Recycling in History

Early History

In the ancient world, Crete generated some of the earliest-known landfills, while Athens required waste to be deposited more than one mile from city walls. Both communities enjoyed citizen-based waste maintenance and recovery because, in part, of a slower production of goods in earlier civilizations. Early Chinese and European communities relied on bronze recovery foundries as worldwide appetites for metals increased. Because of its durability, malleability, and construction qualities, metal recovery and recycling [Page 742]has remained a ubiquitous practice into the 21st century. Early cities also recycled more than wood and metal when laws focused more specifically on hygiene. Early Londoners crafted clean street regulations, leading so-called rakers to repurpose garbage in informal markets. Early German villages required merchant wagons to leave market spaces with the same quantity of refuse as wares sold or traded each day. In both instances, the legal requirements of public life included constraints on waste disposal that increased, in turn, the likelihood that cast-off materials would be valued and therefore recycled.

Industrial Revolution

As the industrial era began, metals, textiles, and paper grew in distribution. Spain built copper recycling facilities in response to continental appetite. England developed rag recycling in response to aristocratic regulations on textiles. Dust yards, or trash sorting spaces, sprang up in a number of European cities, whereby debris was gathered from city streets, sorted by human hands, and sent to secondhand merchants. Remaining dust and cinders from coal and wood fires were sent to fertilizer makers. Eventually, increased industrial-era waste could be attributed to conspicuous consumption of ever-more goods and products. Ubiquitous waste precipitated municipal health laws, which were crafted to protect citizenry from the by-products of disposal. Additionally, these laws positively affected the health of dust yard sorters and made citizens generally aware of disposal practices, including the need to reuse much of what had been previously discarded. As economies industrialized, they encouraged small businesses formed to reclaim rags, metals, and other goods from consumers and return them to paper mills, steel mills, and other manufacturers willing to pay for secondary materials. In the United States, the trade provided opportunities for thousands of first-generation immigrants to establish businesses between the Civil War and World War II. Some of these became the largest scrap recycling businesses of the 20th century as demand for secondary materials increased.

The 20th Century

The 20th century brought a number of waste and recycling innovations for the industrial and post-industrial eras. Total waste incineration grew into fashion for a period of time, decreasing the practice of recycling in the West. World wars resuscitated scrap and resource recycling drives in various nations to supplement large-scale material needs for military production. War efforts tended to commingle the reasons for recycling as both a patriotic affair as well as an economic need. The 1920s and 1930s brought about the massive expansion of plastics usage that has continued into the 21st century. Plastics had previously been used through the forms of Parkesine and Xylonite for packaging, cellulose nitrate for waterproofing, and Bakelite for myriad consumer goods. The discovery of super-polymer properties led to injection molding and the creation of plastics from petroleum in the 1920s and 1930s. Polystyrene, acrylic, epoxy resins, silicone, and PVC led to the production of adhesives, high-tensile-strength construction, hygienic surfaces, recording equipment, household plumbing, and water bottling. Plastics made the recycling and storage of foodstuffs more widely available as well. Meanwhile, recycling of plastic materials took much longer to establish in many developed and developing countries. To underscore how this recycling gap is ongoing, consider the Environmental Protection Agency's estimates from 2008 that U.S. landfills are still nearly one-third full of containers and packaging, much of which is plastics.

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