Designing for recycling

Washington citizens and businesses dispose more (6.8 pounds of waste per person, per day), than they recycle (3.9 pounds per person, per day).1 The existing system of recycling cannot address much of the material currently being disposed because few consumer products are designed to be recycled. The problems include:

When products are made from multiple materials that are fused together, recovery of those materials is expensive, and in many cases, technically impossible. Therefore, the secondary product is not capable of being recycled, and eventually winds up in the landfill.
The presence of toxic substances renders many products unuseable for recycling.
Most products collected for recycling are "down-cycled" - that is, made into a product of lesser value, (e.g., office paper to toilet paper) rather than returned to the same or similar use. The result is that material disposal has not been reduced, just delayed.

If we are truly going to have a recycling process that saves money and materials, products must be designed from the beginning to be returned to industrial systems, generating new materials of the same or improved quality.

Sources

Solid Waste in Washington State - 11th Annual Status Report, WA State Dept. of Ecology publication #02-07-019, December, 2002

Automobiles are one of the most highly recycled products in the U.S., yet most of this is for the metals - the plastics, rubber, fabric and glass are "shredded" and disposed of in landfills. It is not yet economically feasible to separate and recycle these materials.

Green Products by Design: Choices for a Cleaner Environment

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