Question by Fisherman: Would the world be a better place if factories recycled their waste products?
Tons of money is used to legally store industrial waste.
But what about those factories who dump into the sea, let it flow into rivers and use illegal dumping sites.
Most of this waste can be recycled and sold, saving both money and the environment.
Best answer:
Answer by haha
yes it would =]
What do you think? Answer below!
Factory waste is often recycled. It all depends on whether it is cheaper to recycle than depose of it. I worked 13 years in a corrugated plant ( makes cardboard boxes). All the scrap paper went back to paper mills to be made into new paper. Scrap metal is generally recycled if enough of it is produced to make separating it worthwhile.I saw a plant that made vinyl siding. All of their scrap was ground up and used to made new siding.
If you think most industrial waste could be recycled without losing money, then you are very wrong. The freight costs alone would stop you.
In the US it is getting harder to get away with that, and many companies have found the financial benefit to finding a useful way of dealing with waste. I read the book Cradle to Cradle, it talks about several companies that are doing just that.
You assume factories don’t already recycle. But remember, Mcdonald’s core business is burgers, not recycling. Recycling cannot be a company’s primary business.
There is not enough material and technology to make it profitable on a small scale. That’s why you only see large materials handling companies that can get into a recycling business. The usable purity level of the recovered products may be very expensive to ensure.
If it’s more cost effective to recover waste for reuse in the factories, they would already do so. The soft drink industry is a perfect example.
In addition, if they used illegal dumping sites, someone will rat them out and then they’ll be out of business.
Many factories that dump into therivers and such would have the EPA and DEP come down hard on them. Heavy or light sentence, they would be on notice to do something about their practices.
There is insuficient money saved to make recycling a better option than shipping it to a storage facility. The storage facility may also already extract whatever it can sell before storing the rest.
Not that we should do nothing, but if recycling were easy and cheap, we would not need to obsess about it.
There appear to be two answers to this one. The first is to change product manufacturing process and purchases of things that generate difficult to store and dispose of waste.
The second is to make it easier and cheaper for companies to get rid of some of their stored waste. It may not be easily or cheaply possible for all types of waste. But, I suspect that for some it is easier and cheaper than what we are led to believe. In the US it seems that we “give” business a number of legislated goodies, tax cuts, and the more. It seems, granted without much investigation, that a number of these goodies benefit individuals/departments within a company as much if not more so than the company as a whole entitiy. In the mean time, we expect the company to pay for their own….you name it… rather than spend tax payer dollars on their problems. It would seem that spending a little governement money and tax dollars in enabling companies to do a better job of recycling, hazardous waste handling, and faciliating the byproduct of one compay’s processes into the input stream of another would cost us all less in the end. If nothing else, it costs us all a lot of money to clean up a mess; and that’s not talking about the ensuing enviornmental costs including the health and welfare of us humans.
In our area of the US there is very little opportunity for business to recycle. If they do, they must take it upon themselves to collect and transport the materials. All the while, local law requires that no solid waste be held on any property; inside or outside of a building. The generally accepted limit is for the duration of one week. But, it can be interpreted to be less than 24 hours and/or within acceptable containers and/or within acceptable and hidden confines. Since there is nothing in code about recycling bins for businesses, there is nothing in writing covering acceptable containers nor confines. All it takes is one complaint… Just enabling more recycling by commercial businesses would reduce the number of items that end up in the local, or transported to out of state, landfills. In the end, it would save us all money.
Larger businsess make for more waste in less space and a bigger target. They often have recycling programs that are encouraged by local municipalities and even the state. But, in doing so, they often sell some of their waste for at least some recouping of the dollars spent managing it. And, in other cases they do some recycling as a way to reduce their garbage rates.
I know of one community whose elected official said of commercial and industrial recycling – We can’t do that. We don’t have the equipment and facilities to handle that number of recyclables. Meanwhile, they are encouraging avid and manditory residential recycling to reduce the city’s shipping of garbage to an out of state landfill. Ok, I’m just an average bear but….the logic of this is not ringing too true to me.
My most recent employer used ISO 14001 to address the issue. I suspect that a lot of other medium and larger companies do the same.
In the UK, however, there are a lot of small companies who have less opportunity to recycle than householders do – or so it seems from casual observation. Recycling is just one thing too many for small traders to bother about.
I know of some such offices where the staff take it upon themselves to, for example, collect the compostable materials (tea bags, food waste) and take it home to their composting bins. It’s admirable, but not the proper solution.
First find new technology to recycle the currently un-reusable waste efficiently and economically. As for the illegal dumpers:
Find ’em, catch ’em, fine (or jail) ’em and replace ’em with companies that act responsibly (as if that’s possible).