• Recycling conserves natural resources
• Recycling aluminum saves resources
• Recycling paper saves resources
• Recycling glass saves resources
• Recycling steel saves resources
• Recycling plastics saves resources
• To know more - Recycling saves resources

Throwaway society: disposable cutlery, disposable towels, disposable napkins, diapers, packaging, cameras…. There is no limit to let us feel good by inventing new kind of disposable products. "Throw away is liberating" claims the advertising. The future is bright in that sense. We already hear about disposable watches and mobile phones.

On the contrary, extending the lifetime of a product makes sense. Recycling contributes to increase resource efficiency in production and consumption. The Wuppertal Institute, for instance, estimated the total amount of materials recycled in the United Kingdom at around 54 million tones in 1996. The minimum of resource savings this way was about 167 million tones or about 3.1 tons saved per ton recycled. This was about 8 % of the total material requirement of the country.

The Wuppertal Institute calculated the inputs from the environment ( resource extraction ) as well as the outputs to the environment ( disposal, emissions ) of 1 kg of primary and of 1 kg of secondary (recycled) aluminum.

Source: Wuppertal Institute, Material Flow Accounts - Aluminium

Aluminium is used in many packaging applications such as beverage cans, foils and laminates and represent 20% of aluminium waste in Europe. Consumption of aluminium packaging increased by more than 4% per year from 1980.
About 1 million tons of Aluminium is used for packaging each year in Europe:

• 40% for packaging foils
• 60% for rigid and semi-rigid packaging: cans, containers, sprays. = 32 Billion cans sold in Europe per year,
  

Source:European Aluminium Association, Environment & Recycling

The European champions for recycling cans are Sweden with 92% and Switzerland 88%.
For the EU, the recycling targets for aluminium beverage cans set in the European directive on Packaging and Waste are met.
40% aluminium cans are recycled on the average (+ 10% since 1994) in Europe, worldwide over 50% of aluminium cans are recycled.
Aluminium has a high value as a scrap metal and can be recycled economically.

Source:European Aluminium Association, Aluminium in packaging

Did you know? - Recycling Aluminium

Forests are cut primarily to produce paper products and lumber in roughly equal volumes, although the former is growing faster. The world consumes five times more paper now than in 1950. US offices' paper use soared from 0.85 to 1.4 trillion sheets (about 4.2 to 7 million tons) just between 1981 and 1984, as early desktop computers and laser printers were being introduced. Other countries did not lag far behind. From 1970 to 1990, paper production rose 4 % a year in Japan and in Southeast Asia, 8 %, compared with 2.5 % in the US.

Paper accounts for about 2 % of world trade and 2.5 % of world industrial production. Yet much of the paper produced is used only for a short time and then discarded. Only about a tenth of the paper stream goes into durable storage in such form as files, records and books. Much of the rest of printing and writing paper, which represented 28% of 1992 paper and paperboard consumption, find its way into the office. This paper accounts for as much as 70 % of typical office waste. During the years 1972-1987, America's discarded office printing and writing paper grew almost five times as fast as the human population, office paper over five times and copier paper almost ten times.
Source: Natural Capitalism

Further information: Recycling paper protects the environment

Did you know? - Recycling Paper

Glass itself, as a material, is considered environmentally friendly since it has almost recyclability and it can be reused many times.

When recycled it saves greatly on raw materials and energy. Each ton of cullet used to manufacture glass saves on 1.2 tons of virgin raw materials (sand, limestone and soda ash). The substitution of each 10% of virgin raw materials in the furnace saves about 2% of the energy required for melting.
Source: Fédération Européenne de Verre d'Emballage

The US EPA estimates that the recycling of one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100 Watt bulb for 4 hours.
Recycling obviously also diverts materials from landfill and it also significantly reduces the amount of waste from mining that would otherwise be produced.

Further information: Recycling glass protects the environment

To know more: Glass recycling for teachers and pupils
Did you know? - Recycling glass

Steel is the world's most recycled metal. About 435 million tons of steel are recycled worldwide every year. This represents a resource saving of 652.5 million tons of iron ore and 217.5 million tons of coal.

The Wuppertal Institute calculated the inputs from the environment ( resource extraction ) as well as the outputs to the Environment ( disposal, emissions ) of 1 kg of primary and of 1 kg of secondary steel.

Source: Wuppertal Papers, Material intensity of advanced composite materials

To know more:Steel recycling education material
Did you know? - Recycling Steel

The development of plastic materials has exploded in the second half of the XXth century.
Production of plastic materials in the world rose from less than 5 million tons in the 1950s to some 80 million tonnes in 1997. Consumption of plastics in Western Europe was about 28 million tons in 1997 (35% of world production).

Click here to see the different types of plastics

Plastic packaging waste represents about 60% of the total plastic waste.
The distribution and industry sectors generate some 2,6 million tons out of the 9.8 million tons of post-user packaging waste produced in Western Europe. Household waste represent more than 70% of the overall plastic packaging waste.
Source: European Directive on packaging and packaging waste

The production of 1 kg of plastics consumes between 1.8 and 2 kg of oil.

When plastic in burnt for energy recovery approximately half of the energy content is lost.
Source: Comparing feedstock recycling of plastics waste to mechanical recycling methods, Dr A. Tukker, TNO, 2002.s

• Recycling PVC saves resources

A previous study realised by the Wuppertal Institute applied MIPS methodology to PVC drinking water pipes.
MIPS - material intensity per service unit - includes all man-induced material displacements from cradle to grave counted in mass units. The study provides an overview of processes and material input-data for the production of PVC used for drinking water pipes. It does not include the dismantling of post-consumer PVC pipes. The results show that the secondary PVC is more economical from a resources point of view than the primary:

Source: Wuppertal Papers Nr. 63, October 1996

Further information: Recycling PVC reduces environmental impacts
Did you know? - Recycling Plastics

• Mechanical recycling of plastics saves energy

The TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) paper compared four options for the treatment of the plastic waste: municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI), energy recovery or blast furnaces, feedstock recycling and mechanical recycling. It concludes that from an energy point of view, mechanical recycling is in theory the best option because it permits to save the feedstock energy that is embodied in the plastic itself (+/- 40 MJ/kg) as well as the energy used for producing the primary resin (between 40 and 50 MJ/kg). The incineration with municipal waste is generally the least favourable option in environmental terms. One main reason for this is that it allows recovering maximum 50 % of the calorific value contained in the plastic. The study concludes that mechanical recycling is favourable provided that via advanced separation and upgrading technologies a high-quality recycling can be reached.
If this is not the case (and notably when recycling only leads to "downcycling" like the use of secondary plastics in park benches, fancy ballpoints and road side guidance piles) the advantages provided by mechanical recycling might not be convincingly better than feedstock recycling or co-incineration with energy recovery (for instance in cement kilns).
Source: Comparing feedstock recycling of plastics waste to mechanical recycling methods, Dr A. Tukker, TNO, 2002.

To know more:
The plastics mechanical recycling process in pictures

Further information: Recycling plastics protects the environment

To know more: Recycling saves resources