How much energy DOES it take to recycle a new aluminum can or a set of newspaper?

Yes, you may not cut any trees down by using 100% recycled fiber to make paper products but that's not looking at the whole picture. The world is an energy balance. The ecosystem is not just made up of trees or things that are green, for that matter. What's important is energy efficiency and energy balance. Have you gained anything for the Earth's ecosystem if, when processing recycled fiber, you end up using twice the amount of fossil fuels as when processing virgin fiber?

You don't think about reusing dietary fiber from vegetables by processing feces, cleaning it, and making fiber supplements from that recycled fiber. Why? because that process would be ridiculously expensive and energy extensive (not to mention disgusting). But, going by your argument, it would save so many celery stalks. Big deal. No, you just grow more celery. The "save the trees" argument was used years ago and what did we get from it...mountains of plastic trash bags and plastic products that increase our use of fossil fuels. We could create cellulose fibers in a laboratory from single carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms painstakingly assembled by scientists through multiple reactions (think of the jobs this would create!) and not cut down a single tree! it would just take the population of china to make the amount of paper that one modern paper mill makes. Now what do you think is better for the environment?

 

What about making paper from a different kind of fibre? Something longer, stronger, and faster growing - like hemp?

 

My understanding about recycling is that the economics vary a lot from time to time and place to place, but that the environmental benefits are typically pretty good. It may or may not pay, but almost all of it saves energy.

Let me do a quick study of paper, doing that not-fun thing of actually looking for some hard data from expert sources.

Ok, let me start with Wikipedia -- not a great source, but easy to access, and a good quick read on viewpoints.

Their sources all say it saves energy (between 40 and 64%), but, because some pulping plants are fired by biomass, and because some pulping plants may use hydro power, it may or may not save fossil fuel. Not sure how the underlying studies treat transport costs, and pretty clear that the biomass/hydro comment was not quantified.

Paper recycling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The EPA, by contrast, literally says that almost all recycling saves energy. That's my understanding.

Resource Conservation Challenge | Region 4 | US EPA

This EPA brochure definitely shows energy savings from paper recycling, including transport:

http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/ghg/climfold.pdf

Here's the comprehensive EPA study. This looks well-researched and documented. This is an EPA white paper on energy costs and GHGs associated with municipal waste.

Waste Home - Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases | Climate Change - What You Can Do | U.S. EPA

Their section on recycling looks pretty comprehensive. For paper, they even dealt with the issue of sludge disposal.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/waste/downloads/chapter3.pdf

The last table in the paper seems to be their net-net impact estimate. Reading from the first and last columns of that:

Metals and plastics recycling saves significant amounts of carbon emissions per ton.

Paper products save a modest amount of carbon emissions in recycling, but save a large amount (at least in the short run) through increases in carbon storage in forests. (They have a lengthy section of the report on how the arrive at that).

Glass recycling offers small (but positive) carbon savings.

But all of them are net savers.

 

Just from a resource conservation point of view, making paper, especially low value paper such as news print from virgin fiber is just crazy. A question might be, if you aren't going to recycle it, what are you likely to do with it?

I am reminded of the 1980s when the GP mill in Bellingham WA made toilet paper (possibly the lowest value paper out there!). I would see the logging trucks rolling into town with old growth Douglas Fir and Hemlock trees 3-5' in diameter, all to be ground up for toilet paper.

The worlds best framing lumber, in some ways the finest trim material (Vertical grain fir!) grinding it up into toilet paper. Now a generation later we are forced to used 2nd or third grown framing lumber, finger jointed studs, and MDF for trim. Pretty sorry.

 

An interesting fact from the forest and paper industry is that, by their definition, the majority of paper in the US now gets recycled.

paperrecycles.org - Paper Industry Association Council - News




They attribute the dip at the end to the poor economy -- the price of waste paper went pretty close to zero in the past couple of years.

This is what I meant before about the economics. Here's a random cite about paper prices in 2008:

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/gre...lables_pile_up_as_profits_they_generate_fall/


"Prices for recovered waste paper have plummeted to record lows. At the docks in New York, recovered paper for export has fallen from a peak of nearly $200 per ton in July to about $20 per ton. Domestically, prices have also plunged. Residential newsprint prices in the Northeast fell from a peak of $170 per ton in August to $20 per ton. Mixed paper and corrugated cardboard reached their peak prices in March and have also fallen dramatically."

That's my understanding of how those markets work. Really high price volatility.

 

And then you wouldn't need to recycle it; you could just roll it up and burn it.

Tom

 

No, no, no. Hemp and marijuana are two different things.

 

Popular misconception.
There is a substancial difference in THC concentrations between hemp and Marijuana. You could smoke huge quanities of hemp with no buzz.

The irony is that with the current medical marijuana laws, I could legally grow pot in Colorado, but can not legally grow hemp!

 

I hunch Tom's aware of the difference; he's just being funny. But it's not funny, really, how successful the campaign has been to equate the two. Hemp has been cultivated for thousands of years and has a thousand and one uses, but it's been demonised as 'the evil weed'. It's not. Read what the site I linked says about hemp and cotton. Cutting our pesticide use in half would be wonderful for the environment, but not so good for corporate profits.