Generally, everyone is “on board” with recycling programs, and we can feel pretty good about our own part in this “green” effort as we place our recycling bin out each week for pick up. We might even participate in household hazardous-waste-collection efforts. In any regard, recycling is very much part of the lexicon of our 21st Century culture.
In Michigan, where Dragun’s US office is headquartered, our Governor has set some aggressive, residential, recycling goals. Additionally, the state has recently made it easier to reuse certain high-volume, low-hazard materials with new beneficial use rules.
But … recycling is not always pretty. After all, taking these discarded products and repurposing them requires a lot more than just restocking shelves or refilling them with new products.
Here are two specific examples where recycling, while typically supported by the populace, can be met with opposition.
The first one is recycling metals. We’ve been mining metals for centuries and putting them to use in everything from pots and pans to weapons, transportation, computers, catalytic converters (to remove contaminants), and nanometals to keep the stink out of our socks.
The use of these metals over the years has resulted in metals in bulk and microscopic amounts being scattered about our planet. In fact, according to a recent article in Chemical & Engineering News, there may be so much platinum, palladium, rhodium, and other metals in soil from the exhaust of catalytic converters that it may eventually be viable to reclaim these metals from the dirt on the side of roadways.
Reclaiming Metals from Landfills
Recycling of metals can get to be “dirty business” not when we go after the microscopic deposits of metals – but when we go after metals in much larger supply such as from old landfills. We have historically put a lot of metal in old dump sites, and there are billions of dollars in valuable metals just waiting to be harvested from landfills. On the surface, this is great news – but, of course, the dirty business is resurfacing this metal.
Some of the opposition of reclaiming materials from landfills includes concern about releases of greenhouse gases, odors from digging up old landfills, and just an attitude of “not in my backyard.” Recently, we’ve seen some of this opposition firsthand as one of our clients is attempting to take a defunct landfill, reclaim the metals, and upgrade the landfill in the process. It’s a great recycling idea, but there are more than just a few regulatory, as well as “social,” hurdles to overcome.
The second recycling process that is often met with opposition is the reuse of biosolids from waste treatment plants and manure from agriculture. These waste products contain very valuable, reusable material, including necessary nutrients for plant growth. And, like all other natural resources, there is a finite supply of nutrients, such as phosphorus. See “Global phosphorus scarcity: identifying synergies for a sustainable future.”
Recycling Manure
Reusing manure is classic recycling – using waste to grow food that will eventually be waste again. But recycling manure in any form is a messy business, and, quite frankly, it stinks. With a growing human population encroaching on farm lands, there are even more pressures on farms that land apply manure.
As way of observation, I was recently traveling to Toronto (along highway 401), and my travel coincided with the “land application season.” The smell of manure was distinctive. But, what I also observed was, even though the local businesses were downwind of the manure, never once did I hear a comment from owners or patrons (in populace areas) regarding the smell. It seems, just based on my observation, that this recycling activity, as part of farming, was more accepted.
Certainly, there are those with legitimate concerns about mismanagement of manure. After all, the nutrients that make human and animal waste valuable can make them an environmental threat. Improperly applied, these nutrients can run off and impact the local rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater. The assessment of this potential impact can be very challenging.
Finally, you add an increasingly active Environmental Justice program to all of this mix, and we have a formula for making recycling increasingly difficult to implement in the years to come.
As human population continues to grow and natural resources are consumed, we’ll likely have to find more creative ways to recycle and reuse these resources, including a bit of give and take on the dirtier side of recycling.
If you need to put some science to work on your current recycling efforts, contact our senior environmental scientist, Jeffrey Bolin, M.S., CHMM (jbolin@dragun.com), at 248-932-0228, ext 125.