Asbestos is mostly used in UK as a building material. Much of the asbestos from buildings is now being removed. However, tonnes of asbestos still remain to be removed. Asbestos dust is dangerous when inhaled. Hence special care has to be taken while removing asbestos.
* Basically there are three types of asbestos that are in use today. White, blue and brown.
* The fibers with which the asbestos is made gets disturbed during the removal of asbestos. Moreover, these fibers are very much harmful if inhaled.
* Using face masks and hand gloves is advisory while handling asbestos.
* Packaging of asbestos should be done carefully before transportation. The asbestos should be kept damp and contained in plastic bags while transporting, to reduce airborne fibers.
* Most of the councils readily accept asbestos at their household recycling centers.
* You can seek the advice of your local council to get assistance in asbestos recycling.
* Few companies provide certain services to remove asbestos safely.
* A few precautions has to be taken for safe handling of asbestos:
Ø Wear a dust mask approves for use with asbestos.
Ø A plastic sheet could be spread out to collect the dust.
Ø This dust should be cleaned with a damp cloth, which should be sealed in a plastic bag while still damp.
Ø The asbestos material should be dampened to prevent dust escaping.
Ø Asbestos should be removed in sheets or components. Breaking up of the asbestos products should be avoided.
FACTS
1. About 15,000 metric tons of asbestos was used in the United States in 1999; most was imported from Canada.
2. In the past, asbestos was used in around 3,000 products manufactured worldwide, most commonly in the construction, car manufacturing and textile industries.
* There are over 50 different types of plastic that are in use today. However, the mostly used plastics are HDPE, PVC and PET.
* It is good to deposit the waste plastic bottles at the local recycling banks.
* The plastic bottles should be cleaned initially, before taking them for recycling.
* Purchasing those containers that your residential recycling program won’t accept must be avoided.
* You can seek the help of your county’s department of public works or other recycling centers to determine what type of plastic to recycle and where to take them for recycling.
* Crush the plastic containers to save space in your recycling bin.
* The plastic bottles should be deposited in the recycle bins. Throwing away the plastic bottles in the trash should be avoided.
* Many of the recyclers do not recycle all kinds of plastics. It is necessary to find out what kind of program your community has, for recycling plastics.
* Remember to remove all the labels and caps from the plastic bottles before you send them for recycling.
* Follow your community’s instructions on what to do with your plastic bottles. Most often there is a special curbside collection for recycling, but otherwise take them to your local Bottle-Bank.
FACTS
1. Americans use a whooping 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour. And the sad news is that most of those used bottles reach the landfills.
2. Recycling plastic saves twice much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
3. Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
4. Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every hour.
To recycle paper, several pieces of scrap paper are collected.
* The collected scrap paper is torn into small pieces and is put into large buckets. If you need the recycled paper to be in color, just add small pieces of colored scrap paper in the bucket.
* Then one gallon of warm water along with a tablespoon of bleach is poured into the bucket.
* Now more water is added to cover the paper pieces completely.
* The scrap paper should be allowed to soak for atleast one hour.
* Next, place about one cup of soaked paper into the blender. Add two more cups of bleach water into the blender, too. Blend this paper and water mixture on high. If it doesn't blend easily, you need to add more water to the blender. This forms the slurry.
* Pour the slurry into another bucket and repeat the process until all of the paper has been blended.
* Different paper products like cardboards, newsprints, office papers are made by adding suitable materials to the slurry.
* The slurry is spread using large rollers into large thin sheets.
* The wet paper is then left to dry, and is rolled up in to sheets, ready to be cut.
FACTS:
1. To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down.
2. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!
3. The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!
4. Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution!
5. The construction costs of a paper mill designed to use waste paper is 50 to 80% less than the cost of a mill using new pulp.
6. Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.
* The glass which is disposed in the rubbish bin will reach the landfills along with all other waste.
* Glass is recycled in all the glass banks around the globe.
* Many supermarkets have glass-recycling banks, enabling you to recycle glass on your weekly shop.
* Most home recycle bins, provided by your local council, usually accept glass.
* Glass collected at the curbside is usually color separated on the vehicle or is sold as mixed glass for color separation or for use in alternative markets.
* Glass from pubs and clubs is usually collected color separated in wheeled bins, but often it is collected in mixed bins due to lack of space.
* Glass is usually separated into three colors. Brown, green and clear.
* Recycled glass contains contaminants which must be removed before it is used to make new containers. Metal, paper, plastic, organics, ceramic and pyro-ceramic must all be removed. This is done using manual inspection and high-tech equipment utilizing metal detectors, vacuums, crushers, screens, lasers, digital cameras and even x-rays to detect and remove contamination.
* Once the recycled glass has been cleaned and prepared it is mixed with raw materials and the whole process of glass product manufacturing begins again.
* Recycling glass mainly constitutes of 6 major steps:
>> Dumping Glass
>> Glass Collection
>> Commercial collection
>> Removing contaminants
>> Container making
>> Alternative uses.
FACTS
1. Currently we landfill around 1,400,000 tonnes of glass each year. This is a real lost opportunity!
2. 100% of recycled glass can be used to make new glass bottles and jars, without any loss in quality.
3. Green bottles are made with up to 90% recycled glass content.
4. Can you believe that glass recycling in 2003 saved enough energy to launch 10 space shuttle missions?
· The aluminium cans thrown into recycle-bins by the consumer are collected and transported to the treatment plant.
· In the treatment plant, aluminium is sorted, cleaned and made ready for reprocessing.
· They are then turned into molten aluminium through a re-melt process. This is done to remove the unwanted coatings and paintings present in the can.
· After that, the large blocks of aluminium, called the ingots are made. It is estimated that it takes 1.6 million aluminium cans to make an ingot.
· To give aluminium great strength and flexibility, these ingots are taken to the mills and are rolled into sheets.
· These rolled sheets are then used to make aluminium products such as cans, wrappers etc.
· The interesting fact is that it takes mere 6 weeks to complete all these processes and the aluminium cans will be back in the shelves.
FACTS:
* Recycling one kilogram of aluminium can save up to 8 kilograms of bauxite, four kilograms of chemical products and 14 kilowatt hours of electricity.
* Anything made of aluminium can be recycled repeatedly: not only cans, but aluminium foil, plates and pie molds, window frames, garden furniture and automotive components are melted down and used to make the same products again. Used aluminium cans can be recycled to make new aluminium cans, aluminium windows can be recycled to make new aluminium windows and old aluminium engine blocks to make new ones. The recycling rate for aluminium cans is already above 70% in some countries.
* Aluminium beverage cans can be profitably recycled by individuals and groups and most countries have a national can recycling association which offers advice, support, and can put collectors in touch with purchasing organizations.
* Aluminium is the only packaging material that more than covers the cost of its own collection and processing at recycling centers.
Aluminium will never loose its properties no matter the number of times it has been recycled. This means that aluminium can be recycled forever.