Does recycling really use less energy than not recycling?

Question

According to information on the EPA web site; "When people reuse things or when products are made with less material, less energy is needed to extract, transport, and process raw materials and to manufacture products."

I am having some difficulty accepting this statement as 100% accurate. The materials obtained from recycled products also need to be transported and processed, don't they? I would think there would be a lot more transporting and processing associated with recycled materials than with virgin materials. Granted it probably requires more energy to extract a virgin material from mother nature versus obtaining the recycled materials. But still, the amount of transporting and processing required of recycled materials must offset that one benefit. Does anyone have any info about this? Where I might locate more information about this aspect of recycling would also be appreciated.

Answer 1

As an absolute, the EPA statement is false. Just ask, if recycling is cheaper, why does it cost money to do it, why do companies not pay for the material instead of citizens having to pay. The statement is only true if you don't count the energy, etc that it takes for people to earn the money they are paying for recycling.

There are metals and glass recycling that does pay, but newspapers and plastic are losing propositions and not economical at all. Tree growth is sustainable and paper recycling will always be a feel good exercise.

Answer 2

According to Wikipedia recycling uses less energy and reduces the waste from manufacturing whatever the item is. The only major draw back is the use of water and if your a mayor, the cost. Transportation does create Carbons but far less than mass incinerating garbage. They do have garbage burning power plants which produce both power and air pollution. Another thing about recycling is that a lot of the processes use chemicals, so there is no power use for those processes. Wiki doesn't mention the chemicals, but I remember a field trip I went on as a kid, so it's not something I made up.

Answer 3

I'll use aluminum as an example, because it is commonly recycled.

Large, heavy machinery is used to intially dig the aluminum out of the Earth, along with a whole bunch of dirt and rock (which is just waste to them). Then the very impure aluminum must be smelted into something much purer...this is also very energy consuming.

Finally, the aluminum must be shipped to various factories all over the planet to be used in making an enormous variety of things.

When you recycle the aluminum (minus some other waste materials that find their way into the bin) is already smelted and essentially pure enough to re-use. It's already been dug out of the ground and shipped across the planet. The aluminum is gathered at a recycling center in large quantities for re-distribution, usually in a fairly localized area.

I worked in a Recycling plant in Portland Oregon for a while years ago, and I can tell you that the aluminum really never left the Pacific Northwest. It didn't need to, since factories in (for example) Texas had recycled aluminum from Texas to use and it would cost them less to get it.

In the end, recycling is much more efficient than digging up new stuff all the time. Maybe not on a can-per-can basis, but once you start talking about the MILLIONS of cans used in America every year the difference is enormous.

Answer 4

In many cases it is beneficial to recycle materials but not always.

Products made from metals have to be mined and quarried in the first place - a very intensive and wasteful process in which the majority of excavated material is waste. The mined material then has to be processed in order to extract the metal content, an energy intensive process. Recycling metals skips both these stages.

Similarly, plastics are oil based derivatives and again the oil has to be extracted and by recycling this stage can be skipped. Oil supplies are dwindling (although not as much as some people make out). If we want oil to be available for future generations it makes sense to conserve it where we can.

There's still much transporting of materials even when recycling but usually this is to a local recycling facility from where the material is taken to a local facility for manufacturing into goods. There's a lot less transportation involved as it cuts out the primary industry which often involves shipping materials from source - this can be thousands of miles away.

Answer 5

I agree with the general concept of recycling, but in the rural area where I live I believe the cost is probably too high, especially the way it is currently being done.

A big truck comes by every two weeks to pick up from widely scattered houses using plenty of fuel in the process. The plastic gathered, for instance, is almost certainly less than the fuel required to pick it up.

I live in an area where there are many Amish and Mennonite families. They do their own recycling in that they preserve their garden grown foodstuffs in glass jars that they reuse year after year. They buy almost no canned goods or drinks in aluminum cans. They are dairy farmers using their own milk so no plastic milk jugs to recycle. Good for them! But, that means our gas hog recycling truck is driving by a very large percentage of places that have nothing to put in the recycle bin.

I don't know what the answer is.

Answer 6

You're onto something here, but not in the precise way you've put it.

Of course, it can be wasteful to recycle if the recycling process uses resources inefficiently. This can be true even if the energy output is less to recycle. For example, local recycling in my area is extremely wasteful of water, as all items--paper, styrofoam, aluminum, plastic, glass--are thrown together and then sorted out using thousands of gallons of potable water, a complete waste of a scarce resource. Given that northern California is a natural desert which uses water from other places, it makes no sense to recycle in this manner.

Where you stopped short, however, was in comparing recycling only to processing new material. It makes sense to discourage or avoid the original process if it is wasteful of resources (whether or not it is recyclable) in the first place.

For example, perhaps aluminum should be eliminated as a source for consumer drinking cans. Once limited to industrial purposes, recycling aluminum can have maximum impact, and all the extra costs of separating consumer aluminum from other recyclables, washing, sorting, trucking and remanufacturing would be moot.

I used aluminum cans as an example because there's a huge energy output in finding and mining bauxite into aluminum, and the relationship between aluminum and Alzheimers may prove to be as harmful as that of lead for drinking goblets was for the Roman Empire. We don't 'need' aluminum cans; it's a major expense to society to manage them.

What other currently trendy recyclables could there be that we should just eliminate?

Answer 7

you are correct in your assumption that collecting, transporting and other process have an energy 'cost' that reduces the energy 'savings' of recycling but it would be hard to give you an answer since there are so many variables. obviously, trucking 100lbs of glass 100 miles in a truck that gets 8 mpg is less efficient than half that distance in a toyota prius, but it would be hard to get a decent average figure.

you might try contact your local waste-haulers or city government for figures since one may make money by managing a recycling program (or not) and the other would know about funding one (or not) and should be able to tell you the transportation impact.

i guess your point would lead one to think that maybe there's more to be said for conservation - using less to begin with - is a better solution to pollution production and energy savings than recycling.

Answer 8

Transportation is a far smaller energy component than mining and refining. So yes recycling does save energy. Depending upon the material the savings can be very considerable. Metals and most especially aluminum are very energy intensive to refine from ore and most of that energy is saved in recycling. Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy cost of processing new aluminum. The wikipedia article below discusses both the pros and the cons. It's not a great article but it does offer a decent overview of the issues.

Answer 9

Just think of all that waste in our land fill sites. It takes thousands of years to break down some materials. So I believe that if we do our part and recycle, we can help the environment heal, to a small percent. Man has made this mess and we should do our level best to help clean up. As far as the shipping part goes we should be seriously thinking about using a alternative source of fuel. The oil companies are going to price themselves out of business. Have a good day.

Answer 10

Yes, it recycling does use less energy than making products from scratch. When you already have the material, all you have to do is "melt" (excluding paper) it down and then you can use it again. Making stuff from scratch, you have to find materials that allow you to make the new product, mix materials to get your materials, or spend more energy in extracting a certain material from a mixture or solution. Then you have to process the material(s), and then you have your product... Making stuff from scratch is more complicated, and uses more energy than does recycling.