Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

Dear Friends--The following is forwarded from the GreenYes
mailing list.
Tom

At 06:22 PM 5/11/2010, Lacaze, Skip wrote:

This life cycle inventory may provide useful information for those supporting recycling over disposal or energy recovery (assuming that you have a way to accumulate clean postconsumer plastic):    [Emphasis added.]

 

See http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_acc/sec_news_article.asp?CID=206&DID=10916 for more information and links to the study.

 

New Study Confirms Recycling Plastics Significantly Reduces Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

 

ARLINGTON, VA (April 28, 2010) – A new study confirms that recycling plastics, specifically PET and HDPE, results in significant savings in energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The study used life cycle inventory (LCI) methodology to quantify the energy requirements, solid wastes, and atmospheric and waterborne emissions for the processes required to collect postconsumer PET and HDPE packaging, sort and separate the material, and reprocess it into clean recycled resin.

 

Based on the LCI study results and data from U.S. EPA, the generation of cleaned recycled resin required 71 trillion Btu less than the amount of energy that would be required to produce the equivalent tonnage of virgin PET and HDPE resin. In other words, the amount of energy saved by recycling PET and HDPE containers including bottles in 2008 was the equivalent to the annual energy use of 750,000 U.S. homes. The corresponding savings in greenhouse gas emissions was 2.1 million tons of CO2 equivalents, an amount comparable to taking 360,000 cars off the road.

 

(Calculations were based on the tonnage of postconsumer PET and HDPE recovered in 2008, and the energy required to collect, sort and domestically reprocess the tonnage of plastics containers (including bottles) recovered in 2008.)

 

The new study, “Final Report­Life Cycle Inventory of 100% Postconsumer HDPE and PET Recycled Resin from Postconsumer Containers and Packaging,” conducted by Franklin Associates Ltd., was jointly sponsored by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR), the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) and the PET Resin Association (PETRA).

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