Manufacturers, materials, recycling their cost

A related issue is decreased quality of some streams of recycled materials. Manufacturers of recycled paper seem to have the most problems, reporting that the additional contamination causes economic harm to their operations. Not only must the receiving facilities pay for unusable material, they also have to do more processing and use more chemicals to remove the contaminants. It has been estimated that mUl operation costs increase by about 8 per ton when fiber from single-stream rather than dual-stream MRFs is used. ... 

The food industry has long depended upon reliable, impermeable packaging materials such as glass and metal. Both suppliers and food manufacturers focus research efforts into lighter-weight, fiexible, and semirigid packages, which are typical qualities of plastics. While parameters such as functionality, recyclability, and cost are critical characteristics, the lack of complete impermeability and inertness in these polymer materials can have important effects. Due to their size... 

All these reasons persuade carmakers to lighten vehicles, improve their quality and performances, extend guarantees, reduce development and manufacturing times, reduce costs and support materials that can be recycled. 

As a result of die increasing amount of raw materials that is used to manufacture foamed products and their environmental impact in waste streams the awareness to reduce the use of these materials and to stimulate re-use and recycling is growing. However, these processes are limited by the complexity of the waste streams and high costs involved in re-use and recycling of foams. A possible solution could be found in materials from Biorelated Polymers Sustainable Polymer Science and Technology Edited by Chiellini et al., Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001 3... 

Shaw Industries has an environmental guarantee program, promising to collecL transport, and recycle any carpet tile made with their EcoWorx backing, at no cost to the customer. The company will recycle the material into new carpet. The company was awarded the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for development of that carpet tile as well as the Most Iimovative Product Award at NeoCon. Shaw also manufactures Eco Solu-... 

---