Would You Want to Work in a Recycling Facility?

While the recycling industry does provide real, living-wage jobs for many thousands of people, not all these jobs would be considered suitable by many people. For instance, the front line jobs on the sorting line of a recycling facility are usually smelly, noisy and sometimes, downright dangerous.

In urban areas where recycling is an emerging and growing industry, one solution to the problem of finding people to take these jobs is to preferentially give them to homeless people who need to establish a job history. This has worked well in many areas, though turnover rates continue to be rather high, despite relatively high wages.

Of course, the feasibility of any recycling program is dependent upon a skilled workforce that is capable of providing a very pure product. This takes some time on the line to develop the skills necessary to make spot-decisions regarding recycled materials.

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The Connection Between Recycling and Alternative Energy

One of the most exciting things about recycling as a social phenomena, is the ability of waste reduction schemes to help foster other "green" technologies and programs. Given the serious social, climatological and political ramifications of reliance upon fossil fuels in North America, anything that helps encourage the use of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and hydro power is a massive benefit to society.

The connection between recycling and alternative energy, aside from both being "green" solutions to waste and pollution problems, is political as well as personal. For instance, someone who is motivated to be passionate about recycling is likely to be an advocate of carbon-neutral power. This is true for governments as well as individuals. There are even technologies that can actually produced bio-fuel from previously landfilled materials such as plastic and organic-waste derived methane.

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Automotive Battery Recycling: A Success Story

Though most people don't think of it as such, the oldest and most often used type of rechargeable battery is found in automobiles. The lead-acid batteries that most cars and trucks employ is recharged by the alternator when the vehicle is running. These batteries were once very often sent to landfills when they were no longer able to take a charge.

However, in recent years, regulations regarding the recycling of automotive batteries require nearly all sellers of such batteries to take the old ones back for rework when a new one is sold. This scheme has resulted is a tremendously high rate of recycling - well over 95% in most areas - and is currently being held up as an example of the sort of job people can do when regulations, markets and consumer desire to do the right thing come into play. As a side benefit, the amount of lead that is distributed into the local soil and watersheds is significantly reduced.

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