IDEA: Recycling and Garbage management (1)

Hi,
  there is two things certain in life: death and taxes. Actually, I think garbage makes it a threesome. There is always garbage. Typically, garbage is everything that anyone wants to dispose off. Most commonly this is understood to be waste products, such as somewhat revolting material like sewage and kitchen waste. But actually, the classification is rather grey as one man's garbage is another man's treasure. Ebay being a great example of individuals disposing of items that are of less value to them than to the buyer - just lookup horse manure.

  With this thought going to a meaningful conclusion for recycling purposes, recycling starts with the sorting of waste products or disposable items into value classes. For household waste the most important step is to get a clean separation of the "goods". This is a vital step and various incentive schemes should be used to encourage this.  A major incentive would be offering a full cycle system for certain garbage materials.

  First looking at an example for low hanging fruits -- specifically yoghurt container but also water bottles that are largely labelled as to their composition as PET or similar material. Gently heating of bottles to around 80-90 degrees causes most plastic to revert to their original form. Some heat may be generated from excess or end of live material too contaminated for reuse.  Any foreign body will lead to burning or discolouration and marks the material easier to grade for reuse. Because of the relative small amount of material the heat energy required is less than some bakeries would use. For example a house hold may engage a service provider that will reduce its selected plastic to another base material according to the materials requirements.

  As with film development at a photo development plan -- albeit less frequent today -- a person would submit the waste material to the provider that returns the same material to the person in a uniform reformed state. Alternatively, a household or community could invest in a reformatting system themselves to reform the waste. If the material was cleaned and separated correctly the reform process will likely produce good grade new raw material. Such reformed raw material should be easier to classify and thereby have increased the value.

  This principle in conjunction with incentive schemes as well as a general shift in garbage mangement mentality leads to better use of the natural resources. The idea its to put the incentive for clean separation back onto the household and with that to bring forward an incentive for manufacturing to product easy to separate materials. And thus providing the basic method to connect the end of the life cycle of a product with the beginning of the same or another.