The word on recycling

My name is Joseph, and I am a closet environmental terrorist, or so I am told. As chair of the senate environment committee, I am directly charged with spearheading environmental initiatives and education efforts (i.e. recycling) on campus, and if it’s anyone’s duty to point out the inconsistencies in the anti-recycling argument, it’s mine.

First of all, let me assure all of you concerned readers out there (yeah right) that recycling is the most ecologically responsible thing you can do with used paper and is not “potentially more harmful to the environment.” Paper recycling does involve the shipping of bailed paper to the recycling facilities. Yet, the “nasty toxins” emitted from the diesel trucks transporting it only harm those directly breathing in the sulfur dioxide and particulate byproducts of diesel exhaust, which ironically comes from a motor that gets better mileage than a GMC Yukon. However, even that won’t be so bad, because next year the EPA will require only low-sulfur diesel fuel to be available on the market, which will actually make diesel superior to spark-ignition. As for “the plumes of gaseous poison” coming from these de-inking facilities that are depleting the ozone layer, indeed, these hazardous gases made up of methanol and other organics (not ozone depleting) are released through process vents, but recovery boilers reduce methanol stack emissions to nearly zero. By the way, this small quantity of methanol is usually significantly greater than all the emissions of the other hazardous organics combined. Also, the dewatered sludge produced from the paper recycling process is sealed into marked and intricately labeled barrels (sorry, not rusted) and is extensively tracked until it arrives at the more highly regulated treatment, storage and disposal facility. Furthermore, the pulping industry has been going through an enormous restructuring due to the new, extremely stringent EPA regulations for emissions of absorbable organic halides (AOX emissions) in waste waters. Alternatively, the current commercialization of enzymatic de-inking, which uses microbial enzymes to de-ink the paper, can greatly improve the ability to effectively recycle paper as it is more efficient, less hazardous, and less expensive than conventional de-inking chemicals and doesn’t create treatment problems. In fact, this technology is much less energy intensive, which translates to less power plant pollution.

So as you do a complete (and balanced) life-cycle assessment of the recycling of paper, you will find that making paper from recycled materials saves between 40 percent and 60 percent of the energy required to make it from trees, prevents up to 95 percent in related air pollution, and recycling each ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water (EPA). In fact, more landfill space is conserved by recycling paper than any other material, which might be due to the fact that every year enough paper is thrown away to build a twelve foot wall from New York to California. And if you are intrigued by how all of this works, you can take ENCE Intro to Solid and Hazardous Waste Management, so that you are no longer fooled by environmental misconceptions spread by those who don’t do the proper research.

Recycling not only saves trees, but it saves our forests from being clear-cut and converted into tree plantations that are void of all common forest critters. Yet, if the net number of trees in the U.S. is really increasing, just wait until the Bush administration completes its dismantling of the most popular federal rule ever enacted that protects (from resource extraction activities) the remaining 30 percent of our national forest lands that are not already dissected with roads and/or logged or mined. In addition, the only reason that the price of timber products like paper is not rising is because governments (including this one) are heavily subsidizing their timber and agriculture industries that are driving the deforestation. In fact, the global rate of deforestation is currently one acre of forest per second, one-third of which is driven by the paper products market, and no matter how many trees the timber industry is planting, nothing will make up for the loss in the planet’s biological diversity and the immeasurably valued services (like preventing erosion and regulating regional climate) that forests provide. So feel free to roll up this issue of The Daily Campus and drop it into one of the hallway recycling bins along with your empty bottles and cans, because we now have a single-stream recycling program. That’s right, finally no more sorting! The forests and future generations including the forest critters will thank you.