Ultimate Recycling
As an experienced Dumpster Diver and Scrapper I have found that quite a lot of useful and valuable things are being wasted. And by quite a lot I'm thinking that about 50% of all trash/garbage is more valuable being repurposed than it is just being disposed of. Now, I don't like to be Chicken Little crying, "the sky is falling," or the boy who cried wolf, but I do believe we are rapidly moving into a period of time where a lot of what we, The People, have thought to be immutable truths about our society are going to be challenged and questioned. I believe we are heading towards a paradigm shift in proportion relative to what prophets and conspiracy theorists classify as The Apocalypse. And I aim to distance myself from such a phrase by suggesting a proposal that whether or not we are headed for a Doomsday type situation the merit in the suggested idea stands on its own as a very good idea.
This idea I have named, Ultimate Recycling (whose namesake I would consider Ultimate Frisbee, a far superior sport to just casual frisbee throwing, hehe ;P ). Ultimate recycling aims to sort every bit of matter that would otherwise become waste and to send it into the appropriate process for making it reusable again. This goes for food waste, food container waste (whether metal or plastic), and especially broken appliance waste (which in my opinion is a shame we don't already acknowledge the value of), not to mention replacement home and commercial materials such as sinks, roofing materials, carpeting, tables, and really anything and everything.
So this is a dirty job, I have done it, but it's a dirty, stinky job and it even has a risk that could have terrible consequences. The risk of which I am referring to is that of a needle stick. And while this isn't the only job role (or profession) which offers the risk of being infected by a blood borne disease it is probably the job with the least amount of compensation for this risk, at least monetarily speaking. But it is a very dirty, stinky job which I am proposing and ultimately it would have to be filled by a qualified individual.
1) Garbage - Also known as food waste, shall be turned into compost, however, even this has to be separated into vegetable and animal compost. I don't know the acceptable margin of error here but I do know that the two kinds compost differently and need to be separated.
2) Plastic Garbage - These will need to be washed/cleaned in some way before they can be remelted and reused but this process doesn't necessarily need to be done by hand. I imagine that these containers may be able to be thrown into a bin or a waste water processing pool so that they may be cleaned by some sort of natural process. In fact this past water processing pool may be populated by fish that will eat the food particles from the plastic containers and then the fish may even be harvested for food themselves later.
3) Metal Waste - Most of this I imagine will be tin cans and other smaller forms of metal waste, such as aluminum cans, which propagate from residential and commercial properties and are easily separated from the trash bins.
4) Appliances and Metal Property Pieces - These are also easily separated but usually require special attention to their deconstruction. Microwaves are a good example of this because they contain a component which is considered to be hazardous unless it is removed and broken down from the appliance. And actually this hazardous component which produces the microwaves is made up of two powerful magnets, some aluminum, and a bit of copper wire, all of which, when separated is useful, if not valuable. The metal property pieces of which I am referring to are things such as aluminum siding, faucets, door knobs, and basically anything which isn't classifiable as anything else already previously listed. These things are easily sorted away from the less valuable garbage and junk.
5) Circuit boards and TV's - These are a bit of a bug-a-boo since they are not valuable in the classical sense of metals recycling. However, these things are definitely recyclable considering they always contain a wealth of small electronic components such as capacitors, transformers, resistors, and other. How these thing shall be of use is questionable but when it comes to a city or community attempting a project of Ultimate Recycling these things will definitely be of some sort of value, whether it be educational, artistic, practical, experimental, in tuning and repairing appliances, or decoration is really yet to be determined by the extremity of future circumstances.
6) Anything else - There is more to be recycled, we need to make sure everything is being reused appropriately. Even bodily wastes. More later, edits needed, volunteers requested.
This idea I have named, Ultimate Recycling (whose namesake I would consider Ultimate Frisbee, a far superior sport to just casual frisbee throwing, hehe ;P ). Ultimate recycling aims to sort every bit of matter that would otherwise become waste and to send it into the appropriate process for making it reusable again. This goes for food waste, food container waste (whether metal or plastic), and especially broken appliance waste (which in my opinion is a shame we don't already acknowledge the value of), not to mention replacement home and commercial materials such as sinks, roofing materials, carpeting, tables, and really anything and everything.
So this is a dirty job, I have done it, but it's a dirty, stinky job and it even has a risk that could have terrible consequences. The risk of which I am referring to is that of a needle stick. And while this isn't the only job role (or profession) which offers the risk of being infected by a blood borne disease it is probably the job with the least amount of compensation for this risk, at least monetarily speaking. But it is a very dirty, stinky job which I am proposing and ultimately it would have to be filled by a qualified individual.
1) Garbage - Also known as food waste, shall be turned into compost, however, even this has to be separated into vegetable and animal compost. I don't know the acceptable margin of error here but I do know that the two kinds compost differently and need to be separated.
2) Plastic Garbage - These will need to be washed/cleaned in some way before they can be remelted and reused but this process doesn't necessarily need to be done by hand. I imagine that these containers may be able to be thrown into a bin or a waste water processing pool so that they may be cleaned by some sort of natural process. In fact this past water processing pool may be populated by fish that will eat the food particles from the plastic containers and then the fish may even be harvested for food themselves later.
3) Metal Waste - Most of this I imagine will be tin cans and other smaller forms of metal waste, such as aluminum cans, which propagate from residential and commercial properties and are easily separated from the trash bins.
4) Appliances and Metal Property Pieces - These are also easily separated but usually require special attention to their deconstruction. Microwaves are a good example of this because they contain a component which is considered to be hazardous unless it is removed and broken down from the appliance. And actually this hazardous component which produces the microwaves is made up of two powerful magnets, some aluminum, and a bit of copper wire, all of which, when separated is useful, if not valuable. The metal property pieces of which I am referring to are things such as aluminum siding, faucets, door knobs, and basically anything which isn't classifiable as anything else already previously listed. These things are easily sorted away from the less valuable garbage and junk.
5) Circuit boards and TV's - These are a bit of a bug-a-boo since they are not valuable in the classical sense of metals recycling. However, these things are definitely recyclable considering they always contain a wealth of small electronic components such as capacitors, transformers, resistors, and other. How these thing shall be of use is questionable but when it comes to a city or community attempting a project of Ultimate Recycling these things will definitely be of some sort of value, whether it be educational, artistic, practical, experimental, in tuning and repairing appliances, or decoration is really yet to be determined by the extremity of future circumstances.
6) Anything else - There is more to be recycled, we need to make sure everything is being reused appropriately. Even bodily wastes. More later, edits needed, volunteers requested.