deinking mills cannot take it, thereby precluding use of recycled materials in the most resource-conserving products, we're failing our zero waste vision. 

You might be able to explain to me how a system that dumps everything together could still prevent contamination of most of the paper, but I don't see how it could be done.
>
-- 
Susan Kinsella
Executive Director
Conservatree
100 Second Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
415/721-4230
E-mail: paper@conservatree.com
Website: http://www.conservatree.com
> From: Svanvoor7@aol.com
> Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 07:40:36 EDT
> To: zerowaste@grrn.org, CRRA@ucsd.edu, greenyes@grrn.org
> Subject: Re: [GreenYes] CALLS NEEDED:  Stop Tax Credits for Garbage Energy
>
> The audit demonstrates that the system 
> effectively mechanically separates 90% of the MSW delivered from the curbside 
> (household recycling would not be required) thereby insuring greater 
> compliance at the household and only one pick up is required. The outputs 
from the system are recyclables and organic waste.