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   LET’S TALK TRASH

                 Dasheill Sarnoff

Most people around the world recognize that trash is a problem, but I don’t think it hits them as a big problem or so I thought. I went around Mountain View High School and Los Altos High School and asked what the kids and teacher thought about our trash problem.  Christina D’Elia, a senior at Los Altos High School comments, the landfills are taking up all our water space and we are now sinking in many parts because it used to be water and now it’s “land”. But it’s really just garbage.” Alvin Smith, a Mountain View junior, sees the problem from a global perspective. “In South East Asia their waters are really bad because trash ends up there and just causes a lot of pollution and hurts the environment. Unless something is done about that it will keep on getting worse. As you can see the people are very concerned about trash and what it’s future will hold. One thing is for sure, recycling is the solution.

Why Trash Is A Problem

 Trash is a problem because it takes up a lot of space and I mean a lot, the permitted are for a standard landfill is about 20 acres with a fill area of 11 acres, if you think about it that massive. The big problem in other countries that don’t have the recycling technology that we do and just throw their trash into a big landfill, the problem with this is that it can create acid rain, this happens when the sulfates are sold to chemical companies as gypsum when the purity of calcium sulfate is high. In others, they are placed in landfill. However, the effects of acid rain can last for generations, as the effects of pH level change can stimulate the continued leaching of undesirable chemicals into otherwise pristine water sources, killing off vulnerable insect and fish species and blocking efforts to restore native life.
                                   

THE RESERCH

The research that I have collected for this paper contains both sides of the argument and that argument is weather or not it is worth recycling, this data below includes arguments about both opposing sides and upon two of the topics that I thought were important.

Recycling paper is bad
Lockjaw says that
So, if recycling paper doesn't actually save the mighty oaks, or the old-grown forests, it must at least be more economical, right? Unfortunately, that's not so. Paper from trees is a relatively simple process. Recycling adds more steps. Paper must be collected, cleaned, shredded and treated chemically before it can then be turned into a paper that is generally of lesser quality than the original whence it came. The treatment of paper to be turned into more paper uses more chemical processing than the original paper did, and you KNOW that can't be good for the environment. In the end, the recycled paper simply costs more than paper directly from wood pulp. The only reason the end cost is lower to the consumer is because the government subsidizes its production, passing the additional costs on to the taxpayer
So, recycled paper costs more to produce, causes higher tax rates, increases chemical pollution, and doesn't save old growth forests. Does it at least help in controlling so-called "greenhouse gasses" to leave trees standing instead of chopping them down? No, it doesn't.
You see, trees grow and they die. When a tree grows, it turns a load of carbon dioxide into oxygen. Trees aren't the best at this job, but they aren't slouches when it comes to oxygen production. After a while, though, the tree reaches a point where it reaches a balance. The cast off leaves or needles fall and begin to decay. This decay process produces carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide used up by the tree eventually reaches parity with that being thrown off by decaying matter. When the tree dies, the balance shifts completely toward carbon dioxide production. If, however, the tree is turned into other products, the cycle changes.
One of the major complaints about landfills is that the bio-matter in them doesn't have the chance to break down and decay. If we simply buried the old paper in landfills, then it wouldn't decay either. This would result in less carbon dioxide being produced. I argue that the BEST place for old paper is at the bottom of a landfill.

Recycling glass is bad
Lisa Provence wrote:

Locally, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority stirred up a green frenzy when it contemplated plans to stop accepting glass, plastic, phone books, and textiles at the McIntire Road Recycling Center and to charge $1 per vehicle entering to recycle whatever's left.

Tropea says “trashing glass, plastic, textiles, and phone books recycling will save about $8,000”.

Plastic and glass are the losers. "The markets for it may be less than the freight of getting it to them," says Coiner.

With the costs involved in recycling plastic and glass, is it worth it to try to recycle them? "Economically, no, it is not," says Coiner. "But I think you have to look at the bigger picture. Environmentally, is it right not to recycle?"

Recycling glass is awesome!!!

 Upon further research, a brilliant idea came to mind. Instead of only talking about how trash is a problem, I decided to add a section about how people around the world are trying to solve this problem through recycling.

Glass is an ideal material for recycling. The use of recycled glass in a new container helps save energy. It helps in brick and ceramic manufacture, and it conserves raw materials, reduces energy consumption, and reduces the volume of waste sent to landfill. Because if you think about it glass is only made up of melted sand, so all you have to do is put those little broken bits of glass back in the furnace reshape it and waalaa!, you have you bottle exactly how it was before.

• The process of recycling glassSeparate container glass from such items as windows, mirrors or ceramics because the manufacturing process is very different for items other than containers.
• After a hauler picks up the glass, it is taken to a material recovery facility where the glass is separated by color, cleaned, and then crushed (cullet).
• The cullet is shipped to a manufacturer who melts it (at temperatures up to 2,700°F) and mixes it with "virgin" material to make new containers.12

Reuse of glass containers is preferable to recycling according to the waste hierarchy. Refillable bottles are used extensively in many European countries and, until relatively recently, in the United States. In Denmark 98% of bottles are refillable and 98% of those are returned by consumers. These systems are typically supported by container deposit laws and other regulations.
 I searched the far and wide for the answer to determine if weather recycling glass is worth it. This research has led me to Wikipedia. Commonly asked question, “Is it really worth the energy cost to recycle this empty Sobe bottle, or am I just wasting my time?” FOOL!!! Of course it is worth it, allow me to explain. The reality is that recycling two bottles saves the equivalent energy of boiling water for five cups of coffee. That sounds like peanuts until you learn that we each throw away 331 glass bottles and jars every year (that means nearly 20bn).
One major reason to recycle glass is that it reduces the need for energy-intensive quarrying of silica and lime. For every tonne of recycled glass used, 1.2 tonnes of raw material is preserved. Because glass is made of such simple materials it is easy to turn it back into jars or bottles using little energy, except - and herein lays the problem - if it's green glass. Because the UK is a prolific wine importer but produces very little wine, traditionally greener bottles have been left sitting on the wall than we have use for. They used to be piled up in green-glass mountains and shipped to South America for reprocessing, but now they are crushed and used as aggregate in road building.
Restaurants and bars could contribute some of the 600,000 tones of glass they generate each year, 80 per cent of which is chucked into landfill. The exceptions include the Strada restaurant chain and Young's pubs. Their glass is now recycled by an innovative firm, Smash & Grab (smashgrab.co.uk), which rescues the equivalent of 625,000 wine bottles from landfill each year, now if you think about how much of that glass is going to waste and the possibilities that could be done with that glass it almost makes me want to beat people in the face that don’t recycle with a wet sock, not to hard mind you but enough to make them think about recycling.
Here’s a little story I created to help explain how recycling is useful and how it works

Life of a Can

A can. It’s funny how something that has such a short use has such a long life. If you think about it– once we are done chugging that 16oz beer can (as fast as we can because half time is almost over) it’s rushed to be thrown away. But once we throw it away –its life is just beginning. On Saturday you roll your trashcan outside, filled with various contents and this beer can. The local garbage man comes by, picks up the trashcan and dumps all its content into the truck, including our 16oz friend. After that he drives his truck to the local garbage dump. After the trash is dumped there, it is picked up by another truck. Then another truck will come and pick up that trash and bring it to the separation lines. This is where our favorite can is put on a belt that takes it through an array of machines that separate the materials and bring them to their own piles; these piles consist of plastic, organics, metal, and glass. Our can is picked up by a magnet and is sent to a pile full of other metal objects. Now you might think that this is the end for our little 16oz buddy– but it’s not. You know your friend that bought that new Mustang? Well… its awesome looking frame–that can is a part of it.                                                   

Paper recycling is awesome!!!
Paper recycling is important because like glass it is also a worth while recyclable resource. There is controversy on just how much energy is saved through recycling. The EIA states on its website that "a paper mill uses 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber. Another benefit to recycling paper is it helps save trees. How many trees are saved? You ask well, in 1990 recycling awareness pamphlet the EPA stated, "Every ton of paper recovered for recycling saves 17 trees from being cut down to make new paper. The British Environmental Agency agrees. The argument for saving trees has been used consistently to justify the recycling of paper. In 2005 51.5 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling. The process of recycling paper is also very simple.
While there are differences depending on the specific type of paper being recycled (corrugated fiberboard, newspaper, mixed office waste), recycling processes include the following steps:

• Pulping: Adding water and applying mechanical action to separate fibers from each other.
• Screening: Using screens, with either slots or holes, to remove contaminants that are larger than pulp fibers.
• Centrifugal cleaning: Spinning the pulp slurry in a cleaner causes materials that are more dense than pulp fibers to move outward and be rejected.
• Flotation: Passing air bubbles through the pulp slurry, with a surfactant present, causes ink particles to collect with the foam on the surface. By removing contaminated foam, pulp is made brighter. This step is sometimes called deinking.
• Kneading or dispersion: Mechanical action is applied to fragment contaminant particles.
• Washing: Small particles are removed by passing water through the pulp.
• Bleaching: If white paper is desired, bleaching uses peroxides or hydrosulfites to remove colour from the pulp.
• Papermaking: The clean (and/or bleached) fiber is made into a "new" paper product in the same way that virgin paper is made.
• Dissolved air flotation: Process water is cleaned for reuse.
• Waste disposal: The unusable material left over, mainly ink, plastics, filler and short fibers, is called sludge. The sludge is buried in a landfill, burned to create energy at the paper mill or used as a fertilizer by local farmers.

After finishing these stems you have pile of brand new paper and it didn’t cost you a
single tree.

12  Wilson, Sharl T. "BEYOND THE CURB: RECYCLING PROCESS." http://www.mde.state.md.us/Programs/

     LandPrograms/Recycling/Education/process.asp. 14 Aug. 2001 <http://www.mde.state.md.us/

     Programs/LandPrograms/Recycling/Education/process.asp>. 

                                            
In conclusion I have learned that trash is indeed becoming a menus to society, but as long as wee keep on sorting, recycling continuing to find new ways to reuse our everyday waste then this problem will cease to exist and continuing to that which is recyclable for that which is not I believe that recycling is a good thing, because instead of leaving something at the bottom of a land fill and letting it rot there for the next  thousand years, we are putting it to good use and taking up less space. I feel that it is our duty to protect our planet from the grimy hands that is garbage

 Fare well
                                                                  
       Dashiell Sarnoff

  S, Lock Jaw. "paper recycling is bad." Weblog entry. 2 June 2005. Lockjaw's lair. 27 June 2006

     <http://www.lockjawslair.com/archives/2005/06/paper_recycling.html>. 

  Provence, Lisa. "NEWS: Cost of recycling glass, plastic lose luster." Weblog entry. 25 Apr. 2002.

     the hook. 30 Apr. 2007 <http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2002/04/26/

     newsCostOfRecyclingGlassPl.html>.

  Provence, Lisa. "NEWS: Cost of recycling glass, plastic lose luster." Weblog entry. 25 Apr. 2002.

     the hook. 30 Apr. 2007 <http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2002/04/26/

     newsCostOfRecyclingGlassPl.html>.

  Provence, Lisa. "NEWS: Cost of recycling glass, plastic lose luster." Weblog entry. 25 Apr. 2002.

     the hook. 30 Apr. 2007 <http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2002/04/26/

     newsCostOfRecyclingGlassPl.html>.

  Provence, Lisa. "NEWS: Cost of recycling glass, plastic lose luster." Weblog entry. 25 Apr. 2002.

     the hook. 30 Apr. 2007 <http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2002/04/26/

     newsCostOfRecyclingGlassPl.html>.

  Hyde, Ariane Conard. "Litterbug World." Lip magizne 1 Apr. 2005: 4+. Abstract. 5 Apr. 2007 <http://http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21651/>. 

  Hyde, Ariane Conard. "Litterbug World." Lip magizne 1 Apr. 2005: 4+. Abstract. 5 Apr. 2007 <http://http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21651/>. 

  "Glass recycling." Wikipiedia. 4 Oct. 1999. 4 Feb. 2007 <http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/

  "Glass recycling." Wikipiedia. 4 Oct. 1999. 4 Feb. 2007 <http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/

  "Glass recycling." Wikipiedia. 4 Oct. 1999. 4 Feb. 2007 <http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/

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