A Brief History of Separated Recycling
Recycling is a big part of the waste management of our world, trying to address resource conservation, pollution reduction and climate change mitigation. Separated recycling is basically, sorting different types of garbage for processing depending mostly of the material an object is made of. This has evolved greatly in time, leading to development of cutting edge technologies and global awareness.
Early recycling
The idea of recycling is not entirely new, throughout history we can point to many examples where objects made of the same material were collectively collected and then the base material was reused to create more objects. The Romans would melt down ceramic and bronze objects to create other pottery and bronze made objects. In 11th-century Japan paper was recycled by shredding old archives and records and remanufacturing them into new sheets. More recently, during WW2, a lot of effort was put on the Allies side to recycle scrap metal and rubber for the war effort.
Early recycling practices were relatively sparse and most linked to resource conservation, but the industrialization era started and increasingly impacted on the environment.
The Birth of Modern Recycling
We can say that modern recycling has its roots in the novel “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carlson which was published in 1962. While the book itself is about the environmental negative effect of the extensive use of modern chemicals, especially pesticides, it has started a new environmental movement, whose general objective was a cleaner world and reduction of the mindless resource dissipation. However the book faced numerous challenges from the chemical industry in general, which was quick and denying its facts, and threatened legal action against its publisher.
April 22, 1970 marks the first Earth Day, which was an event marked by marches and activities sustaining environmental reform across the US, which is now an worldwide tradition. In the same year the now widely recognized symbol for recycling was created by Gary Anderson, representing the recycling loop: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
In the 70’ University of Oregon was among the first entities to use a color coded garbage collection into colored trash bins into categories such as Paper, Metal, Glass and Plastics. In 1978 the municipality of Palo Alto began testing curbside recycling collection for newspapers, cans, glass, corrugated cardboard, motor oil and small scrap metal items. The system will expand in the next few years to the whole residential area.
In 1983, Ontario Municipality implemented a single stream recycle system called Blue Box which collects most of the recyclable materials into blue containers. The system will continue to expand to Canadian municipalities in the following years.
In Europe the leader of recycling has been undoubtedly Germany, with the adoption of the “Green Dot” system in 1991 which forced businesses to make product packaging recyclable and used a green label on them to indicate recyclability. The system was later expanded to the majority of the EU countries with vast positive results. A few years later, Germany adopted the Closed Substance and Waste Management Act (1996) which made waste sorting mandatory for households and businesses. Germany continues to lead in this area having one of the highest recycle rate in the world (around 61% in 2023)
The current situation in Recycling
As of today, recycling evolved to be a critical part of the waste management process in most of the world. The recycling world has evolved significantly, pushed by technological advancements, policy changes and surging environmental awareness.
Technological advancements: Modern recycling has greatly improved the automatization of waste sorting by using the latest tech. Optical sorters use light in different spectrums and camera systems with machine learning algorithms to successfully separate different materials. Magnetic separators are extracting metals from the waste flow, and robots driven by AI are developed to complete the sorting process.
Policy changes: Worldwide governments are adopting policies enforcing waste sorting and circular economy. European Union’s “Waste Framework Directive” is concerned with “measures to protect the environment and human health by preventing or reducing the adverse impacts of the generation and management of waste and by reducing overall impacts of resource use and improving the efficiency of such use”
Environmental awareness: Governments and NGOs are actively promoting numerous programs teaching citizens how to use recycling bins and color-coded trash bins effectively. A lot of schools focus on programs aimed at recycling education, and lately an increased public interest has been observed on this matter.
Despite these advancements and efforts, there are still a lot of issues regarding improper sorting, waste contamination, and recycle process efficiency of some materials. Thus, ongoing investment in the recycle technologies and a lot of research is still required to address the challenges of the recycle processes.
