Recycle: The Essential Guide (A Closer Look)
by Warren McLaren, Sydney 
on 07. 9.06
TH was sent a review copy of Recycle: The Essential Guide a while ago. But in the meantime Bonnie had already picked up a copy and reviewed here. So we thought to do some justice to the copy we received, why not extract for your edification, some of the juicy information contained within. The book is basically a handbook on how recycling works and why it is important. It comprises five main formats: An Introduction by Lucy Siegle, of the Guardian’s Observer magazine; Chapters on Paper, Metal, Household Goods, etc.; International Case Studies; a Collection of designer works incorporating recycled and reused materials (most of whom will be familliar to TH readers); and then information sections like organisations, websites, further reading, a glossary and so on. While not a book you are likely to curl up in bed with, it should well suit the eco-curious of all ages, and as act a starting point for researchers. It is a very weighty tome, over 250 pages, with a quiet heavy paper stock. A smaller, lighter book would’ve used less materials and been less energy intensive to distribute, though it was printed on FSC certified, 100% post-consumer stock, in a production that used biogas energy. There are some editorial missteps. Like on page 46 where its says “... only about a quarter of paper in Britain is being recycled. In America this figure is even smaller." Yet on the facing page, in bold type is this: “The United States recycles 36% of its paper.” But as I’m occasionally prone to such slips myself, let’s move on to those many other facts and figures:
• Industrialised nations, although only about 20% of the world population use 90% of the world’s printing and and writing papers.
• every ton of paper recycled saves 3,000 litres of water and 95% of the emissions
• Glass recycling saves about 50% of the energy required to produce virgin glass. This is mostly due to the lower temperatures of the furnace, which in turn extend their life by 20 years. Switzerland and Finland have up to 90% recovery of their glass, whereas Britain and the US can manage only about 30%.
• The city of Curitiba in Brazil gives credits to the poor for every kilogram of waste they bring to a recovery centre. Items like styrofoam are shredded to be made into insulated bedding quilts. Through such initiatives the city recycles almost 70% of its waste.
• Norway introduced a lottery scheme, whereby householders bundled up 7 paperboard milk cartons, with their contact details for submission to a prize drawer of $25,000 USD quarterly. Recycling rates increased from 35% to nearer 60%.
• Switzerland’s Zurich started charging their residents for their garbage bags and observed a drop in household waste from 140,000 tons per year to 100,000. This puts their citizen’s annual waste at 400kg per capita, compared to the average European, on 540kg.
• Each ton of recycled steel saves 1.28 tons of solid waste, and energy consumption by 75%
• Worldwide the aluminium industry uses as much electric power as the entire continent of africa. recycling one aluminium can save enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours or a 100 watt light bulb for 20 hours
• Since the 1950s consumption of plastic has increased by 2000%.
• In a 7 year period up to 2002, Britain’s consumption of PET bottles has about doubled, whereas their rate of recycling for the same has dropped by a third. Plastic makes up 11% of household waste, of which 40% is plastic bottles.
• There is enough cadmium in an older style ‘brick’ mobile phone to pollute 600,000 litres of water.
• The cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors sold worldwide in 2002 contained approximately 10,000 tons of lead. exposure to lead can cause intellectual impairment to children.
• And speaking of kids, the average British baby goes through nearly 3,800 nappies (diapers) in their first 2.5 years on the planet. In the UK nappies account for 3% of household waste, or around 8 million per day.
But my fav amongst all the examples proffered was the reuse of a squeaky toy. An orange cat was cleverly seconded to be a bike bell, when a Cuban cyclist lashed it to their handlebars. Brilliant.
Buy Recycle: The Essential Guide Edited by Duncan McCorquodale and Cigalle Hanaor.
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Can You Recycle Teflon Cookware?
- 5 Reuses for: Watermelon
- Compost Stink? Add Cardboard!
- 6 Automotive Parts You Can Easily Recycle
- Forget Going Green Because It's the Right Thing to Do—Go Green to Make Your Neighbors Jealous
- Does Recycling Really Make a Difference?
Excuse me? "A smaller, lighter book would’ve used less materials and been less energy intensive to distribute"? Are you saying that people should read and learn less in order to save the environment?
"There are some editorial missteps"...you forgot the close quotes on the end of your first citation after this statement!
Dear, no, I should think it was mearly a suggestion that a reduction in the pound weight of the media the volume is printed on would have saved enough electricity to give some angry person the electroconvulsive therapy they clearly need.
Not that I'm being uncivil or making any kind of personal assessment, because I am, not.
How do you suggest they do that, then? 6 point fonts? No margins on the pages? It's already a paperback. I'm sure book publishers like to reduce their printing and publishing costs. They would've figured out the balance between expensive, weighty printing and readability a long time ago. Targetting books to be more environmentally friendly only sends the wrong message.
There are many ways to make a book 'greener', without going overboard. Reducing the point size of type is certainly one way. A drop from 14 pt to 12 pt could yield about a 14% saving in volume. This could render a book of 235 pages, instead of 250, for example. Even changing the typeface itself can have benefits. Let's take an example from Dorothy Mackenzie's classic book, 'Green Design'. She notes that a new font and layout for British Telecom phone directories resulted in paper saving of over 10% — about 8,000 trees in that instance! And her book was published way back in 1991.
Such volume reduction can lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of which ground transport is a major contributor. For example, one beverage brand (Horlicks) found that a 7% smaller package resulted in 13% less truck journeys to deliver the same quantity of goods.
Recycle: The Essential Guide uses many coloured pages with a full bleed (ink running right to the edge of the page). This inhibits the recycling of trim waste (the edge bits cut off to make a square book) because the coloured trim has to be de-inked, creating a toxic sludge, before the paper can be recycled as white stock. An ink-free margin on all pages would've avoided this conundrum.
We have previously mentioned some some resources for graphic designers looking to limit the damage they do, while producing publications we want to read and learn from. One of these books, The Graphic Designer's Greenbook, originally came, unbelievably, shrink-wrapped! Publishers often have different objectives to authors.
And thanks to anonymous for observing that my prone-ness remains current.