As promised in our initial post on recycling facts, we will be publishing more facts about recycling as we come across the information in the web and elsewhere. Here are some interesting and cutting-edge recycling facts we managed to dig up today. Enjoy.

Recycling Facts - Aluminum

“There is more aluminum in landfills than we can produce by mining ores,” says Patrick Atkins, Director of Energy Innovation at Alcoa, a large aluminum manufacturing company. According to a report by TreeHugger.com, Alcoa is looking closely into the possibility of “mining” our landfills. The separation of debris from aluminum found in the landfill is still prohibitively expensive but the savings in energy costs may well be worth it. It takes only a fraction (5%) to produce recycled aluminum as it does to extract the metal from ore.

Recycling Facts - Plastic

Oil can now be recycled directly from plastic. Global Resource Corporation (GRC), a company based in New Jersey, announced that they are now able to extract oil directly from such material as non-recyclable  plastics and tires. The process is described in the GRC website:

NON-RECYCLABLE PLASTICS (or tires) are bombarded with our specific microwave frequency in the form of “molecular vibrations” which causes the “cracking” of the hydrocarbon chain. As a result, the hydrocarbon components in the PLASTICS (or tires)are gasified. The NATURAL GAS is then collected – the remaining gases are converted into OIL.

Recycling Facts - Metal

For every ton of steel recovered from scrapped cars, between 226 kg and 318 kg of “autofluff” is produced. Autofluff is left-over material containing plastic, rubber, wood, paper, glass, etc., according to Gershow, a steel recycling company interested in purchasing GRC’s Hawk-10 machine. The Hawk-10 machine is said to be able to extract oil and gas from autofluff, using the GRC technology described above.

Recycling Facts - Fabric

Musical clothes is now produced from recycled audio tapes. An innovative approach to recycling was introduced recently by a company called SonicFabric, which produces fabric made from recycled audio tapes. The fabric or dress made of this musical fabric can actually produce mixed sounds by using a recycled tape head (from an old Walkman) rubbed into the fabric.

Another company,DesignTex, has also announced breakthrough technology in the polyester fabric it produces. Designtex says the fabric is produced using Titanium, instead of the environmentally unsafe Antimony, and can be “be perpetually recycled into a product of equal or greater value.” 

Energy Recycling Facts

Energy from animal manure? Why not? Motherjones.com reported that the town of Reynolds, Indiana is about to “go completely off the grid” by using anaerobic digester to produce electricity from the methane gas extracted from cow and hog manure. Another town, Benson in Minnesota, is reported to burn  500,000 tons of turkey manure, producing 55 megawatts of power and providing 100 jobs.

What recycling facts would you like to share? Feel free to add in the comments below any information or link to an article that you feel should be added to our growing list of recycling facts in this site. Thanks.