Recycling—Trash into Cash

While concern over environmental quality keeps growing in the United States, the output of material goods—which generates the residuals that throw the greatest burden on the environment—keeps growing, too. Wide recognition of the situation has led to increased interest in recycling residuals, that is, putting them back into production activities instead of simply discharging them into the environment. The Resources Recovery Act of 1970, enacted by Congress in October 1970, shifts the emphasis from a focus solely on waste disposal—better methods for "throwing things away," as in the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 —to recovery and reuse.

The new emphasis on recycling is evident at other levels of government, as well as in a number of private activities. Examples of legislation are: a local ordinance in Bowie, Maryland, banning the sale of beer and soft drinks in nonreturnable containers, as of 1 April 1971; a similar one in Lake County, Michigan, effective the same date, and one in Richland County, Wisconsin, as of 1 July 1971; a regulation in Irvington, New Jersey, prohibiting the inclusion of newspapers (and magazines) in mixed refuse for collection; the initiative measure in the state of Washington (defeated in the November elections) which would have placed a 5-cent deposit on each container for beer and soft drinks in the state after 1 April 1971; and the various proposals at state and federal levels for imposing a tax on disposable (nonreturnable or nonrecyded) containers. A recent count showed that awaiting consideration in 25 state legislatures, were at least 65 bills aimed at restricting the use of nonreturnable beverage containers by banning or taxing them, or requiring deposits.

Recycling can be applied to both reusable and nonreusable containers. The reuse of containers requires careful cleaning before refilling—an operation that in itself generates residuals. It also calls for more substantial containers, which means more materials produced to more rigid specifications. In contrast, some nonreturnable containers, such as all-aluminum cans, are usable directly as raw material inputs into the manufacture of "new" containers or other aluminum products.

The multiplicity of agencies with authority and responsibility for handling solid residuals leads to a fragmentation of control efforts. For example, legislation enacted at a local level to ban nonreturnable containers or to put a disposal tax on vehicles is more easily circumvented and thus is likely to have less effect than legislation at the state level. On the other hand, because the local level of government has the day-to-day responsibility for handling and disposing of solid residuals, ordinances relating to separation of, for example, newspapers from mixed refuse can be effective. Action at the national level is most appropriate to stimulate recycling of some residuals, such as the disposal tax on vehicles.

Examples of specific programs include: the experimental waste paper recycling operation by the city of Madison, Wisconsin; the pioneering aluminum can recovery program of the Reynolds Metals Company in the Los Angeles area, under which the company pays 1/2 cent for every can turned in; the Kaiser Aluminum Company can recycling program in the San Francisco Bay area, begun in the early summer; the recently announced aluminum can recycling program to be undertaken by Alcoa in San Diego County, California and in the Dallas—Fort Worth metropolitan area; various glass container recovery programs, such as that underway by Owens-Illinois in Newark, N.J.; and the trials being made, by brewers in particular, to reverse the trend to nonreturnable containers by buying back glass bottles on which no deposit has been paid and by reducing prices on products in glass containers on which a deposit is paid.

Recycling is not a new idea. Significant quantities of materials have traditionally been recycled in making the same product in some industries—notably lead, copper, steel, and paper. And there are numerous examples of residuals that are recycled in the sense that they become inputs in by-product production, either at the site of original production or at another site, ranging from the incorporation of residues from processed tomatoes in pet food to the use of corn-milling residues as ingredients of plastics. The basic question is whether the current extent of recycling is best from society's point of view, considering the costs of alternative means of disposal and the costs represented by the "ultimate" discharge of residuals into the environment.

Recycling of course cannot be accomplished without costs, normally including both transportation and processing costs. The latter involve such activities as separation, compacting, baling, and storage. Further, to become raw material inputs, reclaimed materials that have lost their usefulness after having served their primary function (from automobiles to newspapers) require more resource inputs in their reuse to produce a given product than virgin materials. They may also give rise to specific pollution problems of their own. Nonetheless, because the private market does not consider all of the relevant costs of residuals handling and disposal, including those reflecting the use of common property resources, it underprices production from virgin materials. (This has important implication for resource depletion.) A considerably higher level of recycling may well be economically justified from society's point of view. This is particularly true in metropolitan areas, where the residuals handling and disposal problem is the toughest. What is needed is more explicit attention to recycled possibilities by public agencies, the development of economic incentives to stimulate more recycling by the private sector, and a continual incorporation of recycling as one of the alternatives in residuals-environmental quality management.