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Research Journal of Environmental and Earth Sciences 4(8): 776-781, 2012
ISSN: 2041-0492
© Maxwell Scientific Organization, 2012
Submitted: March 31, 2012 Accepted: April 30, 2012 Published: August 20, 2012
Corresponding Author: Anselm E.O. Eneh, Department of Architecture, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, Tel.:
+2348133764353 776
Mitigating the Impact of Climate Change through Waste Recycling
Anselm E.O. Eneh and Stephen N. Oluigbo
Department of Architecture, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Nigeria,
Abstract: This study reviews the impact of disposal of liquid and solid waste on earth’s environment and their
emittance of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. They trap re-radiated solar heat energy in the
atmosphere and subsequently overheat the earth. It advocates that instead of production of materials from earth’s
virgin resources and disposal of wastes by burning or degradation, minimal production from virgin materials and
total recycling of wastes drastically reduce the emission of such gases and vapours that would otherwise have had
damaging effects on the environment. This was based on the European Commission Study on Environment’s
Report, (Smith et al., 2001), which showed that reduced dependence on fresh production of goods and overall source
segregation of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), followed by recycling, gives the lowest net flux of greenhouse gases,
compared with other options for industrial production processes and treatment of bulk MSW. The text recommends
global action on treatment of wastes and concludes that GHG emission is not a regional phenomena and should
therefore receive local, state and national attention.
Keywords: Change, climate, mitigating, recycling, waste
INTRODUCTION
Climate change: The Earth has gone through many
natural cycles of warming and cooling during droughts,
flooding and extreme weather patterns. Scientists have
confirmed that the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are
warming gradually as a result of human activity
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-IPCC,
2007). This warming will exacerbate climate variability
and ultimately, adversely impact food and water
security around the planet. Central to global warming
and climate change is the “greenhouse effect”. Carbon
dioxide (CO2), Nitrogen Oxides (NOX), Sulphur
dioxide (SO2), dioxins, fine particles and other
greenhouse gases entering the Earth’s atmosphere by
activities of everyday energy use and the way of
management of the environment still contribute to the
build-up of Green House Gases (GHG), which are
directly released into the atmosphere. Climate change
impacts are only one of a number of environmental
impacts that derive from solid waste management
options. Other impacts include health effects
attributable to emissions of ozone-depleting substances
like Chloro-Flouro-Carbons (CFC), contamination of
water bodies, depletion of non-renewable resources,
noise, accidents and so on. These environmental
impacts are in addition to the socio-economic aspects of
alternative ways of managing waste (Smith et al., 001).
Waste minimization, recycling and re-use represent an
important and increasing potential for indirect reduction
of GHG emissions through the conservation of raw
materials, improved energy, resource efficiency and
fossil fuel avoidance (Bogner et al., 2007). Half the
world’s population lives in urban areas and a significant
portion of human activities that lead to global climate
change are concentrated in cities (Betsill, 2001).
Controlling local emissions will do little to protect a
particular community from the potentially adverse
effects of climate change, since emissions of GHGs
have global and no direct local effects. Local regions
will be impacted on only through the impact of GHGs
on global climatic scale. It is therefore questionable
whether local initiatives can make meaningful
contributions to mitigating global climate change in the
absence of policy changes at the state and national
levels. When decisions taken at such fora as the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change are applied nationally and
locally, great strides will be made to save the
inhabitants of this planet from further disasters.
The subject-matter of this study therefore comes at
a time when the issue of climate change is being
discussed on global scales. The objective of this text is
therefore to encourage and advocate zero-waste
recycling in production of goods and services as an
alternative to production from new or ‘virgin’ sources
because less energy, less carbon emissions and better
social services are provided by the former. Shortfalls
can however be made up from new sources of
production.
Effects of climate change: The best that can be done
globally is to cut down on emissions of GHG because it
Res. J. Environ. Earth Sci., 4(8): 776-781, 2012
777
appears that the rate of rebuilding the gaps in the ozone
layer seems to be slow. It is human beings that need the
environment more than it needs the humans.
Environmental sustainability should be the keyword for
every action taken in respect of humans’ relationships
with the environments-natural and built. The effects of
climate change are already in existence and are felt in
every part of the planet earth. Flooding is most
devastating in low-lying areas of the world, due to
glacial meltdown at the polar regions of the world,
resulting in upsurge of ocean levels and currents.
Tornadoes and resultant extreme rainfalls add to
dislodge human settlements. Higher than normal
temperatures experienced around the world have caused
uncontrollable bushfires because the protection which
the earth receives from the ozone layer against the
penetration of hot infrared rays of the sun has
significantly diminished.
Peer-reviewed research published by the Journal of
Geography and Regional Planning, concludes that
Nigeria’s average temperature has risen by 1.7°C in the
period 1901-2005. The increase has been higher in the
semi-arid regions and lower in the coastal zone. The
study also demonstrates that the rate of change has
increased since the 1970s. By contrast, rising sea levels
threaten Nigeria’s coastal regions (One World Guides,
2011). The low-lying terrain of the Niger Delta, criss-
crossed with creeks and waterways, open to the Atlantic
Ocean, make it extremely vulnerable to flooding. The
protective mangroves of this coastline have been
largely lost to human intervention.
Half of the 15 million population of the city of
Lagos live less than 2 m above the sea level. The
wealthiest areas of Victoria Island and Ikoyi are in
Nigeria’s coastal front line, alongside the slum
settlement of Maroko. The consequences for the
Nigerian people is a geographical threat from
desertification in the north, gully erosions and
landslides in the central states and flooding in the south.
Each effect results in dislodgement and dislocation of
inhabitants from their households and ancestral
domains.
HOW PRODUCTION AND WASTES
CONTRIBUTE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Much of the waste that is disposed of in landfills
decompose, resulting in the release of both methane and
carbon dioxide. In 2008, 20 million tonnes of CO2
equivalent (eq.CO2) were released from the disposal of
solid waste on land (Gregory, 2010). Waste policies can
impact decisions made all the way up the supply chain,
where GHG emissions are generally more significant.
Using recycled content in products instead of new
materials usually results in less GHG emissions over a
product’s life cycle.
High levels of energy and materials consumption in
industrialized countries are the driving force behind the
decline in virtually all major life support systems on
Planet Earth. Over the last decade, Sheehan (2000), an
increasing number of scientists and other concerned
individuals concluded that modern levels of materials
and energy consumption have a destabilizing influence
on the world's atmosphere. Energy consumption
contributes directly to climate change by adding
carbon-based molecules to the atmosphere in excess of
naturally occurring amounts. Carbon molecules,
primarily carbon dioxide from burning petroleum
products, trap radiant heat and keep it from escaping
from the Earth's atmosphere. The resulting warming of
the air has continued to change in global climate.
Materials consumption contributes indirectly to climate
change because it requires energy to mine, extract,
harvest, process and transport raw materials; more
energy to manufacture, transport and dispose of waste
products.
THE RECYCLING OPTION
Recycling is important to the environment because
it controls GHG emissions in two ways:
Increasing recycling rates: Recycling more materials
means less virgin resources are being used in
manufacturing processes. All of the GHGs that would
have been released from extracting and refining new
resources are avoided. Although some GHGs are
released by transporting and processing recycled
materials, there is almost always a net benefit over the
use of virgin resources. More recycling means that less
waste ends up in landfills, decreasing landfill
emissions. It should be noted that recycling paper
products both saves GHG emissions that would have
been generated from cutting and processing trees as
well as allows trees to continue to act as carbon sinks.
Extended producer responsibility: Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) is a waste management
framework that seeks to shift the responsibility for
managing the end-of-life of a product from the
government and taxpayer to those in charge of
designing and producing the product. The theory is that
if a producer is burdened with the cost of disposing a
product at the end of its life, it has an incentive to
design the product for recyclability or reusability as
well as to reflect on the environmental cost of the
product.
Res. J. Environ. Earth Sci., 4(8): 776-781, 2012
778
CONTROLLING GHG EMISSIONS THROUGH
RECYCLING OF WASTES
Beyond everyday recycling option is a zero-waste
situation; an absolute reuse and recycling of waste. This
calls for a radical zero waste resource efficiency and
strategies for elimination, by recycling, rather than
managing waste; a consequence that will result in many
benefits for slowing down climate change. Zero Waste
is a goal for responsibly managing materials and the
energy required to make them (Sheehan, 2000). It is a
system approach to resource management that
maximizes recycling, minimizes waste, reduces
consumption and ensures that products are made to be
reused, repaired or recycled back into earth’s
environment without dire consequences. It will mitigate
climate change by drastically minimizing the amount of
GHG released into the atmosphere by human activities.
Zero waste recycling as noted by Sheehan (2000),
Morris (2008) and Seidel (2009), will cut down on
virgin materials extraction (including drilling, digging,
cutting, refining, smelting and pulping) in addition to
energy wastes which hitherto:
• Release chemical substances, carbon dioxide,
waste heat and processing refuse into air water and
land.
• Impair the health of people exposed to polluting
chemical releases.
• Dislocate and destroy habitat for a wide variety of
non-human creatures and organisms.
• Impair ecological functions and biological diversity
in ecosystems.
• Alter the senses and feelings humans enjoyed in
many previously natural environments.
Such consequences create important differences
between recycled material-and virgin material-based
system.
Reasons for zero-waste recycling:
It saves energy: By reducing energy consumption
associated with extracting, processing and transporting
‘virgin’ raw materials, manufacturing with recycled
materials uses less energy compared with
manufacturing using virgin materials. Conserving
energy remains an important issue worldwide especially
with increased demand in domestic and industrial
concerns. Energy savings through recycling are of
important environmental benefit. It always takes less
energy to make a new product from recycled materials
than it does to make it from new materials.
Manufacturing using recycled rather than virgin
material saves substantial energy in virtually every
case. Net carbon emissions are four to five times lower
Fig. 1: Energy use: recycled & virgin content products
(MJ/kg) (Morris, 2008)
Fig. 2: Energy savings: recycling versus Waste to Energy
(WTE) incineration (MJ/kg) (Morris, 2008)
when materials are produced from recycled steel,
copper, glass and paper Morris (2008). They are 40
times lower for aluminum. Making a tonne of
aluminum cans from its virgin source, bauxite, uses 229
British thermal units (Btus). In contrast, producing cans
from recycled aluminum uses only 8 Btus/tonne, an
energy savings of 96%.
Figure 1 and 2 show relative energy uses and
savings when recycling of wastes are applied. Despite
this, 45 billion aluminum beer and soft drink cans were
wasted in the U.S. in 1998. Likewise, extracting and
processing petroleum into common plastic containers
(Polyethlene Terephthalate ‘PET’ and High Density
Polyethylene ‘HDPE’) takes four to eight times more
energy than making plastics from recycled plastics. The
recycling rate for these plastic containers was only
20.2% in 1998. Energy conservation is just one of the
environmental benefits attained by eliminating waste,
increasing material efficiency and manufacturing
p
roducts from recycled rather than virgin materials.
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Aluminum
PET plastic
HDPE plastic
Newspaper
Cardboard
Steel
Glass
Recycle Virgin
0
50
100
150
200
250
Alum cans
PET bottles
HDPE bottles
Newspaper
Cardboard
Tin canes
Glass jars
Recycling WTE incineration
Res. J. Environ. Earth Sci., 4(8): 776-781, 2012
779
Soft drink containers, Sheehan (2000), may be only
2% of the waste stream and aluminum cans may only
comprise 1.4% of the entire waste stream by weight,
but they contribute ten times as much (14%) of the
emissions embodied in a tonne of divertible waste sent
to landfill. Plastic containers take large amounts of
energy to manufacture.
It preserves the natural environment and its
resources: Paper and wood account for almost half of
all waste that goes to landfills and incinerators. Forest
products (paper and wood) constitute 38.3% by weight
of ‘municipal solid waste’ and 51.9% by weight of all
products (excluding food scraps and other domestic
wastes) sent to municipal waste facilities. Wasted paper
alone constitutes 48% of the greenhouse gases emitted
during the production of products that wind up in a
tonne of municipal waste sent to landfill and 64% of
commonly diverted waste (Morris, 2008).
Reducing paper and wood scraps save forests that
absorb carbon from the atmosphere thereby reducing
the global greenhouse effect. Trees take carbon from
the atmosphere and store it in their tissues for long
periods. Waste prevention and recycling reduce
greenhouse gases by saving trees that take up carbon
dioxide. This is so because by recycling paper, more
trees are left standing so they can take in carbon dioxide
and release oxygen into the atmosphere (I Love a Clean
San Diego-ILACSD, 2004-2011). Paper and
paperboard dumped at landfills are burnt or
decomposed. Tonne for tonne, recycling reduces
pollution, saves more energy and reduces GHG
emissions more than any other solid waste management
option. Increasing recycling should be a priority
strategy for reducing global warming effects associated
with solid waste management. By using materials more
than once, natural resources are conserved, ensuring
reserves for future generations.
Reduces air and water pollution: Recycling reduces
air and water pollution because the recycling process
reduces the amount of air pollution produced by power
plants and the amount of water pollution produced by
chemicals used in the manufacturing process. In the
United States of America, Sheehan (2000), estimates
that by cutting the amount of waste generated back to
1990 levels, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced
by 11.6 million Metric Tonnes of Carbon Equivalent
(MTCE), the basic unit of measure for greenhouse
gases. The largest source of emissions is landfill
methane (CH4), followed by that of wastewater and
Nitrous Oxide (N2O).
In addition, minor emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)
result from incineration of waste containing fossil
Carbon (C) -plastics and synthetic textiles (Bogner et
al., 2007). Waste minimization, recycling and re-use
Fig. 3: Carbon dioxide emissions: recycled & virgin content
products (kg eCO2/kg) (Morris, 2008)
represent an important and increasing potential for
indirect reduction of GHG emissions through the
conservation of raw materials, improved energy,
resource efficiency and fossil fuel avoidance.
Increasing recycling rate from between 28 to 35%
would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9.8 million
MTCE, compared to landfilling the same material.
These levels of waste prevention and recycling
would slash emissions by more than 21.4 million
MTCE-an amount equal to the average annual
emissions from generating electricity for consumption
of roughly 11 million households. Figure 3 compares
CO2 emissions between recycling of wastes and
production from virgin materials.
Eliminates need for landfill sites: Recycling reduces
and eventually eliminates the need for landfills (which
release methane) and incinerators (which waste energy
relative to recycling and reuse). Recycling saves space
in existing landfills. When landfills fill up, new spaces
have to be allocated for additional landfills. There are
no such spaces in many urban areas unless in the back
yard. Recycling reduces the amount of solid waste
going into landfills, making each landfill last longer.
Reducing land filling and incineration cuts down
methane gas emission and saves energy. Landfills and
incinerators contribute to global climate change by
destroying resources and causing more new resources
to be extracted (I Love A Clean San Diego-ILACSD,
2004-2011). When a million tones of used products and
packaging are buried or burned, then billions of tones of
virgin materials will be extracted from the environment
to make new products and packaging to replace those
wasted. Methane from landfills is the top human-caused
source of methane. Thirty six percent of human-caused
methane releases come from municipal solid waste
landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental
0
4
6
8
10
12
Aluminum
PET Plastic
HDPE Plastic
Newspaper
Card board
Steel
Glass
Recyled
Virgin
2
Res. J. Environ. Earth Sci., 4(8): 776-781, 2012
780
Protection Agency (Seidel, 2009). Organic materials
derived from living organisms, produce methane in
landfills when they decompose without oxygen, under
tonnes of garbage. Methane gas is a potent greenhouse
gas, 21 times more effective at trapping heat in the
earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide. A tonne of
municipal solid waste, land filled, produces 110 kg of
methane. Some landfill operators try to recover
methane. According to Reay (2006), 50% is about the
best recovery of methane from landfill sites. Most
landfill methane is flared on site while few recovered
methane is used to produce energy. Many landfills
eventually leak and pollute groundwater.
It creates jobs: A lot of money is made by scavengers
on dumpsites who extract reusable waste/byproducts for
sales to recycling industries and also for exports. In this
way hitherto unemployed individuals source their
means of livelihood from waste recycling.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations: In view of the issues discussed in
this study, it is recommended that governments should
encourage the following practices at local, state and
national levels:
• Implement waste reduction practices: reuse,
recycle, use recycled content products.
• Reduce raw material usage.
• Improve and optimize manufacturing processes.
• Improve material specification standards.
• Encourage recovery of byproducts and scraps for
reuse.
• Increase energy efficiency.
• Change production lines based on envisaged sound
environmental impacts results.
• Decrease transportation of materials or products.
• Use energy substitutes or waste-to-energy
processes.
• Remanufacture/refurbish products.
• Improve operation and maintenance programs for
efficient waste reduction and GHG impacts.
Conclusion: There is need to develop an international
response to global warming in line with negotiations of
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Countries will not be
able to meet the commitments contained in these
agreements without the assistance of city and local
government agencies. Non Governmental
Organizations (NGOs) and individuals should invest in
zero-waste recycling ventures because of their
profitability commercially and to the environment.
There is urgent need for national and global
declarations for intensifying zero-waste policies for
their environmental and economic values, in order to
save planet earth from further degradation. Saving the
planet ends up in saving humans all over it. Climate
change is not a regional concept, so attacking the
problem from regional perspectives will yield little or
no effect. Environmental issues should be introduced at
all levels of education, to bring the awareness of
environmental abuses and their consequences, to the
consciousness of everyone in the planet.
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