Energized purpose

Recycling Today, Jan, 2005 by Brian Taylor

Recycling advocates--defined here as those who wish to see the recycling of more materials even without a profit incentive--have spent the past several years wondering if recycling could recapture the public imagination as a worthy cause.

Some telltale signs and accompanying speculation this summer may have offered a scenario for that to occur.

Resource conservation has long been held out as an important motivation for recycling. But before all the bauxite and iron ore is gone from the ground or all the trees have been cleared from the forests, a different type of resource depletion may spur more recycling.

Anyone who recalls paying $2 per gallon for gasoline this summer may also recall speculation during those months that global oil production had hit an important peak in terms of extracting easily recoverable petroleum.

Higher gas prices are one of several recent events that have caused long-term thinkers to consider the economic implications of fossil fuel depletion.

Industrial consumers of recyclables tout the energy savings of the process. The Aluminum Association has long held that melting aluminum scrap uses just 5 percent of the energy required to mine, separate and smelt primary aluminum.

Despite this energy savings, as many as half of the aluminum beverage cans in the United States go to a landfill rather than to a secondary smelter.

Cheap, abundant energy may have caused industrial producers to look past the energy savings of some recycling processes. But if the energy savings are really as dramatic as touted (especially in the case of aluminum), then the profit motive and the altruistic motivations could soon come to the forefront to re-ignite recycling as an issue on the public's agenda.

Representatives of Balcones Recycling Inc., Farmers Branch, Texas, and Pratt Industries (USA) Inc., Conyers, Ga., have contacted the Recycling Today Media Group to clarify phrasing used by the two companies.

In an article in the June 2004 issue of Recycling Today and at the 2004 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, a former employee of Pratt Industries used the phrases "Anything That Tears" and "If It Tears" to describe a program offered as part of Pratt's recycling services.

Both phrases are federally registered trademarks of Balcones Recycling Inc., and Balcones has been offering services in connection with those trademarks since 1993.

Pratt Industries offers its recycling services under the trademark "If You Can Tear It, We Can Take It."