Recycling as an Alternate Form of Energy - Report Example

Recycling as the alternate form of energy Running water is being used as energy source for thousands of years now; These days most of the energy is obtained for hydro-electric power stations, that provides almost around 20% of the worlds electricity. Natural resources are solar power, Wind energy, Hydro-electric power, geothermal power and the latest known Biomass. Solar Power: Three types of solar power are established, although sun is the ultimate source, solar cells, solar furnaces and solar water heating are the solar power types. The advantages and disadvantages of solar power are briefed below: Solar Power Advantages Disadvantages Free No pollution No waste Can be used in remote places Handy for law-power uses. Doesn't work at night Expensive to build Reliable for very sunny climates Wind Energy Free No pollution No waste Doesn't take too much land Can be used in remote areas Unpredictable Ruins the seen Can be noisy Hydro-electric power Free No pollution Constant supply of power Water stored for peak times Full capacity in short time Expensive to build Cause floods upstream Difficulty in finding good location Geothermal power Free No pollution Small area of land No fuel needed Scarcity of suitable locations Difficult to treat poisonous gases that rise Biomass Better to recycle waste Waste is cheap Less earth resources used Hard to collect waste Causes pollution Availability of some wastes is not constant Alternate source of power is the thrust are of research in both developed and undeveloped countries. The United States Government will propose a 30-30 plan which aims that by 2030, 30% of the fuel that is been used for transport will be biological. The EU plans to have at least 20% fuel being biological by the end of 2020. Japan has already drawn up the sunlight plan, the main focus of which was solar energy that produced around 130,000 kilowatts of electricity. Nuclear Energy: Thermonuclear plants utilize Hydrogen2 (Deuterium) and 3 (Tritium) for its reactions, Hydrogen 2 is obtained from sea. Hydrogen is obtained form lithium, which is obtained from recycled batteries. The reaction between hydrogen 2 and 3 leads to production of Helium atom and neutron. This reaction is an exothermic reaction, thus releasing large amount of energy in the reactors. This reaction is known as Nuclear Fusion (The energy Story). It forms the basic reaction if power plants. Nuclear energy has its own share of advantages and disadvantages. It is cheaper, produced massive amount of energy and the raw material of which is easily available. But the most important challenge in the existing world of nuclear power is to get rid of the nuclear waste. Why is Recycling Important Recycling is not only required to protect the resources, but it will be more significant since it will lay in big way to reduce the natural resources pressure. Recycling is significant since it saves: 1. Raw Materials: Recycling will lead to the reduction in the need for raw materials such as metals, forests and oil and thus leading to reduction of impact on the environment. The level of our consumption in the UK is already having a significant impact on the environment and communities across the world, and alarmingly, UK is consuming an increasing quantity of raw materials. 2. Reduces our impact on climate change: Even though recycling uses energy but it also reduces the climate emissions and it is reported that recycling a material also uses less energy that manufacturing the virgin materials. A recent study done for the Government by the consultants ERM, and a study carried out for the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP). This study reported that the relative greenhouse gas savings in UK is from recycling for paper/cardboard, glass, plastics, aluminum and steel. 3. Generates Cash: After collection, the recycled materials is separated and blended at materials recycling facilities and then sent to reprocessors such as paper mills, glass factories or plastic recyclable. Here the waste is converted to new products, although it costs local authorities money to collect recycling, the materials also generates income when recycled and sold. 4. Cost effective: The cost of different waste management's is difficult to define in economical terms but, still the cost of recycling is less when one compares the landfill, incineration and recycling. Table 1: Cost effectiveness of Recycling Area(Sq.Km) Population(million) Estimations of solid Waste Produced Thousand tons/day) Total Waste Health Care Ware Industrial Waste Domestic Waste 330,000 80 49,134 42,875 26,877 21,828 5. Creates Jobs: The process of collection of recycling and composting creates jobs for people. From collecting to sorting the materials to its category form paper, plastic or. This creates more jobs than it creates in landfills. Figure: 2 Comparison of Industry Employment 6. Helps us towards sustainable living. For householders, it is one of the easiest way by which they can ease the burden of them impact on environment since most of the times it is first the action they take. It introduces a "green" consciousness to daily life. It will start making people think the impact on their consumption and thereby less production of waste and will also encourage us to make our lifestyle generate less waste. (Briefing, 2007) Fun facts of Recycling: Recycling batteries keeps heavy metals out of landfills and the air. Recycling saves resources because recovered plastic and metals can be used to make new batteries. Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 4000 kilowatts of energy and 7,000 gallons of water. To bring that to City of Indianapolis terms, in 2006, DPW and the City County Building recycled 120 tons of Paper, thus saving 2040 trees, 45,600 gallons of oil, 480,000 kilowatts of energy, and 840,000 gallons of water. Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it ends up in landfills. Recycling just half of this would save 34 millions trees, 760 million gallons of oil, 1.4 BILLION gallons of water and 8 BILLION kilowatts of energy. Talk about reducing carbon emissions! You can recycle your junk mail at any Paper Retriever bin in Indianapolis. Aluminium cans are unique in that in 90 days a can is recycled, turned into a new can & back on store shelves. In 2003, 54 billion cans were recycled, saving the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil - America's entire gas consumption for one day. Plastics are made from petroleum. Want to bring down the price of gasoline Recycle your plastics! In 2003, U.S. residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 236 million tons of municipal solid waste, which is approximately 4.5 pounds of waste per person per day. In Indianapolis, this translates to 3.6 million pound every day. This is why it is important to recycle. There is a major role of the government into the energy problems. The government should create more level playing fields, should give more tax incentives. It should have a role in purchasing power. The resource conserving programmes should be a must. There is no federal legislation regarding energy conserve and a law must be framed and passed by the government. Conclusions: Now it is high time to put our all resources toward development of new energy sources and recycling or non conventional resources are one of the best available options to curtain energy crisis along with environmental conservation. At technological front we have achieved quite well but utilization of this technology in ground level, abundant work should be done in proper direction like collection of domestic waste, segregation of waste in terms of biodegradable and non degradable. Better service to household to encourage waste segregation and maintenance etc. In conclusion increasing energy requirement and environment deterioration should go hand in hand. Bibliography (2007). Briefing. London: Friends of Earth. The energy Story. (n.d.). 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