I found this article in the Earth Times and I think you will find it quite enlightening, check it out and leave your comments in the box at the bottom of the post.

Landfill compactor

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The hitchhiker’s guide to recycling! (recycling parts that you can’t reach)
By Dave Armstrong

When we used to use an object for something else, it was called, “multi-purpose,” or old technology.

A really old thing became an antique or vintage object and may have added-value, if it were rare.

At the moment, we try and recycle or down-cycle many materials (such as electronics) that are environmentally distasteful or downright toxic.

After the invention of farming, we usefully recycled some less profitable crops by green manuring, often using leguminous clovers, rye and the like.

What is the future for your recyclable materials list?

Well, we may be able to rely on more automatic disposal and recycling technology if our science keeps developing apace.

When an ancient wanted a new axe, he went and sharpened the old one. When the head wore out, he recycled the same handle and bought or exchanged for a nice new one.

Neolithic axes
By Remi Mathis (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

In such times recycling an animal was about our limit, with skins and horn to use for clothing or tools, as well as the meat content.We deal in recycling now with huge amounts of almost unknown materials, some of which are simply turned around and some that find their way into awkward situations such as mercury.Being dumped from so many small batteries, metals such as mercury (along with lithium and cadmium) can’t be tracked into our environment.Fish have long been avoided as food in some regions because too much mercury found its way from industry into the local ecosystem.

Even better the schemes whereby cars and other industrial products are sold back to the manufacturer for recycling pose an even more efficient solution to the problem of relocating lost materials in the industrial environment.

Glass is a well-cycled product, with even the bottles being recycled in early history.

The saving in the down-cycling of course is in the energy required to make glass, and of course many other materials especially the metals.

On another organic area, wood recycling (of whole forests) has been the trend ever since we realised there would be no wood!

Scandinavian enterprise quickly converted use all, to replanting everything we had harvested, so that in years to come, people could re-harvest the same crop of timber.

Unfortunately oaks and many others have a complaint, as they never achieve their full dominant place in the community and the ecosystem unless they are given a few hundred years.

Who is prepared to wait that long for a profit motive.

More at… earthtimes.org

So, what do you think of the recyclable materials list post, can you add any ideas of your own?

The debate over what should be on the  recyclable materials list has been raging for as long as I can remember and I don’t think it will be going away any time soon.

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