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recycling — English
Reuse of material, but not necessarily in its original form. We can never escape the physical laws of the conservation of mass and energy which determine that “there is no away” (see “incineration”), so whatever objects we manufacture or create will still be around in some form or other after we have no use for it anymore. (See “development”, “dual economy”, “developing countries” and “countries in transition (CITs)”, “secondary economic activities” and “tertiary activities”.) Moreover, in order to manufacture objects, we use some non-renewable resources and in the end our scarce, non-renewable resources are “trapped” in objects we have no use for, while our resources are running out. This is obviously a lose-lose situation. The logical solution would be to reduce, reuse and recycle. Recycling involves both reduction, since less objects (items) need to be manufactured, and recycling since either the objects (items) themselves are reused, or at least the material from which they have been made is reused to make another item or object. The culture of consumerism is depleting our non-renewable resources and cluttering our world with objects we do not want. To convert to a different culture is not going to happen in one generation, but if we all worked together we might achieve it before it is too late. There are interesting, innovative forms of recycling in different parts of the world, and it is important to note that inexcusable wastage is far more serious in the developed world than in the developing countries. Laudable attempts at recycling are the Collect-a-Can project, and Mondi and Nampak’s paper recycling projects in South Africa. There are people who make a living by collecting used cans and getting paid by weight for the collected cans which are then used to make new cans. Nampak collects used paper from large paper consumers like Unisa, and Unisa is even paid for the waste paper. Mondi provides private individuals with push-carts to collect carton and waste paper and remunerates the collectors for the waste they deliver. The recycling of glass is very successful in Europe and Canada, but in South Africa it has thus far had limited success. Owing to South Africa’s large poor population, many rejected objects are collected from landfills and end up as building material for shelters (mokhukhus) in informal settlements. In this way recycling is inadvertently achieved.
