Section 1

THE PROBLEM

U.S. Materials-Use Pattern. Resource recovery in its varied aspects must be seen as part of a much larger economic structurethe total materials and energy use patterns of the nation. Today the recovery of waste materials supplies a very small part of the total material and energy requirements of the U.S. population, and while both population and materials consumption are increasing, the use of materials from waste sources is declining relative to overall consumption.

In 1971, the U.S. economy used an estimated 5.8 billion tons of materials for its total activity, equivalent to 28 tons for each man, woman, and child. Of this total approximately 10 percent comes from agriculture, forestry, fishing, and animal husbandry (food and forest products); 34 percent is represented by fuels; and 55 percent comes from the minerals industries in the form of metals, construction materials, and other minerals.1

Materials use is growing at a rate of 4 percent to 5 percent yearly. Per capita consumption was 22 tons in 1965, 24.7 tons in 1968, and 28 tons in 1971.2 During the same period, population grew at a rate of 1.3 percent annually.

A high rate of materials and energy consumption means a high rate of waste generation. Approximately 10 to 15 percent of annual inputs to the economy represents accumulation of materials in use (in structures, plant, and equipment, etc.); the rest of the tonnage is used consumptively with residues discharged to the land, water, and air, or is used to replace obsolete products and structures which in turn become waste.3

Nearly all of the materials and energy required in the U.S. comes from virgin or natural resources. The tonnage of fabrication and obsolete wastes recycled is approximately 55 to 60 million tons,* equivalent to less than 1 percent of total minerals tonnage required overall by the nation.

If we disregard food and energy substances, the estimated 1971 demand for nonfood, nonenergy materials was 3.6 billion tons, and waste recovery satisfied 1.5 to 1.7 percent of the total requirement. Environmental Consequences of Materials Use. Any form of materials use has environmental consequences. Materials resources

[p. 1]

must be extracted, purified, upgraded, processed, and fabricated into products; in addition, there are transportation steps between most of these steps.

At every point, solid, waterborne, and airborne wastes are generated and either enter the environment or are removed from processing steps at some expense.

The production of 1,000 tons of steel, for instance, results in 2,800 tons of mine wastes, 121 tons of air pollutants, and 970 tons of solid wastes.5 Similar waste flows are associated with every materials flow, although, of course, the magnitudes vary depending on the types of materials obtained. The sheer growth in materials consumption per capita indicates that more pollution and waste is generated per citizen today than was generated in years past.

As will be discussed, reports at this time indicate that the amounts of air pollution, water pollution and waste that result from production systems that use recycled wastes are lower than the effluents from production systems that rely on virgin resources. Thus, any decrease in resource recovery relative to total consumption means an increase in the quantity of residuals generated.

Solid Waste Generation. Ever-increasing per capita materials consumption necessarily means that more solid waste is generated. This can be illustrated graphically by trends in packaging consumption since packaging is a short-lived product category which becomes waste immediately after use.

Per capita packaging consumption (in pounds per capita) has been increasing steadily as shown below.

The situation in packaging is merely an illustration of a general phenomenon of waste generation resulting from a materials consumption rate which grows faster than population.

The total quantity of waste generated in 1971 is estimated to have been 4.45 billion tons, up nearly 1 billion tons from 1967. The make-up of this waste is shown below:

* Includes residential, commercial, demolition, street and alley sweepings and miscellaneous (e.g., sludge disposal).

[p. 2]

The 230 million ton municipal waste load plus that portion of industrial waste occurring in large metropolitan areas constitute what is normally referred to as the "solid waste problem" in popular discussion.

One reason for the growing solid waste burden is that resource recovery has declined relative to total materials consumption. A second reason is the substitution of material-intensive practices (practices which result in consumption of large amounts of raw materials) for less materials demanding practices, e.g., one-way containers for returnable bottles, paper towels for cloth towels, and disposable one-time use products of all sorts-in the home, the office, the hospital, etc.-for products designed for reuse.

The resulting solid waste load is especially burdensome in urban areas because of greater population concentrations and because disposal in urban area is particularly difficult. The urban population, for example, has grown from 64 percent of the total population in 1950 to 74 percent in 1970, thereby increasing the quantity of solid waste in urban areas by a substantial percentage. Additionally, urban populations generate more waste than nonurban residents-approximately 20 percent more per capita.11

Disposal in urban areas is an especially difficult problem because in the city, waste disposal is, at the same time, an environmental, economic, and political problem. Waste collection is labor intensive, labor costs are rising rapidly, and the productivity of most municipal waste collection systems is low. In many urban areas, land suitable for waste disposal has disappeared or is rapidly being used up. Movement of the waste across the boundaries of the political jurisdiction where it occurs is difficult and sometimes impossible. As cities are required to travel longer distances to dispose of their wastes or alternatively are forced to process them to achieve volume reduction, the costs of waste management are increased. To eliminate potential air and water pollution from landfills and incinerators, the waste processing facilities must be properly designed, located, and operated, and must include proper pollution control devices. This degree of control is technologically possible but often costly, particularly in the case of incineration.

Given these circumstances, many cities increasingly are viewing resource recovery as both an environmentally and economically desirable alternative to disposal. Unfortunately, this option is most often not available because demand for materials from wastes is nonexistent or severely limited.

The Recovery Rate. Nearly all major materials are recovered to some extent by recycling. The recovery rate varies from nearly 100

Source: Darnay, A., and W. E. Franklin. Salvage markets for materials in solid wastes. Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972. p. xvii.

percent for solid lead (50 percent for all lead),* 50 percent for copper, 31 percent for iron and steel, and 19 percent for paper and

[p. 3]

board, to 4.2 percent for glass (Table 1). The percentages refer to the proportion of total consumption of the materials satisfied from both wastes recovered in fabrication steps in industry and wastes recovered from obsolete products like junk automobiles and old newspapers.

Consumption of major materials-iron and steel, paper, nonferrous metals, glass, textiles, and rubber-was taking place at a rate of 190 million tons in the 1967-1968 period. During this period the total recycling tonnage of the same materials was 48 million tons, equivalent to 25 percent of consumption of these materials. Historical data in this aggregated form are not available for all materials. In general, however, for most materials, the portion of total consumption of that material derived from waste sources has been declining. Consumption of these waste materials has generally not kept pace with total consumption.

• Paper waste consumption as a percent of total fiber consumption has declined from a rate of 23.1 percent in 1960 to 17.8 percent in 1969.12

• Iron and steel scrap consumption as a percent of total metallics consumption has declined slightly overall from the 1959-1963 to the 1964-1968 period, from 50.3 to 49.9 percent. Purchased scrap

* A substantial proportion of lead is used in gasoline as an anti-knock additive; this lead is dispersed and is unrecoverable.

consumption,* representing the recycling of fabrication and obsolete wastes, has been losing ground: in the 1949-1953 period it was 44.9 percent of total scrap; in the 1964-1968 period, 40.0%.13 • Rubber reclaiming is a declining activity both absolutely and in relation to total rubber consumption. In 1958 reclaim consumption was 19% of total rubber consumption, in 1969, 8.8%.14

• The major nonferrous metals-aluminum, copper, and leadare reused at a composite rate of around 35% of total consumption and this percentage has remained fairly constant over time.15 Historical data on other materials are not readily available in aggregate form, but declining recovery is generally the rule.

It is reasonable to assume that a secondary material, one that has already been processed, should be a more attractive raw material to industry than a virgin material that must be extracted or harvested and processed. The secondary material is already purified and concentrated; scrap steel, for instance, is nearly 100 percent steel while the iron ore from which it is made contains high proportions of silicate materials which must be removed. Why, then, the relatively low recycling rate found in the United States today? The low rate is the result of the action of a number of forces, among them the following:

(1) The delivered price of virgin raw materials to the manufacturer is almost as low in many cases as the cost of secondary materials, and virgin materials are usually qualitatively superior to salvaged materials. Consequently, demand for secondary materials is limited.

(2) Natural resources are abundant and manufacturing industries have directed their operations to exploit these. Plants are generally built near the source of virgin materials (e.g., paper plants near pulpwood supplies). Technology to utilize virgin materials has been perfected; due to the adverse economics, similar technology to exploit wastes has not been developed.

(3) Natural resources occur in concentrated form while wastes occur in a dispersed manner. Consequently, acquisition of wastes for recycling is costly, and is particularly sensitive to high transportation costs.

(4) Virgin materials, even in unprocessed form, tend to be more homogeneous in composition than waste materials, and sorting and upgrading of mixed wastes is costly.

* In the iron and steel industry, distinctions are made between "home" scrap, a process waste in furnaces and in mills; prompt scrap, occurring in fabrication plants; and obsolete scrap, from discarded products or obsolete structures. Purchased scrap is the combination of the last two categories.