Downcycling

Motivations for Recycling

The act and process of recycling holds great importance in the early development of the modern environmental movement. Recycling served as both a catalyst for organizing and a symbol of change from what was considered the environmental status quo of degradation. Citizen concern resulted in the institution of municipal waste recycling programs in Western nations beginning in the 1970s, and recycling continues to serve as an outlet for the expression of environmental values today.

The symbolic position of recycling has played an important role in increasing consumer demand for collection and reprocessing of waste material and the availability to purchase products produced with recycled content. Recycling of materials, however, is not limited to products encountered by consumers in the municipal waste stream. Recycling waste from the industrial production process along with building and infrastructure construction and demolition, though less visible to consumers, is also an important and long-standing component of the global recycling market.

Recycling provides both environmental and economic benefits. Reprocessing of material generally utilizes fewer resources and creates less pollution than initial processing of virgin materials. Recycling also reduces the need for the extraction, mining, or harvesting of virgin material.

Limitations of Recycling

Because of technical limitations of the recycling process and to the composition of products, almost all materials lose value from changes in material structure when recycled. Most plastics, when broken down, result in a lower-quality polymer. This material cannot be recycled back into the original form (for example, a bottle) but instead can only be used to produce more durable products, such as carpet or clothing. These new products cannot be recycled again. Another example of the limitation of materials and the recycling process is that of paper fibers. Each time paper is recycled, paper fibers decrease in length, resulting in the production of a lower-quality product. Eventually, the fibers become too short to be reprocessed into any form of paper. Whereas the product for recycling may have been first produced as white office paper, after subsequent recycling, the fibers are only adequate for the production of paperboard or paper towels, a lower-quality product with a lower material value.

Limitations of Recycling Collection and Markets

The process through which recyclable material is collected and the state of the market in which this material is sold also impacts product downcycling. In commingled collection of materials, several types or grades of materials are collected together in one stream or container. Commingled collection is popular because it requires a fewer number of separate recycling bins. For example, in commingled glass bottle collection, all colors of glass bottles (brown, green, and clear) are collected in the same container. Recycling bottles back into their original form requires the separation of each color because the mixing of colors in the recycling process causes clouding of glass in the final product. In order to recycle commingled glass bottles into their original form, processing companies must separate each color. This separation requires additional labor and other associated costs. It therefore may be more efficient and cost effective for a recycler to reprocess the commingled glass into a lower-grade and lower-value product, such as fill material for construction projects.

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