The Carbon Crushers Booklet on Recycling

This booklet was created by a group of students, studying HND Administration & Information technology.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ............................................................................................... 3 1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 4 2 What is recycling and its importance? ............................................. 5 3. How do I recycle? ............................................................................ 8 4. What’s recycled? .............................................................................. 9 4. Activity 1.1 ....................................................................................... 14 5. Paper ............................................................................................... 17 6 Plastic images ................................................................................. 20 7 Cardboard......................................................................................... 23 8 Glass ................................................................................................ 26 9 Ink/ Batteries .................................................................................... 28 10 Metal ............................................................................................... 33 11 Benefits of recycling ...................................................................... 35 12. Facts and Figures ......................................................................... 36 Bibliography ........................................................................................ 38

Quiz ......................................................................................................39

Foreword

This booklet has been created by Stacey Connor, Helen

McDonald, Louise Carty, Kirsty Baird and Gillian Pettigrew we

are all HND Administration and Information Technology

students at Coatbridge College.

A requirement of our course is to undertake a project. The

project we have chosen is to raise awareness in regards to

carbon management with a particular emphasis on the value of

recycling.

The College is committed to raising awareness, teaching and

promoting sustainable practices among students and staff. The

objective is to motivate students and staff to become aware of

their sustainable practices which will ultimately benefit the

college and local community.

This booklet has been created to raise awareness on all

aspects of recycling; a booklet was created rather than leaflets

so that the information was green friendly.

There was a large amount of support and guidance given from

Jackie McLellan who is a lecturer in the business department

and also from Errol Luders and the media support team who

has made it possible for this booklet to be created.

1 Introduction

This booklet has been created to raise awareness

about carbon management in particular looking at

the issue of recycling.

The booklet will include:

• What is recycling and it’s importance

• Recycling paper, plastic, cardboard, glass, ink/

batteries and metal/ aluminium

• Benefits of recycling

• Facts and figures of recycling

• Activities and a quiz

2 What is recycling and its importance?

What is recycling and its importance?

• It means to make use of rubbish by breaking it down and turning it into something new.

• 2/3 of rubbish is recyclable.

• Recycling or making new things from recycled items takes a lot less money, much less energy, and saves a lot of the Earth’s natural resources, thereby helping the environment.

• Recycling also saves space in landfills.

Some things are made into the same product over and over again...

Sometimes they’re turned into something completely different

May be made into something which is similar but also different

How do I recycle?

3. How do I recycle?

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What’s recycled?

4. What’srecycled?

What’s recycled most?

• Glass bottles and jars.

• Food and drinks cans.

• Some kinds of plastic especially drink bottles.

• Paper- newspapers, junk mail, magazines and catalogues.

• Cardboard with no traces of food on it. (Must be flattened down first)

• Bottle tops should be removed first.

• Wash out bottles, jars, cans and plastic.

• Squash cans and plastics if you can.

• No need to remove labels.

What’s recycled sometimes?

• Food waste, cooked food and uncooked food are dealt with differently.

• Green gardening waste e.g. grass.

• Aluminium foil-kitchen foil, baking and freezing trays, takeaway and ready meal containers.

• Aerosol cans. (Don’t try and squash these as they could explode)

• Plastic bags.

• Textiles-clothes, bed linen, curtains and towels.

It’s also possible to recycle...

• Cartons such as soup and juice cartons. They must be washed out.

• Mobile phones -80% of phone materials can be recycled.

• Ink cartridges.

• Specs- can be sent to developing countries or someone else may use them.

• Furniture, can be broken down for parts.

• Wood can be used for playground surfaces.

• Tyres- made into sandals, pedals or bags.

• CDs and DVDs can be street lights or burglar alarms.

• Cooking oil can be used to power vehicles and

machinery.

Mostly Unrecyclable Items

• Anything that’s dirty.

• Greeting cards, gift bags and wrapping paper with foil or glitter on them.

• Film plastic-Clingfilm or magazine wrapping.

• Broken crockery and some types of glass.

• Crisp packets and chocolate wrappers.

4. Nursery Information

On this page there are some images that were obtained from the Coatbridge College Nursery, these images show what the nursery is doing to raise green awareness. It shows that currently the nursery children know, more about recycling than we do.

This is the nursery green house made from plastic bottles

The nursery recycles all of its paper

All batteries are recycled in this old water container

Posters are up to promote saving

Uneaten food is recycled to make compost Old tyres are used to grow strawberries which also promote

healthy eating

This is a robot made out of recycled materials This is made from scratch by the nursery children

Activity 1.1

5. Activity 1.1

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Paper

5. Paper Paper

• In many developed countries more paper and card is

thrown away than anything else.

• 1 tonne of recycled paper saves 30,000 litres of water.

Saving Paper images

• Use the internet for writing to people, such as sending e-

cards.

• Write, draw and copy on both sides of your paper.

• Don’t print out unless you have to, use the draft/economy

setting unless you need a very high quality print out.

• Change the page margin so more can be fitted onto one

page.

How is it recycled?

• Paper is sorted by hand into different types.

• It is then turned into pulp. ( a soggy mush churned up

with water)

• Any staples and sticky tape fall off and chemicals are

used in water to remove ink and glue.

• The pulp is sprayed onto a moving belt which squeezes

out the water.

• Once it’s dry, the paper is wound into a big roll and

stored, ready to be made into other products.

What’s it made into?

• Paper can only be recycled about 5 times.

• The fibres it made of get shorter and weaker each time.

• Top quality office paper may eventually become

newspaper then a cereal box then toilet paper.

• Once it’s unrecyclable it can be sent to an incinerator

and burned for waste energy.

Facts and Figures

• Every tonne of paper recycled saves 17 trees.

• A fifth of everything we put out to get recycled is paper

and card.

• A paper recycling machine makes 2 kilometres of paper

a minute.

• Old newspaper and magazines can be recycled into new

ones in only 7 days.

• Recycled paper produces 73% less air pollution than if it

was made from raw materials.

• 12.5 million tones of paper and cardboard are used

annually in the UK.

• The average person in the UK gets through 38kg of

newspapers per year.

• It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper.

Plastic

6 Plastic

Problems with Plastic

• No one knows how long it takes to recycle.

• Plastic release lots of CO2 when it’s incinerated.

• Most plastics are made from oil and a tenth of the worlds

annual oil supply are used in its manufacture.

• A huge amount of plastic rubbish get dumped, blown or

washed into the world’s oceans, where it pollutes sea life

and our seafood.

Can all plastic be recycled?

• All plastic can be recycled but it has to be sorted into 7

different types which are processed differently.

From bottle to fleece

• First bottles are sorted into types and colours and then washed

by strong jets.

• Then there torn into bits by spiky rollers and bits are heated until

melted.

• The melted bits are pushed through holes to make strands.

• When the strands cool they are woven into fabric.

• It takes about 25 two litre bottles to make an adult fleece.

This symbol shows the plastic is type 1 and made from ’PET’ (polyethylene

terrephthalate)

Look for it on drinks bottles

Green Plastics

• Some modern plastics are biodegradable so can be

composted.

• Some are photodegrade-decompose when exposed to

light.

• Bio-plastics can be dissolved in water.

Facts and Figures

• Most families throw away about 40kg of plastic per year,

which could otherwise be recycled.

• The use of plastic in Western Europe is growing about 4%

each year.

• Plastic can take up to 500 years to decompose.

• 275,000 tonnes of plastic are used each year in the UK,

that’s about 15 million bottles per day.

Cardboard

7 Cardboard

Cardboard

• There are 2 kinds of cardboards that are commonly recycled,

these are cardboard and corrugated cardboard.

• Flat cardboard can be used to make shoes boxes and cereal

packaging.

• Corrugated cardboard can be made into packing boxes.

• Not all cardboards can be recycled, cardboards that are coated

with wax and are used in the shipment of fresh product and also

packing of soft drinks and beer cannot be used.

• The reason why these kinds of cardboards are not recyclable is

because, when they go through the pulpier, the fibres do not break

down into individual fibres because of the wax.

So, only the two first mentioned types of cardboards can be used, the

flat and corrugated cardboards.

Types of Cardboard

• Corrugated cardboard is very popular and used to make boxes for

shipping. It is comprised of corrugated fiber paper, sandwiched by

sturdy sheets of cardboard. Once this cardboard has been

deposited into the trash or recycling bin, it is referred to in the

industry as old corrugated cardboard, or OCC.

• Paperboard (also called boxboard or chipboard) is flat, stiff and

often coated to give a glossy appearance. It is used for items such

as cereal boxes, beverage cartons, shoeboxes and tissue boxes.

Paperboard is not cardboard, but people often confuse the two

How its recycled

• It goes through the pulpier in the recycling companies to break it

down into separate fibres

• The pulp is then used to produce more recycled cardboard.

• The advantage of recycling cardboards is that it reduces the need

for cutting down trees, it reduces pollution, it saves importance

natural resources, and it saves the companies a lot of money.

Facts And Figures

• Cardboard is a fully recyclable and biodegradable material. But

there’s just one catch: Oil and water can easily contaminate the

material, rendering it virtually unusable or non-recyclable.

• Recycling 1 ton of cardboard saves 9 cubic yards of landfill space

and 46 gallons of oil.

• Cardboard is safe to dispose of as it has no toxic constituents and

is biodegradable.

• The recovery rate of OCC was 78.3 percent in 2007.

• Cardboard is used to ship 90 percent of all products in the U.S.

• Most cardboard waste comes from big companies, such as

department stores and supermarkets.

Glass

8 Glass #2004815

Glass

• Glass doesn’t decompose, the earliest glass buried over

3000 years ago can still be found.

• Glass must be sorted into different colours.

• Mixed colour glass is sometimes recycled together to

make kitchen worktops or gravel for road surfaces.

• Glass isn’t usual collected but it can be taken to local

recycling centres.

How is it recycled?

• Glass is put on a conveyor belt and then its checked to

see it’s only glass.

• It’s then washed by strong water jets to remove labels.

• It’s crushed into tiny pieces.

• Metal detectors take out any metal and vacuums suck

out scraps of paper.

• Then there heated and shaped into new bottles or jars.

Facts and Figures

• Recycling 1 bottle instead of making a new one saves

enough energy to power a television for 20 minutes, a

computer for 25 minutes or a 100-watt light bulb for 4

hours.

• A bottle sent for recycling can be back on the

supermarket shelves in less than 3 weeks.

• In Switzerland and Finland, more than 90% of glass

bottles and jars are recycled.

• In Denmark, people pay extra for bottles. They get this

back if they return the bottles to bottle banks.

• Every Uk family consumes around 330 glass bottles and

jars a year.

• A bottle bank can hold up to 3000 bottles before it needs

to be emptied.

• 14 million bottles were crushed and used to resurface a

motorway in the UK.

• Each UK family uses an average of 500 glass bottles

and jars annually.

• The largest glass furnace produces over 1 million glass

bottles and jars per day.

• Glass is 100% recyclable and can be used again and

again.

Ink & Batteries

9 Ink

10 facts about recycling ink cartridges

1) Over 65 million printer cartridges are sold each year in the

UK alone.

2) Only an estimated 15% are recycled or reused.

3) Up to 3 pints of oil are used in the manufacture of a new

printer cartridge.

4) Recycled printer cartridges cost up to 65% less than original

brand cartridges.

5) If you recycle cartridges, you can prevent them ending up in

landfill, rubbish dumps and incinerators.

6) The plastic that is contained within the casing of a printer

cartridge can take up to 1000 years to decompose.

7) Imaging drums as well as toner and inkjet cartridges can all

be recycled.

8) A whole barrel of oil is used for every 50 cartridges that are

manufactured from new.

9) One barrel of oil can make around 20 gallons of petrol. That

is a cost to you of about £23.50 at 2008 prices.

10) Recycling 1 million cartridges can save approximately

19 thousand barrels of oil. This is a saving of 1.1 million

pounds worth of oil that would have otherwise been used in

making new cartridges.

Batteries

In the UK about 3-5% of batteries are recycled, the

rest end up in dumps and landfills.

Examples of household batteries that can be recycled

• Mobile phones

• Laptops

• Hearing aids

• Watches

• Portable cameras

• Cordless power tools

• Torches

• Electric toothbrushes

• Razors

• Hand-held vacuum cleaners

What happens to used batteries?

• Recycled batteries are first sorted into different types – for

example lithium, alkaline, lead cell, mercury button – as

each type is recycled differently.

• Lead acid batteries (used for car batteries) and mercury

button cell batteries (flat, round, silver batteries found in

watches) are fully recycled in the UK.

• Lithium and alkaline batteries (AA, AAA and 9v batteries)

are part-recycled in the UK. They are then sent to plants

abroad for the rest of the process.

• Other types of battery are sent abroad, as the UK does

not currently have plants that can recycle these.

Metal

10 Metal Metal

How are aluminium cans recycled?

• Aluminium is used to make 75% of drinks cans.

• Cans are already crushed and packed into bales.

• Then they are shredded into bits.

• Hot air is used to burn off any pattern or logo.

• The bits are heated until melted.

• The melted metal is poured into moulds where it’s left in

solid blocks to cool.

• The blocks are ironed into sheets to make new cans.

Facts and Figures

• Recycling 1 aluminium drink can saves enough energy to

power a television for 3 hours.

• If you bin 2 aluminium cans, you waste more energy than

many people in developing countries each use in a day.

• Recycling steel can produces only 20% of the Co2 of

making them from scratch, which recycling aluminium

cans produces only 5% of the CO2.

• In Brazil, almost 100% of aluminium cans are recycled.

• During the WW2 (1939-1945) all metal was reused,

metal was even taken from corsets and enough metal

was saved to build 2 war ships.

• 24 million tonnes of aluminum is produced annually,

51,000 tonnes of which ends up as packaging in the UK.

• If all cans in the UK were recycled, we would need 14

million fewer dustbins.

• £36,000,000 worth of aluminum is thrown away each

year.

• Aluminum cans can be recycled and ready to use in just

6 week.

11 Benefits of recycling

• The energy saved by recycling well result in less pollution in the

atmosphere.

• Recycling can save many natural resources as old ones items

are recycled rather made from scratch.

• A whopping $20 million could be saved every year if we all

adopted the habit of recycling.

• It can save 15 trees from being destroyed if we recycle only 1 ton

of paper a year

• In the United States 56 % of the paper used was recovered for

recycling during the last year.

• This paper when recycled produces almost 74% less pollution

than making new paper and almost 50 % less water is required

for this purpose.

• Almost 48% of the paper recycled from the offices is again use

to produce tissues, raw material used for paperboard and for

printing purpose.

The more that individuals and businesses participate in recycling the

more our planet will give to us. Some of the gifts that Mother Earth will

bestow upon us are fresh water, clean air, healthy wildlife, litter-free

shorelines, and a thriving and abundant plant life. Sounds like a good

deal.

12. Facts and Figures

Interesting Facts

• Up to 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be

recycled.

• The unreleased energy contained in the average dustbin each

year could power a television for 5,000 hours.

• The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the

UK in 8 months.

• On average, 16% of the money you spend on a product pays for

the packaging, which ultimately ends up as rubbish.

• As much as 50% of waste in the average dustbin could be

composted.

• Up to 80% of a vehicle can be recycled.

• 9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier.

Facts and Figures

• Up to 80% of what we throw away could be reused or recycled.

• If we recycled all our waste paper, over 250 million trees could

be saved a year.

• The biggest waste dump is floating in the Pacific Ocean; it’s

nearly 4 times the size of Great Britain and is full of floating

plastic.

• Everyone throws away their own body weight in rubbish every 7

weeks.

Websites • http://www.eccm.uk.com/ - Camco Advisory Services

• http://www.greenerscotland.org/ - Greener Scotland

• http://www.recyclenow.com/what_can_i_do_today/start_recycling_at_2.html-Recycle Now

• http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/nav/page524.aspx - Recycle more

• http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/ - Recycling Guide

• http://www.ecoschoolsscotland.org/guide/ - Eco School

Dates to remember

Earth Hour- 28th March

Earth day- 22nd April

World Environmental day-5th June

Bibliography

Books

Meredith, S. (2009). Why should I recycle? (1st Edition). London:

Usborne Publishing Ltd

Knight, J, M. (2008) why should I recycle rubbish? (1st Edition).

London: Franklin Watts

Lanz, H. (2010) Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (1st Edition) London: Franklin

Watts

Websites

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Environmentandgreenerliving/Wastea

ndrecycling/DG_180525 Accessed (13/3/12)

http://environment-green.com/ Accessed (5/3/12)

http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/ Accessed (5/3/12)

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