Perfect Recycling is possible

Some people say that perfect recycling is just a dream that can never be achieved. But are they right?

We can say that perfect recycling is possible but mankind's mindset needs to change. When mankind moves away from this unsustainable mass production consumer oriented society, the pressures of recycling will be reduced to a sustainable level. People want to buy everything and anything and the large factories are all to ready to provide low quality goods that have a short lifespan, at a cheap price, without too much concern for the cost to the environment. An out of control consumer driven society equates to a recycling system that just cannot cope, as we see today.

Mankind will always need some types of manufacturing processes to enable useful products to be made and used for a good quality of life. Recycling would of course reduce the need to manufacture more or new items as old materials or complete products would be reused instead.

The earth can cope and clean minor issues that may result from a less polluting manufacturing process than currently employed. The manufacture process nor that involved in the recycling process does not need to be perfect because there are cleaning mechanisms within nature that can get rid of manufacturing contaminants.

Take for example Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) , they have the ability to absorb dangerous heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, zinc, chromium, copper and manganese. They have also been used to assist in cleaning radiation affected areas. Read more in Sherie Blumenthal article Sunflowers to the Rescue! posted in Home and Garden https://www.farmersalmanac.com/sunflowers-to-the-rescue-15614.

It is also known that many types of plants clean toxins from the air. NASA has undertaken research into this area. Read more here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study

Mankind is always learning about the dangers involved in their creating tons and tons of non recyclable toxic waste annually. For a better solution they need to look at nature, how it recycles all its wastes perfectly and we should work towards doing the same.

The creative works and cycles within planet earth show that intelligent design was involved. The creator of this earth made it to be inhabited by humans and also sustainable forever into the future through the planets internal cycles of water, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen to name the main ones. These recycling systems are always at work within nature and they work perfectly. Lets take a closer look at some of these cycles.

Water recycling : Water is cleaned and purified by running through different layers of soils, evaporation and condensation. Heat from the sun causes water to rise into the atmosphere where it condensates into clouds and falls back onto the ground (rain, hail, snow) finding its way into the river systems which further filter's it and then the water flows back into the sea and once again is evaporated into the atmosphere and blown back to wards the land, so the cycle continues. This cycle also takes place all around us, all of the time. Water falls from the sky and yet again is evaporated back into the atmosphere in a clean manner leaving behind heavy metals and other contaminants and even salt.

Oxygen and carbon cycles : One of the purposes plants were made for this planet is that they help in adding to the oxygen levels. Plants take in carbon dioxide produced by humans and animals as a part of combining this with sunlight, the process called photosynthesis which produces carbohydrates and oxygen.

In order to breathe cleaner air some residents living near main roads with heavy traffic are planting trees. People are becoming ever more aware of the health benefits of plants. Read https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/02/how-planting-trees-in-cities-can-save-thousands-of-lives/

The pollution from cars, namely carbon monoxide does not harm the plants as it is rapidly oxidized to form carbon dioxide which is used for photosynthesis. Humans and other living creatures are adversely affected by carbon monoxide because it binds with the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in the blood.

Nitrogen cycle : Another ingredient for life to exist on this planet is the production of organic molecules as proteins. The molecules need nitrogen gas which is within the atmosphere. The atmosphere is made up of about 78% nitrogen. Lightning changes the nitrogen into the correct compounds that plants can absorb. The plants then use this to produce the organic molecules. Animals eating these plants then acquire nitrogen. The cycle continues when plants and animals die as the nitrogen compounds are then broken down by bacteria  releasing the nitrogen back into the soil and atmosphere.

Attempt at perfect recycling

Many countries around the world are realizing that they desperately need to improve their recycling efforts. A world leader is the central European country Slovenia, which recycles 170,000 tons / year at their capital's recycling plant, achieving 98% recycle rate of wastes into objects, compost or fuel. Watch the short 2 minute video below;

Some other European countries like Sweden have introduced similar types of recycling plants. They recycle many goods by giving them to second hand shops to be resold, other waste products are used for transport fuels while the remainder are incinerated by electrical burning turbines to produce heating and electricity for the residents of Stockholm.

Sweden has still found they have a problem recycling plastics. They are rightly worried about burning these plastics because of the pollution caused from this.

One solution to fix the plastic problem would be to encourage (or demand) manufactures to change their standard plastic to one made from vegetable material. It is difficult to tell the difference between the traditional plastic and the vegetable plastic free ones, which are compostable.

An Australian company sourceseparationsystems.com.au is a great example whom makes bags and other products that are predominantly made of third grade corn. Corn being ideal as it’s an annually renewable crop, which unlike trees, can be grown and harvested in a single season. The corn is deliberately sourced from international GMO-free regions with high levels of rain, to minimize any irrigation. When corn is harvested, it is graded for sale. Third grade corn is basically spoilt corn, graded as unsuitable for both human and animal consumption and so, it’s often left by farmers to rot.

So we can see that the world is working on this world wide problem of too much waste and smart solutions are being initiated and improved upon.

Remember to do your bit right now for a better planet by remembering the recycle industries three R rules of; Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

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