Recycling Broken Concrete Into Urbanite Gaining Support

The recycling of broken concrete into new materials, often called “urbanite,” is gaining a great deal of support among sustainable builders and local authorities, alike. Typically the broken concrete pieces are put in a crushing machine and reduced to smaller pieces that can be used as the aggregate in new concrete. Old rebar can simply be pulled out with powerful magnets.

Concrete is one of the most energy intensive, and hence, one of the most polluting substances used in modern building practices. It consumes a great deal of energy in the manufacturing process as well as the mining of aggregate materials. It is thought that concrete production may consume as much as 30% of the energy supplies in some Western nations.

The energy savings are tremendous and the broken concrete is kept out of landfills. Best of all, urbanite is often free to anyone who wants to haul it away, making it an ideal fill product for many types of sustainable structures.

For information on waste management visit our ‘Waste Management‘ Guide

Are We Really Running Out of Landfill Space?

Since the most massive shut down of sanitary landfill spaces in US history in 1993, there have been very few new landfills created to take on an ever-increasing total volume of waste.

Though rates of recycling have gone up considerably since then, the total rate of waste generation has also increased, to make the level of solid waste that arrives at landfills to remain nearly even or slightly higher over that same period.

The lack of new landfills is partly due to increased regulation in the permitting process for the creation of new facilities. While landfills were once little more than “rubber-stamped” into existence throughout much of the 20th century, environmental science matured in the latter third of the century and identified the true threat to water supplies (in particular) that emanated from landfills that were once assumed to be quite safe.

For information on waste management visit our ‘Waste Management‘ Guide

Federal Regulation of Landfills

One of the reasons that the construction of new landfill facilities has slowed down considerably is due to legislation at the state, provincial and federal level.

These laws have not only mandate more restrictive rules on the owners of landfills, but are often conflicting with state and provincial laws and regulations.

Many of the regulations passed in the 1990s caused an unprecedented number of landfills to simply shut down, rather than be held liable for updates and fines relating to past problems or updates required to continue on. As a result, the total number landfills decreased and, according to the “law” of supply and demand, the price to deposit in those existing landfills increased significantly.

In particular, many landfills that shut down before 1993, in an effort to avoid fines for water and soil pollution did so in such a rush that their efforts to contain the “final product” were grossly inadequate, leading to even higher costs that owners hoped to recoup from their remaining facilities.

Environmentally Friendly Packaging For Reducing Waste

If you have made a commitment to live a sustainable lifestyle, you’re probably looking for the environmentally friendly way to handle just about everything in your life. One of the easiest ways to do this is through managing the sort of packaging you bring into the house, as well as what you do with it, by way of recycling.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reducing your Packaging Waste

You have more control than you might imagine over the amount of waste you bring into your home. If you bring it in, it’s not only a chance to make an environmentally friendly disposal choice, but your duty to make sure you do so in a manner that is safe. For instance, many people were swayed from using alkaline batteries just because they were becoming problematic to dispose of safely.

Reusable bags are another prime example of an item that has become a global concern. Even when you reuse them a few times, plastic bags must go somewhere, and wherever that is, they’ve been found to leach out toxic by-products. You can bring your own reusable bag, without having to bother with the decision as to whether it’s best to get your stuff in paper or plastic.

Avoiding the Single Use Mentality

Of course, if you are given a plastic bag, you can reuse it several times, until it gets old and shredded. Resealable bags are another famous example of a product that was meant for a single use and may be cleaned and used again.

Other single use items can be replaced. Plain, cotton bar towels, for instance, can replace rolls and rolls of paper towels. Many times the amount of water is required to manufacture a single roll of paper towels, as compared with the manufacture and shipment of a cloth version and a washing. Over time, that adds up to tremendous savings in just that single resource, not to mention making only one trip to your house.

Choosing to Buy Recyclable Goods and Getting Them to the Bins

Aluminum, for instance, requires only 5% of the energy to recycle into new items as compared with mining new ones. Plastics save about 70% when recycled, with steel and paper saving 60 and 40% respectively on their virgin counterparts. Recycled paper has the advantage of eliminating nearly three-quarters of the air pollution associated with virgin paper production from wood pulp.

The kitchen is a very common place to create refuse, much of it as a consequence of purchasing processed goods. Therefore, the more food you make yourself, the fewer of these containers and wrappers will fall into either the recyclable or trash streams. However, even when you must make waste, you can choose packaging that can be recycled by your local recyclers.

Waste Management

Getting your recyclable items to the bin is easy in most cities. Environmentally friendly city council persons have made sure there are plenty of places for us to recycle. If you live in a rural area, this might mean hauling stored recyclables yourself in a semi-regular recycler-run. The market for some items is soft and can be removed as an option unless there are state or federal monies to subsidize the recycling of some materials, such as hazardous waste.

Green Shopping Choices

Many stores now have offer environmentally friendly options, such as using your own reusable bags, allowing slow shipping options, safe and natural options for many product lines as well as pointing out what items are locally-made and come with minimal packaging (since there’s no shipping). These items are all interrelated and a store that features items that either reduce or reuse packaging are often sustainable in other areas, too.

Many people have come to look upon the vast quantities of un-recyclable waste as an opportunity to do better. Every shopper who uses reusable bags, pays a few cents more for the environmentally friendly option or takes a few extra seconds to check and see how the packaging on an item can be recycled is making a huge difference. You’ll keep from having so much waste to do something with, offset some more of your carbon footprint and reduce contamination of otherwise safe groundwater.

Reducing Waste Paper for a Better Environment

Most people are shocked to learn how much waste paper is generated in a typical office or home in a given year. The average North American, for instance, used about 700 pounds of paper per year. Up to 95% of all business information is kept on a “hard copy.” Packaging also uses a great deal of paper, now accounting for over 40% of paper use. As for offices, it is said that nearly 30 pages per day are printed by someone using a computer to view the Internet at a job site.

This generation of waste paper has a major impact on not only the number of trees that are cut down, but also the patterns of pollution that are generated by both virgin paper mills and recycling mills.

The quality and uses of such paper is called into question and certainly changing. This is the result of an increasing worldwide population as well as the also increasing cost of transportation. There is also a greater need than ever for large trees, since they’re capable of filtering the excess carbon dioxide out from the atmosphere and replacing it with oxygen.

It is said that the old growth trees of the world, which are being cut down at a rate of 8% annually, are the lungs of the world. If true, reducing paper waste and keeping those trees standing combats climate change on several fronts, as well as preserving habitat for some of the last examples of many species in North America and abroad.

Most municipalities have recycling programs, so waste paper is very easy to recycled from the home or office. At work, just having a recycling bin is enough to get people to recycle their scrap paper while on the job. Office paper is the most commonly recycled, and usually makes a good recycled product that will fetch a decent price on the paper products market.

The waste paper industry is vast, and already saving a great deal of energy. Paper and paper products have recently occupied 1.2% of the world’s economic output, with and trending upwards as the dangers of plastics are causing them to be banned in many parts of the world.

The amount of paper that once filled landfills was once vast, too. For instance, it was not until 1993 that more paper was recycled rather than being buried underneath countless municipalities. In fact, there are very few areas except the most rural parts of North America that do not have recycling programs today, with waste paper being the most common thing to be recycled. In fact, paper has been recycled in the Western World since the 17th century.

In ancient times paper made from all sorts of substances was somewhat more rare. Waste paper was regularly recycled, with evidence of recycled paper materials from Rome and Egypt remaining in museums around the world.

Reducing waste paper use also includes purchasing and using less of it. The use of a smart phone or PDA can save a lot of paper use, as can simply being more judicious when hitting the print button at work. Those who are in positions of authority in offices can also use computer technology to better store records.

There are many types of computer software that allow collaboration. Now that laptop computers are prevalent and document storage is cheap, computer-based solutions are becoming increasingly useful in the business-place. It is also likely that the increasing price of petroleum will increase the cost of paper to such an extent that small businesses will likely look for solutions to eliminate that expense.

Shopping at a co-op or any other store that has bins allowing you to reuse containers, or re-using paper bags at the grocery, you can have a surprisingly significant impact on your own personal paper usage. By eliminating paper towels and using washable bar towels, you can eliminate a great deal of carbon emitting energy usage and paper waste – called “sludge” in the case of recycling plants – that paper plants generate.

You can also make a difference, ecologically speaking, by purchasing paper products that are grown from sustainably managed forests. There are organizations that certify how sustainable wood sources are, with managed paper-pulp forests being highly regarded, especially when wild and old growth lands are preserved.

Alternate fibers, such as bamboo, cotton, flax, sisal, jute and hemp, may be made into useful paper fibers from plants that can be grown organically. Such fibers are found in fine papers and papers that need to be especially durable, dyeable or soft.

There are plenty of ways to reduce your output of waste paper and lower the impact of the paper you do use by recycling or even composting leftover paper products. The impact on the environment if this became standard operating procedure for millions of people in North America would be far reaching.

The North American Tire Waste Management Problem

Have you ever thought of how many automobile tires are used and become redundant to the motorist? There are nearly half a billion cars on the road in North America. This staggering figure has one thing in common – with rare exception, they all have four tires, each! Given that they are consumable materials, it is estimated that about 350 million tires are disposed of each year. As such, the processing, transport, wear and disposal of these tires is a massive concern, partly because they are so large and durable.

Almost without fail they are made from petroleum products instead of natural rubber, which was phased out in the 1960s. Often they also contain steel belts for additional stability, too. Since the mid-20th century, the life of tires has increased significantly, and this life-span can be increased with proper inflation, wheel balancing and rotation. But eventually, the tread wears too thin to be safe and they must be replaced.

Recycling of tires into other materials such as basketball courts, artificial turf and road surfaces is a very common end to the life of a North American tire, since warehousing them has been identified as a fire hazard and a mosquito breeding ground by environmental scientists.

Waste Management and Toxins From Landfill Sites

Migration of Toxins from Landfill Sites

There’s more than a bunch of rubbish to be concerned about at landfill sites, and a whole lot more than methane to be contained. Consider what trash, some of it dating back decades, is made of. In many cases, the breakdown components of the furniture polish, hair spray and pesticides that people threw out with abandon are just now becoming known to environmental scientists.

The pace of creation for man-made chemicals began its steep acceleration as early as the 1910s, during and after World War One. This just happens to be about the time that the concept of a “sanitary” landfill was popularized in North America. Like the ability of these landfills to expand and really cram the waste in, the mid-century was a time of great expansion on several fronts: novel chemical creation, consumer consumption and waste generation.

What remains unknown is what happens to these chemicals when their byproducts interact in the seepage that has been shown to flow from nearly all landfills.