Hi and welcome to a special edition of Assignment: The World. I’m Teej Jenkins.
Recycling saves millions of tons of waste from entering America’s landfills and in recent years, the amount of recycled material has increased annually. The EPA estimates that in 2007 alone, over 63 million tons of waste was recycled. Much of which makes its way through recycling centers where it is separated before being shipped off to become new products.
Recycling Center
(Narration)
Schools and offices use endless amounts of paper, products are shipped in cardboard boxes, drinks are sold in plastic bottles and a lot of our food comes in these same materials. Recycling, which is making new products from old material, is one of the best way to keep this stuff from ending up in landfills. Nowadays most people know that you separate your recyclables in a separate container, but you may not know what happens after they leave your home or school. The Recyclery, in Kenmore New York, specializes in collecting these materials and keeping planet Earth clean. They take in up to 230 tons of recyclables a day, preparing them to be sent around the country to become new products.
(John)
Material is collected from the Western New York area here and brought to this facility. Typically, its divided in the truck into two material streams, the fiber products and the commingle products.
(Narration)
The fiber products are all your papers; newspaper, notebook paper, magazines and a whole lot of boxes.
(John)
We typically do 15,000 to 17,000 ton a year, just of commercial cardboard.
(Narration)
The fiber is dropped off by truck and the workers sort through all of the fiber material, removing what doesn't belong, like Styrofoam and plastics. Once all the fiber is sorted, its pressed into bails to be sent off and made into new products.
(John)
Once the truck is dumped and cleared of all its fiber material, he proceeds to another section of the plant here and they dump off the commingle material. The commingle material would consist of different grades of plastic, all your tin cans from the household food products, the aluminum cans and your glass containers.
(Narration)
Again, its just a lot of sorting. Workers sort the glass by color, the plastics are put in their own pile, the aluminum is picked out and the tin is separated with some help from a big machine with a magnet. Once its sorted, the plastics, tin, and aluminum are bailed up as well.
(John)
Our bailing machine has a million pounds of force on the bailing ram. A feed conveyor feeds the material over top of the charge chamber and there's a bailing ram that goes back and forth to bail the material up and once the bail is achieved there's a side ram that pushes the bail out and there's an automatic wire strapper that throws the steel ties around the bail. Then its ready to get shipped out to market.
(Narration)
Recycling is one of the easiest ways to conserve and keep our planet clean. By making new products from recycled materials, natural resources like water and trees are conserved and less fossil fuels are used, drastically reducing air pollution.
ATW FACT #1
From 1980 to 2007, the average amount of trash generated by one person has increased from 3.7 to 4.6 pounds per day. During that same time, the amount of trash that makes it to the landfill has decreased from 89% to 54%.
Source: Environmental Protection Agency
INTRO
The EPA estimated that paper and paperboard made up 32.7% of the trash that was generated in 2007, more than any other material. Fortunately, paper and paperboard are also recycled more than any other material, making their way from recycling centers to companies that turn what was once waste into new and useful products. Solvay Paperboard
(Narration)
As humans become more aware of the need to be kind to our planet, more and more waste is getting recycled. That provides more and more reusable materials for companies that strive to keep our planet clean. Solvay Paperboard in Solvay, NY is one company that is taking advantage of this growing stream of material. For them, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
(Tom)
Here at Solvay Paperboard we manufacture recycled, 100% recycled containerboard. What containerboard is is the material, raw material used for making corrugated containers. A corrugated container is like the brown box you may see at the grocery store that they're unpacking cans from. Its 100% recycled, so we don't cut down trees and repulp them here. We bring in raw material that’s gathered by recyclers across NY and New England.
(Peter)
We receive approximately 800,000 tons a year across all three paper machines and that’s our raw material for the process. When the bales are received, they're brought into our warehouse where they're then conveyed by a conveyer to what we call a pulper.
(Narration)
The pulper is like a huge blender that shreds the raw material and mixes it with water. It breaks the material down to the original fibers that made the box in the first place. After this, the mix, or slurry, is sent through a bunch of cleaners that get it ready to be made into new paper.
(Peter)
The clean stock will be then sent to the paper machine. At this point its approximately 1% fiber and 99% water. The slurry is then forced out onto a moving screen. The screen is very similar to what you see in a window in a home, and the water is then drained out through the bottom of the screen and at some points in time, a vacuum is applied to further remove the water. At the end of that portion of the process, we have approximately 25% fiber and 75% water.
(Narration)
The remaining fiber, called a web, gets fed through rollers that use 700 pounds of pressure per square inch to squeeze out even more water before being sent through a huge dryer.
(Peter)
The web passes over several steam heated cylinders where the surface temperature is approximately 300 degrees Fahrenheit. At the end of this section the web will be made up of 9% water and 91% fiber. At that point in time its considered finished product.
(Narration)
The finished product is a 20 ton roll that can be cut to size and shipped off to a company like Southern Container.
(Mike)
We take their paper and turn it into corrugated boxes, which the general public calls cardboard. Our boxes are made of three pieces of paper; the inside liner, the outside liner and a corrugated medium that on the inside of the box. The medium gives the structure to the box, it acts like the 2x4's in a wall that gives all the support to the product.
(Narration)
First the containerboard is pressed to create the corrugated medium.
(Mike)
You add steam and heat to it to form those wrinkles, much like when you iron your clothes, you’re ironing wrinkles out. In this case we're ironing wrinkles into the paper.
(Narration)
An Earth friendly glue, made of cornstarch which is also used to make gravy, attaches the medium to the outer layers of containerboard. Once attached, the sheets are cut to the right size and stacked in piles.
(Mike)
And those sheets are sent over to the converting side to be manufactured into boxes.
(Narration)
Here the boxes are formed. It’s estimated that Southern Container makes a billion sq. ft. of box every year, almost all from used material and no new trees. Now that's recycling.
(Mike)
Knowing that we aren't contaminating, we're actually reusing products, we're saving trees, I think it gives us all a good feeling.
POP QUIZ #1
Recycling can help keep the environment clean by doing what, is it:
keeping trash out of the landfill
reducing the amount of raw materials that are needed
reducing the amount of fossil fuels that are used
all of the above
And the correct answer is number 4….Recycling keeps more trash out of the landfills. It also reduces the amount of natural resources and fossil fuels that are used, because making new products from reused materials requires less energy and natural resources.
INTRO
Vacant and rundown houses are often torn down to make room for new buildings or to keep the community safe. Often these destroyed homes are thrown in the landfill. One company in Buffalo, NY is trying to change that by taking houses down in pieces and saving as much material as possible.
Buffalo ReUse
(Michael)
Buffalo Reuse is an alternative to demolition. Essentially we saw just an immense amount of money and resources going into the demolition of abandoned and vacant structures here in the city of Buffalo. We wanted to create an alternative that would result in throwing less of that stuff into a landfill.
(Jon)
We are a non-profit deconstruction organization. We take apart houses.
(Michael)
Removing the building, but saving as much material as possible.
(Jon)
We actually talk about harvesting them, that’s the term we usually use, harvesting the material from the house.
(Michael)
So we're just now getting ready to take the roof off. When you deconstruct a house, you take it down in the complete opposite order that it was built. So when you build a house, the last thing to go on is the roof and when you deconstruct it, the first thing to come off is the roof. Then we'll go down and we'll take the ceilings, and the walls and the floors and we'll be moving forward. The reality of the situation is there’s a lot of unwanted houses here in the city. Do our goal is to get some mileage out of that. So if we're going to have to take them down, let's save the material so other people can fix up their houses and do it with good material.
(Jon)
We get a lot of hemlock out of houses, we get a lot of fir, get some oak and a lot of woods that you're just not going to get at the local big box...not the local...at your outlet, big box store because they're astronomically expensive or they're just really not even produced anymore. So, we come across a lot of unique stuff.
(Amanda)
The older stuff in the city is built to last and that’s a lot of the stuff we get. So if you just sort of refinish it, its good as new and its good quality.
(Anthony)
Its not like we're wasting things. We're putting things back to use.
(Michael)
If we're going to have to take them down, let's save the materials so other people can fix up their houses and do it with good material, and if we're going to do it let's do it in a way that creates the most jobs as possible, and then finally in a way that has good follow through and keeps the community in mind.
(Amanda)
Its really nice to be able to help in at least this way and save alot of the building materials, a lot of the wood, keeping from cutting trees down and also preserve a lot of architectural stuff that’s in the city. We have a lot of beautiful architecture, so its nice to save that.
(Michael)
So we're doing it for the same cost and we're creating a lot more as a result of that. We have material, we have job creation, we have a lot of infusion of energy into the communities, we have a great crew of people who really care about the work that they're doing and the communities that they serve, and all of this really gives back to Buffalo in a big way.
(Amanda)
I like to do a little something that’s going to help it out and hopefully bring it back to better standing.
(Anthony)
Its exciting. Its challenging. Its something to look forward to every morning when I wake up.
(Jon)
Its also very satisfying to know that the materials here in our community that would end up in a landfill are being diverted back into the community.
(Michael)
We've been here just a few months. We have about 1200 doors in this room alone, we probably have about 4,000 different spindles here, the old tin ceiling that they used to put in houses, we've got several styles of cabinets, kitchen cabinets, overhead cabinets, furniture cabinets, desks. For the person or persons interested in it, they'll spend a little extra time to make it special just because its unique and different. You know, you look at kind of the goodwill type of thing or salvation army, and people are always changing clothes and getting rid of clothes and it's become part of what you do when you get rid of clothes is you take it and donate it somewhere. Well we're hoping to do the same thing here. So that this can be more of just the norm, is that when you have extra building materials or stuff you don't need anymore, there's a place that you can take it where other people can find the materials that they need.
POP QUIZ #2
The EPA reported that in 2007, what material made up more of the trash in America than any other, was it?
metal
plastic
paper
And the correct answer is number 3….Paper and paperboard made up 32.7% of the trash produced in America in 2007.
POP QUIZ #3
When Buffalo ReUse removes abandoned houses they practice deconstruction which means what, is it?
taking down the houses and saving as much material as possible
destroying the house and throwing it in a landfill
picking up the house in one piece and moving it to a new location
And the correct answer is number 1….Buffalo ReUse takes the house down in pieces and saves as much of the material as possible.
GOOD-BYE
Since the 1960’s, recycling has taken off across the country. The EPA reports that in nearly sixty years, the percentage of trash that is getting recycled has grown from just 6.4% to over 33.4%.
That’s it for this week’s show. From all of us here at Assignment: The World, I’m Teej Jenkins. Have a great week!
