RECYCLING SERVICES
Green Recycling Solutions specializes in recycling and helps to lower waste disposal costs while increasing recycling rates. We offer both pick-up and drop-off services for our customer. As with all services, if you are unsure whether your products are recyclable, contact us and we will be happy to navigate you through the process.
Paper Products
Paper waste from offices, data centers, and businesses is often shredded or bailed. Twenty ton loads are then transported and resold for re-manufacturing purposes.
Many people don’t realize it but as much as 90% of our paper still comes from wood, and paper production still accounts for up to 35% of felled trees. Recycling one ton of newsprint saves about 1 ton of wood while recycling 1 ton of printing or copier paper can save slightly more than 2 tons of wood. It has been estimated that recycling half the world’s paper would avoid the harvesting of 20 million acres (81,000 km²) of forestland.
Also, about 35% of solid waste (before recycling) by weight is paper and paper products.
Today, over half of all the paper waste in America is recycled and reused for the re-manufacturing of products such as making new paper, masking tape, paper money, model globes, dust masks, egg cartons, paper towels and tissue, and planting pots for seedlings.
METAL PRODUCTS
Metal such as steel and aluminium can be recycled for use in the re-manufacturing of multiple different kinds of products, from car parts to building structures.
Ferrous metals are able to be recycled with steel being one of the most recycled materials in the world. Ferrous metals contain an appreciable percentage of iron and the addition of carbon and other substances can be used to create steel. In the USA, steel containers, cans, automobiles, appliances, and construction materials contribute the greatest weight of re-cycled materials. For example, in 2008, more than 97% of structural steel and 106% of automobiles were recycled, comparing the current steel consumption for each industry with the amount of recycled steel being produced.
The steel industry has been actively recycling for more than 150 years, in large part because it is economically advantageous to do so. It is cheaper to recycle steel than to mine iron ore and manipulate it through the production process to form new steel. Steel does not lose any of its inherent physical properties during the recycling process, and has drastically reduced energy and material requirements compared with refinement from iron ore. The energy saved by recycling reduces the annual energy consumption of the industry by about 75%, which is enough to power eighteen million homes for one year.
Aluminium recycling is the process by which scrap aluminium can be reused in products after its initial production. The process involves simply re-melting the metal, which is far less expensive and energy intensive than creating new aluminium through the electrolysis of aluminium oxide (Al2O3), which must first be mined from bauxite ore and then refined using the Bayer process. Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium. For this reason, approximately 31% of all aluminium produced in the United States comes from recycled scrap. Used beverage containers are the largest component of processed aluminum scrap, with most UBC scrap manufactured back into aluminum cans.
The recycling of aluminium generally produces significant cost savings over the production of new aluminium even when the cost of collection, separation and recycling are taken into account. Over the long term, even larger national savings are made when the reduction in the capital costs associated with landfills, mines and international shipping of raw aluminium are considered.
VINYL SIDING PRODUCTS
Vinyl siding scrap can be reclaimed, melted down, and reformed into new siding.
Vinyl siding is plastic exterior siding for a house, used for decoration and weatherproofing, imitating wood clapboard, and used instead of other materials such as aluminum or fiber cement siding. It is an engineered product, manufactured primarily from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resin. Approximately 80 percent of its weight is PVC resin, with the remaining 20 percent being ingredients that impart color, opacity, gloss, impact resistance, flexibility, and durability. It is the most commonly installed exterior cladding for residential construction in the United States and Canada.
The waste and leftover siding from construction is gathered and sent off to be melted down in a fairly straight forward process. Due to the environmental concerns over the creation of new PVC and vinyl materials, recycling and reusing any leftover siding is a great way to decrease the impact of using vinyl siding in housing construction.
Cardboard products
Old cardboard containers are compressed and bailed to be shipped out for re-manufacturing into new cardboard products.
The common use of cardboard packaging makes it a commonly recycled waste product by companies that deal heavily in packaged goods, like retail stores, warehouses, and distributors of goods. Similarly to paper, recycling cardboard, or corrugated fiberboard helps save on waste, landfill use, and the felling of trees needed for manufacturing of products normally produced with raw wood.
Old corrugated containers are an excellent source of fiber for recycling. The baled boxes are put in a hydrapulper, which is a large vat of warm water for cleaning and processing. The pulp slurry is then used to make new paper and fiber products such as new cardboard or mixed with paper to make paper towels or tissue. It can even be used in some types of cat litter.
WOOD PRODUCTS
Wood scrap is often reused when the pieces are large enough. Smaller scrap is shipped out and shredded to be used for the re-manufacturing of new wood products such as OSB or particle board, pelletized for heating purposes, or used for landscaping mulch.
In the United States of America, wood once functioned as the primary building material because it was strong, relatively inexpensive and abundant. Today many of these woods that were once plentiful are only available in large quantities through reclamation due to over deforestation.
Recycling timber has become popular due to its image as an environmentally friendly product, with consumers commonly believing that by purchasing recycled wood the demand for “green timber” will fall and ultimately benefit the environment. Greenpeace also view recycled timber as an environmentally friendly product, citing it as the most preferable timber source on their website. The arrival of recycled timber as a construction product has been important in both raising industry and consumer awareness towards deforestation and promoting timber mills to adopt more environmentally friendly practices.
Reclaimed lumber is popular for many reasons: the wood’s unique appearance, its contribution to green building, the history of the wood’s origins, and the wood’s physical characteristics such as strength, stability and durability. The increased strength of reclaimed wood is often attributed to the lack of air pollution that existed up until the 20th century as well as to the wood’s often having been harvested from virgin growth timber, which had hundreds of years to grow before human intervention.
Reclaimed beams can be sawed into wider planks than newly harvested lumber, and many companies purport that their products are more stable than newly cut wood because reclaimed wood has been exposed to changes in humidity for far longer and is therefore more stable, allowing it to be used with radiant heating systems. In some cases, the timbers from which the boards were cut had been naturally expanding and contracting for over a century in their previous installation. Radiant heat, with its low temperatures and even distribution affects the wood flooring the same way, but the impact is much less dramatic with antique wood than newly sawn wood because antique wood has already been through this cycle for years.