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Recycling resources refuse
60
tmot‘i
REVIEWS
the U.S. patents for the 1970- 1977 time period. As such, the book has value for one working in the field of chemicals from pulp and wood wastes, but in no sense can the book be accepted as a review of this field. Irwin A. Pearl Recycling Resources Refuse, by Andrew Porteous, (hardback).
Longmans;
119 pp. &3.95 (cloth) &6.95
A major constraint on the recycling of waste materials in Britain has been fragmentation of control and operation of wastes management into various private and public agencies between which there has been little communication except for limited commercial relations. The main sources of wastes, and handling agencies are: Domestic and trade Collection by district councils. Disposal by counties in England and districts elsewhere. wastes. General industrial wastes. In-house disposal facilities. Industrial waste contractors who collect and/or dispose. Classified recyclable In-house recycling. The reclamation industry, with a possible turnover of several billion pounds/year, and which comprises an industrial wastes. enormous variety of enterprises for collection and recycling of a wide range of materials. All these agencies are motivated by some form of self-interest: profit in the case of the private enterprises, or financial constraint in the case of local government. There are other agencies, however, that are primarily concerned with the technical, economic, or social problems of wastes management in general, and which now play an expanding role in the co-ordination of the agencies referred to above: The Department of the Environment is concerned with national policies for environmental protection and resource conservation; Universities engage in research ranging from systems analysis to the technology of wastes treatment; The Institute of Solid Wastes Management is actively seeking to break down barriers between waste management agencies by providing a professional body serving managers in all the different fields, public and private. It is against this background that Dr. Porteous’ book assumes a special importance because it looks at waste management as a single process. Thus, it has something to interest officials from district councils, county councils and central government, managers in the waste contracting industry and the reclamation industries, as well as his colleagues in the universities and research institutions. It is a book that will contribute towards the long and complex process of achieving a coordinated national policy for waste management, not least because it is comparatively short (120 pp.) and readable by the layman, but it avoids excessive euphoria about recycling because the author takes account of economic factors and recognises the very limited cooperation available from the general public. The structure of the book is good: about a third is devoted to setting the stage by means of a survey of natural resources, including estimates of finite resources and energy relationships, and by a review of the current composition, treatment and disposal of domestic wastes. About half the text is devoted to the logistics and technology of recycling, including glass, plastics, paper, ferrous metal and energy. Detailed descriptions and evaluations of industrial processes include methods of separating mixed wastes, the production of various forms of energy and even the chemistry of protein recovery.
BOOK REVlEWS
61
The author reaches the conclusion that because market forces often tend to defeat recycling objectives there is a need for legislative control, primarily in the field of packaging design and specification, and his final chapter sets out a series of recommendations on the form such legislation could take. For this reviewer the highlight of the book was the very thorough analysis of the economics of electricity generation from domestic wastes via direct incineration. Most of the data were derived from the 1330 t.p.d. Edmonton incinerator and the author concluded that this method was unlikely to be the future path to energy recovery. His view is supported by the subsequent policy of the G.L.C. (Greater London Council) which has been to build transfer stations which link London’s wastes to derelict brickfields by rail. It is also significant that interest now centres on WDF (waste derived fuel in pellets) which provides a fuel in a form which can be stored and transported. Dr. Porteous is equally dubious about the use of refuse as a fuel for district heating, if only for the problem of load factor because the ratio between maximum and minimum demand may be as high as 10: 1. However, the use of WDF instead of crude wastes as a fuel may go a long way to solve this load factor problem. A surprising omission is the recycling potential of textiles, which account for 3% of domestic wastes and were at one time an important revenue source at separation plants and provided such varied products as high quality paper, army blankets, machinery wipers and roofing felt. Is the proportion of man-made fibres now so high that textiles are of no use? Some further qualification is necessary for the author’s statement (p. 60) that fine screenings are usually quite inert. In warm summer months they are usually teeming with fly larvae and cannot be used as landfill cover until they have been windrowed through a thermophillic cycle to kill the larvae. Two warnings are necessary; they are not criticisms. The first is that, due to inflation, current costs are now approaching double those used by Dr. Porteous. The second is that the book is based on the technology, the waste characteristics, and the economic climate of the western industrialised countries and has virtually no relevance to the agrarian, developing nations. Dr. Porteous has performed a valuable service in bringing together in one volume issues that have hitherto been largely the preserve of separate sectors in the waste management field, and by setting out his views on how market forces could be controlled in order to conserve diminishing resources. The high technology of some of the treatment processes described is, however, in stark contrast to the simple methods used during the thirties and forties, the period when Britain achieved a very high level of recycling. A typical municipality had a separation plant at which paper, bottles, textiles, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, bones and cinder were extracted manually or magnetically from a simple conveyor belt, screen and magnet. Paper was sorted into five grades and baled; textiles were sometimes sorted into over a hundred grades ranging from white wool (“clean white knits”) to carpet; bottles were sorted into proprietary, sized, categories; bright tins went to a plant at which the solder was run off by heat and the tin recovered by electrolysis; non-ferrous metal was “cleaned” and sorted into copper, brass, lead, zinc, type and pewter; ferrous was sorted into enamelled, galvanised, light iron, heavy steel, light cast. heavy cast and wrought; and bones went to glue factories and cinders for heating greenhouses. The whole process was labour-intensive and used little energy. The system died because labout costs got out of line with raw material values. One cannot resist the conjecture that during the next ten years rising energy costs and increasing scarcity of other resources may reverse the economic process that killed the pre-war separation plants and that we may return, full-circle, to the simple conveyor, magnet and screen, and to the unequalled dexterity of the human hand. Frank Flinthoff
tmot‘i
REVIEWS
the U.S. patents for the 1970- 1977 time period. As such, the book has value for one working in the field of chemicals from pulp and wood wastes, but in no sense can the book be accepted as a review of this field. Irwin A. Pearl Recycling Resources Refuse, by Andrew Porteous, (hardback).
Longmans;
119 pp. &3.95 (cloth) &6.95
A major constraint on the recycling of waste materials in Britain has been fragmentation of control and operation of wastes management into various private and public agencies between which there has been little communication except for limited commercial relations. The main sources of wastes, and handling agencies are: Domestic and trade Collection by district councils. Disposal by counties in England and districts elsewhere. wastes. General industrial wastes. In-house disposal facilities. Industrial waste contractors who collect and/or dispose. Classified recyclable In-house recycling. The reclamation industry, with a possible turnover of several billion pounds/year, and which comprises an industrial wastes. enormous variety of enterprises for collection and recycling of a wide range of materials. All these agencies are motivated by some form of self-interest: profit in the case of the private enterprises, or financial constraint in the case of local government. There are other agencies, however, that are primarily concerned with the technical, economic, or social problems of wastes management in general, and which now play an expanding role in the co-ordination of the agencies referred to above: The Department of the Environment is concerned with national policies for environmental protection and resource conservation; Universities engage in research ranging from systems analysis to the technology of wastes treatment; The Institute of Solid Wastes Management is actively seeking to break down barriers between waste management agencies by providing a professional body serving managers in all the different fields, public and private. It is against this background that Dr. Porteous’ book assumes a special importance because it looks at waste management as a single process. Thus, it has something to interest officials from district councils, county councils and central government, managers in the waste contracting industry and the reclamation industries, as well as his colleagues in the universities and research institutions. It is a book that will contribute towards the long and complex process of achieving a coordinated national policy for waste management, not least because it is comparatively short (120 pp.) and readable by the layman, but it avoids excessive euphoria about recycling because the author takes account of economic factors and recognises the very limited cooperation available from the general public. The structure of the book is good: about a third is devoted to setting the stage by means of a survey of natural resources, including estimates of finite resources and energy relationships, and by a review of the current composition, treatment and disposal of domestic wastes. About half the text is devoted to the logistics and technology of recycling, including glass, plastics, paper, ferrous metal and energy. Detailed descriptions and evaluations of industrial processes include methods of separating mixed wastes, the production of various forms of energy and even the chemistry of protein recovery.
BOOK REVlEWS
61
The author reaches the conclusion that because market forces often tend to defeat recycling objectives there is a need for legislative control, primarily in the field of packaging design and specification, and his final chapter sets out a series of recommendations on the form such legislation could take. For this reviewer the highlight of the book was the very thorough analysis of the economics of electricity generation from domestic wastes via direct incineration. Most of the data were derived from the 1330 t.p.d. Edmonton incinerator and the author concluded that this method was unlikely to be the future path to energy recovery. His view is supported by the subsequent policy of the G.L.C. (Greater London Council) which has been to build transfer stations which link London’s wastes to derelict brickfields by rail. It is also significant that interest now centres on WDF (waste derived fuel in pellets) which provides a fuel in a form which can be stored and transported. Dr. Porteous is equally dubious about the use of refuse as a fuel for district heating, if only for the problem of load factor because the ratio between maximum and minimum demand may be as high as 10: 1. However, the use of WDF instead of crude wastes as a fuel may go a long way to solve this load factor problem. A surprising omission is the recycling potential of textiles, which account for 3% of domestic wastes and were at one time an important revenue source at separation plants and provided such varied products as high quality paper, army blankets, machinery wipers and roofing felt. Is the proportion of man-made fibres now so high that textiles are of no use? Some further qualification is necessary for the author’s statement (p. 60) that fine screenings are usually quite inert. In warm summer months they are usually teeming with fly larvae and cannot be used as landfill cover until they have been windrowed through a thermophillic cycle to kill the larvae. Two warnings are necessary; they are not criticisms. The first is that, due to inflation, current costs are now approaching double those used by Dr. Porteous. The second is that the book is based on the technology, the waste characteristics, and the economic climate of the western industrialised countries and has virtually no relevance to the agrarian, developing nations. Dr. Porteous has performed a valuable service in bringing together in one volume issues that have hitherto been largely the preserve of separate sectors in the waste management field, and by setting out his views on how market forces could be controlled in order to conserve diminishing resources. The high technology of some of the treatment processes described is, however, in stark contrast to the simple methods used during the thirties and forties, the period when Britain achieved a very high level of recycling. A typical municipality had a separation plant at which paper, bottles, textiles, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, bones and cinder were extracted manually or magnetically from a simple conveyor belt, screen and magnet. Paper was sorted into five grades and baled; textiles were sometimes sorted into over a hundred grades ranging from white wool (“clean white knits”) to carpet; bottles were sorted into proprietary, sized, categories; bright tins went to a plant at which the solder was run off by heat and the tin recovered by electrolysis; non-ferrous metal was “cleaned” and sorted into copper, brass, lead, zinc, type and pewter; ferrous was sorted into enamelled, galvanised, light iron, heavy steel, light cast. heavy cast and wrought; and bones went to glue factories and cinders for heating greenhouses. The whole process was labour-intensive and used little energy. The system died because labout costs got out of line with raw material values. One cannot resist the conjecture that during the next ten years rising energy costs and increasing scarcity of other resources may reverse the economic process that killed the pre-war separation plants and that we may return, full-circle, to the simple conveyor, magnet and screen, and to the unequalled dexterity of the human hand. Frank Flinthoff