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Recycling Reconsidered

Author: Samantha Macbride

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-12-09

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0262297663

How the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard. Recycling is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice, a thriving private recycling industry, and widespread public support and participation. In the United States, more people recycle than vote. But, as Samantha MacBride points out in this book, the goals of recycling—saving the earth (and trees), conserving resources, and greening the economy—are still far from being realized. The vast majority of solid wastes are still burned or buried. MacBride argues that, since the emergence of the recycling movement in 1970, manufacturers of products that end up in waste have successfully prevented the implementation of more onerous, yet far more effective, forms of sustainable waste policy. Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government. MacBride offers a series of case studies in recycling that pose provocative questions about whether the current ways we deal with waste are really the best ways to bring about real sustainability and environmental justice. She does not aim to debunk or discourage recycling but to help us think beyond recycling as it is today.

Recycling Our Future

Author: Ranjit S. Baxi

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9781849951388

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We live in a throw-away society and yet what is discarded is a vital raw material and ingredient being traded as a valuable commodity around the world. Baxi highlights the pressures and challenges facing governments and the industry.

The Future of Packaging

Author: Tom Szaky

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1523095512

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Only 35 percent of the 240 million metric tons of waste generated in the United States alone gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This extraordinary collection shows how manufacturers can move from a one-way take-make-waste economy that is burying the world in waste to a circular, make-use-recycle economy. Steered by Tom Szaky, recycling pioneer, eco-capitalist, and founder and CEO of TerraCycle, each chapter is coauthored by an expert in his or her field. From the distinct perspectives of government leaders, consumer packaged goods companies, waste management firms, and more, the book explores current issues of production and consumption, practical steps for improving packaging and reducing waste today, and big ideas and concepts that can be carried forward. Intended to help every business from a small start-up to a large established consumer product company, this book serves as a source of knowledge and inspiration. The message from these pioneers is not to scale back but to innovate upward. They offer nothing less than a guide to designing ourselves out of waste and into abundance.

A Primer on Recycling

Author: Greg Dudish

Publisher:

Published: 2016-12-21

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781520183138

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A quick look into the recycling industry and our waste - how recycling works, what is waste, a history of recycling, ways you can help, and even arguments against recycling. The book is for those unfamiliar but interested in recycling or for those who would like to conduct their own research and need a starting point. Hours of research has been poured into this book with a light touch into all aspects around recycling and the waste we generate.

The Recycling Myth

Author: Jack Buffington

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13:

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This book states the harsh truth: that despite best intentions, our current environmental practices are doing more harm than good, and that the solution lies in creating supply chains of the future that design, produce, consume, and reuse materials in a manner that is balanced economically and environmentally. One billion beverage containers are used on a daily basis in the United States, with at least 600 million of them ending up in landfills. Even the 400 million that are recycled—at a great cost—are not accomplishing the task of helping the environment. This economic and environmental catastrophe cannot be solved by recycling programs. From his experience as a leader in the American consumer beverage industry and a researcher in Sweden, author Jack Buffington has developed a transformational solution that seeks to not just mitigate the environmental damage but jumpstart the economy while actually achieving zero waste. The Recycling Myth tells the story of how our current environmental practices are unintentionally doing more harm than good and how we need to create a radically different supply chain of the future that must, as best as possible, copy the natural system of growth, decay, and regrowth, and discontinue a disastrous pattern of material design and use. Backed by irrefutable evidence, the book destroys our comfortable notions of the recycling status quo; explains why recycling will never work in the United States, despite decades of attempts; and introduces a new system that will actually work—without asking consumers to consume less.

Recycling Reconsidered

Author: Samantha Macbride

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-08-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0262525240

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The Water Recycling Revolution

Author: William M. Alley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-04-18

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1538160420

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A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Move past the “yuck factor” by learning the benefits and science behind recycling wastewater to beat climate change. In recent years, humans have begun to turn the age-old taboo against mixing sewage and drinking water on its head by using advanced treated wastewater to supplement a city’s drinking water supply. This increasingly widespread practice, known as potable reuse, qualifies as nothing less than a drinking water revolution. Water reuse offers a renewable, locally managed, and drought resistant water supply. The Water Recycling Revolution tracks the story of this development, examines the pros and cons, and explores its future potential. In this book, William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley answer our most pressing questions: How do you get people to overcome the visceral reaction known as the “Yuck Factor” and not only drink, but appreciate, recycled water? What about all those pharmaceuticals and personal care products that people casually flush down the drain? Will diverting discharges from a wastewater treatment plant damage downstream users or ecosystems that previously depended on that water? And what are the implications for climate change? These questions are answered by delving into the history of major water recycling projects from California to Virginia, each with a unique story of what led them to develop potable reuse, as well as the challenges they had to overcome. Additional concerns addressed include pathogens, contaminants of emerging concern, achieving acceptable risk, onsite and decentralized reuse systems, and directpotable reuse. Recycling wastewater can make for a bright future in the fight against climate change, and this book is a valuable resource to convince readers.

Introduction to Plastics Recycling

Author: Vannessa Goodship

Publisher: iSmithers Rapra Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9781847350787

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As in the successful first edition, this book provides straightforward information on plastic materials and technology, including the options for recycling plastics, with special focus on mechanical recycling. This new edition reflects the great strides that have been made to increase recycling rates worldwide in recent years. It considers the expansion of infrastructure in the UK to support plastic recycling and major achievements that have been made in gaining widespread public support and participation for recycling schemes; specifically the need to manage waste on an individual household level. Current issues surrounding council recycling of plastic bottles, and the practice of providing free plastic carrier bags by supermarkets, are also considered. Biopolymers are expected to have a major impact on plastic markets in the future and therefore some of the issues of biodegradability versus recycling are expanded in this second edition, as is the wider context of life cycle analysis and legislation.

Urban Recycling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development

Author: Adam S. Weinberg

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2000-07-24

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1400823897

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More Americans recycle than vote. And most do so to improve their communities and the environment. But do recycling programs advance social, economic, and environmental goals? To answer this, three sociologists with expertise in urban and environmental planning have conducted the first major study of urban recycling. They compare four types of programs in the Chicago metropolitan area: a community-based drop-off center, a municipal curbside program, a recycling industrial park, and a linkage program. Their conclusion, admirably elaborated, is that recycling can realize sustainable community development, but that current programs achieve few benefits for the communities in which they are located. The authors discover that the history of recycling mirrors many other urban reforms. What began in the 1960s as a sustainable community enterprise has become a commodity-based, profit-driven industry. Large private firms, using public dollars, have chased out smaller nonprofit and family-owned efforts. Perhaps most troubling is that this process was not born of economic necessity. Rather, as the authors show, socially oriented programs are actually more viable than profit-focused systems. This finding raises unsettling questions about the prospects for any sort of sustainable local development in the globalizing economy. Based on a decade of research, this is the first book to fully explore the range of impacts that recycling generates in our communities. It presents recycling as a tantalizing case study of the promises and pitfalls of community development. It also serves as a rich account of how the state and private interests linked to the global economy alter the terrain of local neighborhoods.

Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine

Author: Beth Porter

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781538105399

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People are proud to recycle, but in recent years many have become suspicious the process isn't operating as seamlessly as we'd like to think. Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine makes sense of the complex system for any reader who wants to learn how it works, what the problems are, and what they can do to help recycling thrive