Today’s author is me, Olof, a Swedish student working on my Masters degree in Innovation and Entrepreneurship back home . I am here in the US attending a course about American Entrepreneurship at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I am here to see how entrepreneurship works in the US as a part of my masters degree. The course includes a three month internship at a start up company with great potential to be the next market leader. I feel blessed being here, and the fact that I get to work at a company with high ambitions like RecycleMatch is just awesome.
The concept of recycling has been around for quite a while these days. People are realizing the potential of recycling and the value in doing so. For many years we have been recycling the materials with clear potential value such as; metals, glass, plastics, etc. The question is – for how long will we have to wait until the waste we are putting into landfills at this moment can be reused in a better way. To me RecycleMatch, has made a clear global choice. The choice to help our planet and its residents by reducing the masses put into landfills. Which at the same time means saving big amounts of energy and money by not having to reproduce more than what is absolutely necessary.
Every year lots of valuable material are put into landfills. In the US, chemicals alone are produced to a value of $689 billions which is approximately 20 percent of the total world chemical output[1]. With these kind of volumes it is easy to understand that the environmental impact is big. Even if all of the chemicals produced would be harmless, which they most likely are not, it makes our planet less environmentally friendly.
When a student from Sweden gets to see these kinds of numbers you almost can not believe it. After reading up on the subject and realizing that Sweden is slightly smaller in population (9 million) than the US, I thought, chemicals are kind of expensive to manufacturing and there is a huge market for chemicals so it might not be that bad after all. With this said, instead of looking into the chemicals produced, I started investigating how much chemical waste is produced by the American industry every year.
There are lots of different factors that should make us more observant on chemical waste produced than other waste. Let me paint you a picture, in 2008 the toxic chemical waste produced by the American industry measured a total of 3,861 million pounds [2].
The fact that some of these chemicals can have a cumulative effect on the environment is scary. Mercury for instance is a substance that accumulates in our body. This means that if an animal eats toxic waste from, for example, it will not be biodegradable in this animals body. Resulting in that the next species in the value chain will overtake the toxins and will most likely sooner or later end up in a human being. After reading a thesis posted by Sofia Hollstedt at the Swedish University of Agricultural sciences about exposure and accumulation and effects on the immune system of farm animals of environmental pollutants. I realized that the effects are bigger than I could imagine. Her thesis concludes with; “this review shows that soil is the most important pathway of exposure for organic pollutants and that the accumulation of the pollutants mostly occur in the fat tissue” [3]. If not put into perspective this study would probably not have told me much. But it makes me think about how to reduce these enormous amounts of toxins being released. The first and easiest solution that comes to mind is to never produce more than necessary in the first place with reuse or recycling being the next best solution.
Although the best thing for mother earth would be us not producing chemicals – the chemicals do help us develop as a species. Chemicals has made everything from potato farming to auto manufacturing more efficient. Water is a crucial ingredient in many chemicals. This being said means that a lot of water is being used to produce these large quantities of chemicals. Even though two thirds of the earth is covered by water, most of it is salt water. Only 2.5 percent of all the water on our planet is drinkable. The “World Wildlife Fund for Nature” WWF states that there will not be enough freshwater for either nature or humans if we continue polluting or wastefully consuming water, draining landscapes and using land in the wrong ways[4].
Since many chemicals consists of water it is important that we do not just put them on landfills. Putting chemicals into landfills means that if the landfills are not correctly made the chemicals put there might end up in our groundwater [5].
At this moment there are actually being work done to reduce the masses of chemicals produced. After spending some time at Google I have come across a few different methods of recycling chemicals. I think we are able to see a trend where more waste management companies are providing services to separate different chemicals from water. This does not only mean more clean water in our ecosystem but also increased reuse of chemicals. Dr. Paul Palmer former chemist in academia writes on his blog, “chemicals are among the easiest material or commodities to find new uses for”. He writes that this is due to the fact that every chemical typically has hundreds of uses. Chemicals have the advantage of easily being able to transform or be a part of new materials or even new chemicals. There are plenty of different companies out there who specialise separation of different liquids. One company situated in Sweden separates waste oil from water and gets a high-energy alternative fuel which is used by the cement industry[7]. This is just one of many good examples of how to recycle chemicals, do you or your company have a good methodology for recycling chemicals?
Companies in the US should be aware of the impact they have on our environment. We at RecycleMatch are aware, and we are here to help.
Sources:
[1] http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_acc/sec_directory.asp?CID=292&DID=747
[2] http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0378.pdf
[3] http://ex-epsilon.slu.se:8080/archive/00002551/01/Hollstedt_Sofia.pdf
[4] http://www.wwf.se/vrt-arbete/stvattenvtmarker/1122972-vtmarker-startsida
[5] http://www.epa.gov/region4/waste/npl/nplsc/helenasc.htm
[6] http://zerowasteinstitute.org/?page_id=53
[7] http://www.stenametall.com/StenaRecycling/InnovativAtervinning/20ExempelPaInnovativOchLönsamAtervinning/InnovativAtervinning.htm