Recycling not always an energy saver, study finds
by: Jonathan Benson
http://www.naturalnews.com/032465_recycling_energy.html#ixzz1uDgUSGMw
Friday May 20th, 2011
A study at MIT found that in some instances, recycling uses more energy than using new products. Some things however, will always save energy like old tires and used motorcycles. Timothy Gutowski, the professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and some of his colleagues found that for every remanufactured product that appeared to have a net energy savings, there was another that had a net energy loss. And even among those with net savings, the benefits were often minute. The team also found that in the instance of performance rates by recycled items vs. new items, new items had better performance rates and saved more energy over time than the recycled items. With tires, they found that more gas was needed to use recycled tires than new tires. Overall, the team still says recycling still does help the environment in a big way with lowering harmful affects on landfills.
People would have ot figure that recycled models wouldn't work as well as new models, recycled models have already been through the process once. It's kid of like age, when people get older they aren't as fast and efficient as they were when they were younger. But what confused me was, it said that recycling tires will always be useful, but then the article said that more gas is used with recycled tires than with new ones. My parents are always looking for opportunities to recycle, specifically my dad. If he doesn't know if something can be recycled, he looks it up online.
1. If newer models save more energy over time than recycled ones, should we use more new items in attempt to save energy despite the impacts on landfills?
2. What could be done to make recycled models almost or just as efficient as new modles?
3. What are some items that most people don't think about recycling? Is there a way to get people to start recycling them more?
by: Jonathan Benson
http://www.naturalnews.com/032465_recycling_energy.html#ixzz1uDgUSGMw
Friday May 20th, 2011
A study at MIT found that in some instances, recycling uses more energy than using new products. Some things however, will always save energy like old tires and used motorcycles. Timothy Gutowski, the professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and some of his colleagues found that for every remanufactured product that appeared to have a net energy savings, there was another that had a net energy loss. And even among those with net savings, the benefits were often minute. The team also found that in the instance of performance rates by recycled items vs. new items, new items had better performance rates and saved more energy over time than the recycled items. With tires, they found that more gas was needed to use recycled tires than new tires. Overall, the team still says recycling still does help the environment in a big way with lowering harmful affects on landfills.
People would have ot figure that recycled models wouldn't work as well as new models, recycled models have already been through the process once. It's kid of like age, when people get older they aren't as fast and efficient as they were when they were younger. But what confused me was, it said that recycling tires will always be useful, but then the article said that more gas is used with recycled tires than with new ones. My parents are always looking for opportunities to recycle, specifically my dad. If he doesn't know if something can be recycled, he looks it up online.
1. If newer models save more energy over time than recycled ones, should we use more new items in attempt to save energy despite the impacts on landfills?
2. What could be done to make recycled models almost or just as efficient as new modles?
3. What are some items that most people don't think about recycling? Is there a way to get people to start recycling them more?
Opinion
ReplyDeleteIf the old models are not working as well as the new models than I think that we switch to all new models. One bad thing is that I want to recycle but it seems that I always just throw the plastic bottle I have in the trash and don't walk the extra few steps to put it in the recycling bin. My family ordered a recycling bin so we could try to start recycling and for the most part we do a good job. Recycling I beleieve is a part of global warming and if we recycle more than the temperatures will decrease a little. We need to educate people about recycled models and new modles and what can be recycled.
Question 1)
If newer models save more energy over time than we should attempt to use more new items to save energy. We need as much energy as we can and we dont have many alternate sources of power yet. Saving energy will decrease the amount of time coal miners will be digging for coal, which we learned in class.
Opinion:
ReplyDeleteWhen I read this i was surprised that recycling sometimes doesnt help. When i was younger, I remember when my parents told me to always recycle, and i always did because they told me it helped the world. This is still true but there are a few holes in this theory. New products outperform recycled ones, but recycled products save natural resouces, all in all, i think we should still recycle because it saves room in our landfills.
Question #1:
No, we should still recycle, because performance of these producuts is not that important. Plus we are able to save room in our landfills. In the future our landfills may become full and we will have to recycle. Hopefully we can avoid a trash disaster.
This is interesting because everyone is always telling you that recycling is the best. My dad is crazy about recycling. He recycles everything he can. He always encourages me to recycle too. Even if new products are better than old we should still continue to recycle because like Tice said it keeps them out of our landfills.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1)
No, because our landfills are becoming full and we should do whatever we can to keep stuff out of them.
Opinion:
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to find that sometimes recycling is worse than just using new things. However, it is definately better to re-use things rather than let them take up space in a landfill. Although it takes more gas to recycle tires than it does to make new ones,I believe that we should continue to recycle them so we can keep them out of the landfills. I try to recycle as much as I can, but sometimes it is hard when there isn't a recycling can nearby.
Question 1:
I think that we should continue to recylce the tires/other materials. Even if it uses up more energy it will create more room in the ground for our non-recyclable items. Plus, if people realise that recycling is somewhat worse than buying newer things, then maybe they will have to come up with a better way to recycle them.