—Lancaster Farming. Saturday, October 20, 1973
12
Recycling
by Donald A. Harter, Ph.D.
Resource Development Agent
Pennsylvania State University
The wastefulness of a once-only
use of materials has caught the
attention of a cost-conscious
public. “Recycling” has become
a household word. The subject of
much exhortation, it simply
means the recovery and reuse of
solid wastes to convert them into
energy or to create new products.
In Pennsylvania, individual
support of recycling activities, as
evidenced by the growth of
recycling centers, has been
excellent. Although the total
quantities of materials recycled
in this manner remains minimal
compared to the total solid waste
problem, it does represent a good
deal of effort by many people.
For example, Group for
Recycling in Pennsylvania, the
largest non-profit, volunteer
sponsored effort in the State
reports that during 1972 more
than 200,000 people brought in
2,270 tons of recyclable material
to its 20 collection centers located
in 6 Western Pennsylvania
counties.
A sizeable number of
municipalities have entered into
contracts with private firms to
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reclaim trash resources - such as
paper and newspapers - or have
provided facilities and services in
support of volunteer recycling
groups. A few, sbch as Cleona
Borough in Lebanon County,
sponsor their own programs.
Cleona is unique in that an or
dinance is used to mandate an
annual fee for each of ap
proximately 600 dwelling units, to
help defray the cost of its
municipally-administered
recycling effort.
Collecting is not recycling
But nothing is recycled until it
is used as a raw material to make
a product. Contrasted with the
enthusiasm shown by volunteer
collection efforts, there has not
been any regional scale adoption
m the State of recycling oriented
systems supported by
minicipalities. This is probably
not surprising, since, as tax
supported agencies,
municipalities are under a
mandate to provide services at
minimum direct cost to the
taxpayer. Toward this end, the
most economical route to waste
disposal has traditionally been
the landfill method.
The landfill as a waste disposal
method is a relatively
straightforward operation, with
nJ J l l f 11 !
John B. Kurtz
Ph: 354-9251
R D. 3, Ephrata
Promise or
the economics determined by the
cost of transportation and
dumping the waste at a par
ticular location. However, the
growing shortage of acceptable
landfill sites coupled with rising
interest in resource conservation,
underscores the need for a better
understanding of what is
required to make recycling work.
Proposals to encourage
recycling are generally aimed at
overcoming two kinds of ob
stacles ; those involving resource
recovery technology; and those
aimed at the limited market
demand for recycled materials.
Obstacles relating to
resource recovery technology
Most proposals centered on
improving technology argue that
if only we could find better ways
to get paper or glass out of waste,
industry would gladly receive it.
This argument is partially sound
for the diverse reasons discussed
next.
More than 50 recycling systems
currently are estimated to be
under development by industry
and government. They are
dominated, numerically at least,
by “pyrolysis” or energy con
version schemes based on the
central concept of heating solid
waste with little or no air to about
500 degrees Centigrade. Syn
thetic oil produced in this manner
in the laboratories of the U. S.
Bureau of Mines Energy
Research Center in Pittsburgh.
By “pytolizing” raw waste it is
transformed into fuel oil
estimated to be worth around
$2.50 a barrel.
There has not been any com
prehensive recycling system for
mixed municipal wastes in
operation for several years with a
daily capacity range of several
hundred tons. Since many
systems are still in the
development stage, most experts
advise that we should wait a few
years until they are sufficiently
advanced to guarantee success.
Although the hope exists that as
resource recovery techniques are
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