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RECYCLING CONSERVES NATURAL RESOURCES AND CUTS POLLUTION
The greatest environmental benefits of recycling are related not to landfills, but to the conservation of energy and natural resources and reduction of pollution in manufacturing that result from using recycled raw materials in place of virgin raw materials. Recycled materials have already been refined and processed once, so manufacturing the second time around is usually much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the original process. Detailed analysis shows that these environmental benefits of recycling far outweigh any additional environmental burdens that result from the collection and transport of recyclable materials. This conclusion holds true across several major recent studies -- including the study by Franklin Associates, Ltd. that the Journal selectively cites -- that compare the environmental impacts of recycled and virgin materials over their entire lifecycles.
For example, Franklin Associates recently examined the lifecycle environmental impacts of recycling the aluminum cans, glass bottles, newspapers, tin-coated steel cans and plastic soda bottles and milk jugs collected in a typical residential curbside program. The study included all component activities of recycling: collection, processing, transport of processed materials back to manufacturers, and remanufacturing. The study also compared these impacts to the impacts from landfilling or incinerating the same items and replacing them with new items made from virgin materials.
After accounting for all of these activities associated with recycling, the
study found that, for 10 major categories of air pollutants and 8 major
categories of water pollutants, curbside recycling results in a net reduction in
all pollutant categories, relative to a system based on virgin materials
manufacturing. The same result was found for solid waste generation, whether
measured by weight or by volume. In other words, collecting, processing,
transporting and manufacturing new products with recovered materials
results in less release of air and water pollutants, and less solid waste, than
does acquiring and using virgin raw materials in manufacturing. Moreover,
releases from recycling were considerably lower than those from landfilling in
all pollutant categories, and were lower than those from incineration in almost
all categories. A comparison of the air and water releases and the solid waste
arising from each of the three options is shown in Figure.
