-Europe & waste

-Saves resources

-What is it?

By decreasing the need to extract and process virgin materials, recycling helps reduce or eliminate the pollution associated with material extraction and processing. These first two stages of a product's development often pollute air, land and water with toxic material. Besides, they require energy through the burning of fuels such as coal, oil and natural gases. This also contributes to the release of air pollutants.
Source: US EPA, Puzzled About recycling's value ? Look Beyond the Bin

• Environmental impacts of waste treatment options: Eco-indicators 99
• Municipal solid waste treatment options
• Recycling protects the climate
• Recycling paper protects the environment
• Recycling glass protects the environment
• Recycling plastics protects the environment
• To know more - Recycling protects the environment

Eco-indicators 99 is a method developed by Pré-Consultants BV (NL) for the Dutch Ministry of Environment (VROM) to calculate and compare environmental load of a product or a process. This assessment is based on the evaluation of damages to human health, to ecosystem quality and to resources.

Eco-indicators 99 for Municipal Solid Waste options
Eco-indicators 99 for plastics

Eco-indicators 99 allow to compare environmental load of waste treatment options for various materials. Results are expressed in millipoints per kg. The higher the results, the higher the impact.

Results are given in the table below:

Recycling protects the climate

The European Commission Environment Directorate General has commissioned a study undertaken by AEA Technology to assess the climate change impacts of options for municipal solid waste (MSW) management in the EU. The study covers the 15 member states of the European Union and the time horizon 2000 to 2020.
Source: European Commission, Waste management options and climate change

Greenhouse gas fluxes from recycling source-segregated materials are summarised in Figure 16 below. It shows the flux associated with recycling each component per tonne of MSW. The results for plastics are based on HDPE. Paper and aluminium offer the 'best' returns from recycling per tonne of MSW, compared with glass, which offers the least benefit. The total flux from recycling is shown in the right-most bar, which is the sum of the individual waste components. Recycling all of the indicated materials would result in a net emission reduction of about 470 kg CO2 eq/tonne MSW (i.e. a net negative greenhouse gas flux).

Packaging recycling avoids greenhouse gases emissions
By recycling around 2.3 million tons of lightweight packaging, the Dual System has succeeded in saving 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide in Germany in the year 2001. This greenhouse gas reduction corresponds to the amount of carbon dioxide produced in one year by 64,000 average German households, each consuming 2,000 liters of heating oil - or, in other words, the production of a city the size of Potsdam or Heidelberg.

A SOFRES report for the European Commission (2000) carries out a cost-efficiency analysis of packaging waste recycling in France, Germany, The Netherlands and the United-Kingdom and compares the results with alternative treatment routes (incineration with energy recovery and disposal). The study aims at making transparent the underlying political choices, the resulting cost structures and the relative environmental benefits achieved by recycling.

From and economical of view, the study concludes that, although it cannot give concrete net costs and has to rely on several hypotheses, it is clear that in many cases recycling is the cheapest waste management option.
From an environmental point of view, the analysis shows that "from the energy saving and the solid waste points of view, the incineration or landfilling of the mix of packaging which is today recycled in the 4 countries would have been less favourable". When considering the four countries, the study concludes that "recycling can save from 1.5 to 5 times more energy than is generated by incineration (this range covers the variation of energy yield at incineration between 10 and 60%)".
Source: European Commission, Cost-efficiency of packaging recovery systems

Recycling paper protects the environment

There are few comprehensive assessments of ecological benefit of paper recycling. However, in 2000, the German Federal Environmental Protection Agency Germany has conducted a life cycle assessment for graphical paper. This assessment concluded that:

• "the contribution to the greenhouse potential made by the graphical paper in Germany corresponds roughly to the equivalent damage caused by 900,000 people on average per year. That means 11.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (78% fossil carbon dioxide emissions, 21% methane gas emissions).
• Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions mainly contribute to acidification. The damage of the assessed graphical paper corresponds to the mean values for a population of about 450,000.
• It is considerably more environmentally compatible to recycle waste paper for new paper production than it is to burn waste paper for energy production. Environmentally speaking, the least favorable solution is to dispose of waste paper in rubbish dumps.
• Higher rates of waste paper recycling are more favorable for virtually all observed impact categories, such as the scarcity of fossil fuels, greenhouse potential, summer smog, acidification potential, and the overfertilization of soil and waters. The advantage in terms of the greenhouse potential must be emphasized as it has high ecological priority. Another argument in favor of waste paper recycling is that more wood remains in the forest and, as a consequence, the potential of natural area -the portion of woodland that can develop independent of human interference- increases. A decrease in the amounts that are disposed of in dumps and are instead burned in rubbish incineration plants or (hypothetical) waste paper power plants, leads to a significantly more favorable outcome in virtually all assessed impact categories.
• It is considerably more environmentally compatible to manufacture graphical paper out of waste paper than it is to use virgin fibers with wood as the raw material.
  To name an example, a comparison of magazine paper containing coated waste paper (so-called LWC -lightweight coated paper) and LWC paper made solely out of wood clearly favors the former: virtually all environmental pollution is lower. Clear advantages prevail in terms of the strain put on natural areas, the potential for global warming, the scarcity of fossil fuels, the potential build-up of photooxidants (summer smog), aquatic and terrestrial eutrophication potential, as well as eco-toxicity (harmful to environment) and human toxicity indicators. The results seem rather unexciting at first glance since the greater environmental compatibility of recycling waste paper was continuously emphasized. However, the life cycle assessment provided a sound scientific basis for showing where the environmental advantages of recycling paper lie, and that these advantages are not restricted to a few certain environmental effects."
  Source:German Federal Environmental Protection Agency, Life Cycle Assessments for Graphical Paper
  

Further information: Recycling paper save resources

Did you know? Recycling Paper

Recycling reduces the amount of waste glass going to landfill. At least 1.5 million tons of glass still go into landfill sites each year, where it doesn't degrade and remain in the environment. It takes about 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down at the landfill.
Glass recycling saves 4 to 32% of energy. It can also lead to 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution in glass manufacturing.
Source: Office of Waste Management - University of Massachusetts Amherst, Environmental benefits of recycling

Further information: Recycling glass save resources

Did you know ? Recycling Glass

Recycling plastics protects the environment

As for paper, the debate is fierce between plastics recycling supporters and incineration defenders. This may explain the diversity of results of LCA studies performed on plastic waste recycling and energy recovery. Unfortunately, these different studies show diverging results.

For HDPE, LDPE, PET, PP, PS and EPS, Eco-indicators 99 also confirms the waste management hierarchy: the most environmental friendly option is the recycling followed by incineration and the landfilling takes the third place.
For PVC the recycling is the best environmental option followed by landfilling. The incineration of PVC is considered as the worst option.

Further information: Recycling plastics saves resources

Did you know ? Recycling Plastics

• Recycling PVC reduces environmental impacts
  
  A review of LCAs on PVC goods realised by the industry shows that the industry of the PVC have made significant efforts to improve industrial processes and that, therefore, PVC has no significant ecological disadvantages (or advantages) compared with similar goods made with other materials. This study shows also that the recycling of the PVC and the new technological development can have a positive effect on the reduction of the ecological impact of the PVC.
  Source: Life Cycle Assessment of PVC Products : A Green Guide to Ecological Sustainability, Dr H. Krähling, AGPU, March 1999

Further information: Recycling PVC saves resources

To know more: Recycling protects the environment