TABLE OF CONTENTS Harold Leverenz
George Tchobanoglous
David B. Spencer
During the 1980s, recycling took on much greater significance than just providing an alternative method for treatment of our solid waste. Recycling became an American philosophy, a public mandate. Source reduction and recycling became the only popularly accepted methods for dealing with the management of America s solid waste. However, to place a large part of the responsibility of solid waste management for a community on recycling alone puts an undue burden on recycling and could damage a strong, sound recycling initiative if it results in excessive cost or excessive contamination of high-value products. Just as the sanitary landfill came to be viewed as a disposal panacea at midcentury, only to be later discredited, the euphoria over recycling will need to be tempered with a strong record of tangible results. Topics discussed in this chapter include: (1) an overview of recycling, (2) the recovery of recyclable materials from solid waste, (3) development and implementation of materials recovery facilities, (4) equipment for processing of recyclable materials, (5) environmental and health impacts of recycling, and (6) recycling economics.
In the United States, the recycling rate for municipal solid waste (MSW) is about 22 percent, not including composting, based on estimates by Franklin Associates (U.S. EPA, 2001). However, the goal of 50 percent diversion by 2000 is close to being achieved in California. One significant trend is the emergence of a greater number of mandatory and voluntary programs for the source separation of...
