Everyone is into recycling these days – and every bit of waste that can be diverted from the landfills is a good thing. The situation needs to be looked at carefully.

Two small communities in Canada have banned the use of disposable plastic shopping bags – and now larger communities are taking note. The ban is growing, despite the fact that major grocery chains have set up recycling facilities for disposable plastic bags.. The growing number of bans appears to be driven by the fact that most bags don’t get to the recyclers, the bags are a waste that decomposes slowly, they are a huge source of litter and they have caused problems for wildlife. This is enough to ban their use, but there is another, likely even better reason. I read recently that the annual worldwide production of these single use bags consumes more than 50 million barrels of oil. That is a lot of oil. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that the world production of oil appears to be topping out at about at about 86 million barrels per day – and last winter, consumption reached 88 million barrels per day. We were relying on storage to carry us through peak periods, yet at the same time, we were wasting more than a half days production on single use disposable bags. This would seem to make little sense.

An interesting aside – China has taken major steps in this area already. So much for the common comment that we all hear that China is not active in environmental areas.

The practice of recycling vs eliminating products altogether needs a second look. Aluminum is an interesting material. It is the most common metal on earth, but refining it involves a process that is the same as charging a battery. The aluminum absorbs a lot of electrical energy to be converted from the natural state into the metal that is used. Used aluminum beverage containers do NOT loose the energy that went into making them when they are recycled. Recyclers simply melt them down, and recover pure aluminum almost ready for reuse. A small amount of the metal (and energy) may be lost, but most is recovered. This seems to make good sense, as discarding the cans traps the energy that went into the aluminum refining process in a landfill forever.

Glass on the other hand is a product that is basically made from sand. It takes a lot of energy to make, largely to melt the silica and then allow it to solidify into the glass containers that we know. Some years ago, I worked at an airline and a group of keen flight attendants successfully started a recycling program. The program was supported by the company. After capturing the “low hanging fruit” (beverage cans, paper and cardboard), the crews went after glass. At the time, they served large quantities of bottled wine on flights, and there was a continuous supply of empty bottles – almost all identical. I attended a dinner and had heard one winery complaining about the fact that there was only one bottle manufacturer in Canada at the time, and the wineries were hostages – paying high prices for bottles. I was pretty certain that one winery would want the bottles. I spent a lot of time looking for someone to take the bottles and was turned away by every one that I spoke to. No one was interested in collecting these bottles – even packed in cases for pickup. In the end, we offered them to the “home brewers” and they put a small portion of them to good use.

I then looked at the recycling process. Glass is simply melted when it is created, and when it is reused, it is melted again – at pretty much similar energy use. There is really little saved, and in fact, the transportation to the recyclers probably makes it a net environmental liability. In looking back at the airline business, weight is a huge cost, both in fuel costs and emissions. There needs to be a replacement for glass bottles – they are heavy and as a result they consume added energy, in delivery from wineries to customers around the world, in aircraft where they are served, and in transport to the recyclers. They are not, in my view, worth recycling, but rather than discarding them, they need to be eliminated.

The reduce, re use and recycle concept is terrific, but as so often is the case, one needs to look a little further. The option to eliminate needs to be considered first.

We live in a world where consumption is a big issue. Most of the fuel used in cars and aircraft is used to transport the automobile or the airplane itself. A small fraction is used to transport people and their belongings. Car and aircraft manufacturers have made great strides in reducing the weight of the structure of their products in order to reduce the fuel overhead. We have heard a lot about the new generation of aircraft that are coming, that make use of composite materials to provide strength and little weight to do just this. The gains in fuel use per passenger mile are impressive.
We need to do the same to our packaging of retail goods – deliver the product in a package that is light and can be composted, recycled or reused. The energy wasted in delivery needs to be considered. This is one more example of a well intended plan that looks only at a part of the picture.