editorial Reusing resources easier said than done Everyone accepts the principle that wastes should be recycled, but economic forces hinder implementation
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f there is one thing you can get everyone to agree on these days-and there aren’t many things to choose from-it is that many of the nation’s waste disposal practices are a shameful waste of valuable resources, Furthermore, the idea that wastes might be treated as resources in their own right has developed in a matter of a few years from an idealistic dream to a concept that deserves urgent consideration. Each time a conference is devoted to the concepts of recycle and reuse-and that is happening increasingly oftenthe concept is pushed a little further into the consciousness of technical professionals and public alike. There may be a danger, though, in jumping to the conclusion that all the talk will necessarily lead to action. There are some unfortunate precedents in the field of environmental control to warn us that talk is cheap. A thorough examination of some of the facts of the matter soon reveals that most wastes are almost as far away from being reused as they were ten years ago. In view of widespread acceptance of the idea that much waste disposal is really money down the drain, this lack of progress may seem strange. But closer examination reveals that at the heart of the matter are some rather basic facts of life. This issue of ES&T contains a special report on solid waste disposal (page 3 8 4 ) . The report covers. among other things, the approaches currently being considered to utilize in some way the valuable components or properties that almost all solid wastes possess. The surprising conclusions of this report are that many social and economic factors are actively inhibiting the technological attempts to reuse wastes. Thus, modern practice is to dispose of municipal solid wastessteel cans, paper, gold teeth fillings, and all-in landfills, rather than to attempt to recover anything valuable. The reason for this is that it is simpler and cheaper to do so. When a great deal of money is expended for the collection and dumping of wastes, it is a kind of de facto public policy not to spend any more money on them for any reclamation work. Again, another story in this issue describes the range of processes available in the steel
industry to recover or regenerate pickling acid from spent liquor (page 380). The processes work. Are they widely used? Well, no they’re not, say spokesmen for the industry, but this is because it is so much cheaper to dispose of the spent liquors in a nearby river or into a deep well-perfectly legal procedures in many parts of the country. If, on the other hand, it could be demonstrated that investing in a recovery plant would result in the production of cheaper acid than could be bought in the open market, then such plants would undoubtedly be more common than they are. Likewise, if technology permitted the recovery of primary metals from refuse so that costs per ton were lower than for conventional ore processing, there is little doubt that recovery would be practiced on a large scale. But if wastes can only be reused if and when they are directly competitive in the hurlyburly of the general marketplace, they clearly do not stand too much of a chance. Yet, where is the sense in mining rapidly declining natural sources of copper, for instance, when there are huge piles of municipal refuse lying around in which the copper content is higher than in the natural ore? Nowhere, in our opinion. Somehow, the ground rules must be changed. We do not pretend to know how, but it will obviously take legislation because some changes in economic procedures may be called for. Possibly, subsidies are needed, to ensure that at least some of the piles of mine tailings are used for brick making, that all auto hulks are reused as scrap steel, that wood fibers are recovered from municipal refuse. Maybe tax breaks should be given to industries so that they will find it “cheaper” to recover a waste product. Certainly, it will hit everyone’s pocketbook to do this. But the alternative is even more painful, for at the rate we are going we will soon have moved all the earth’s natural resources from the ground onto a series of gigantic waste heaps. When that time comes-and it may not be so far away-we will be forced to mine those waste heaps. There will be no further alternative. So why not start now?
Volume 4, Number 5, May 1970 365
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