The Environment of this beautiful planet has often been the core of heated debate. Does recycling really work? Do hybrid vehicles do more harm than good? Has there been so much damage to the environment that trying to help is futile? Is global warming even real? All these questions have multiple sides to the story. One debate in particular has been a fulcrum of advertising campaigns and city services for decades…Recycling, is it safe?.

We all know how recycling works. Certain materials like metal, plastic and glass is recycled by isolating them from trash and then sending the recyclable materials to a recycling facility. There’s just one problem…somebody has to physically separate our items and the recycling worker often gets more than he or she bargained for.

The above picture is from Total Reclaim - serving the Pacific Northwest for everything from computer recycling to proper battery disposal and more. The work that needs to be done to successfully recycle a computer is harrowing. A standard motherboard is layered with sharp edges and electrical components that are shaped like pins and often have the risk of shock. As pictured above the man is using a hammer to break open the case. Well, what does the Recycling worker think is going to happen when he smashes his computer with a hammer? It’s probably going to explosively break apart and hurl lasers and hard drive pieces all over the place. The whole process is much more dangerous and human manual labor intensive than we’d like to imagine.

The clean recycling facility filled with intelligent robots that sort through materials is not a true depiction of a recycling facility environment. Needles are a constant threat to recycling workers.

Sometimes needles are infected with HIV and other diseases. These needles can be found in bottles or small boxes or inside other pieces of trash. These “hidden” needles are usually mixed with other trash and can pop out at recycling workers. Here’s a (hypothetical) scenario: It’s 1988 and Robert Downey Jr. (The star of the upcoming action film, “IRONMAN” is with his buddies at a big party.

He just finished “Less than Zero” and so Robert and his friends are doing heavy drugs including heroin and they are using needles. Well the needles that got thrown out at Robert’s hypothetical party aren’t very biodegradable so some of the diseases can stay on the needles for a long time. Well someone has to handle the waste from Robert’s beer bottles and vodka jugs. What is nasty is that according to the HSE, cigarette packs and bottles are often a source of places that people stuff their dirty needles. That’s a huge problem because needles are sharp and can puncture most work gloves. Known diseases to be found via recycling include but are not limited to: HIV, Hepatitis and Tetanus.

In spite of all these ways that recycling is dangerous for the workers, the environmental situation demands recycling. The environmental situation would be even more dangerous if it wasn’t for recycling. Landfills would overflow (which they pretty much already are…just look at all the new golf courses that went up in the past 10 years) and there would also be more illegal dumping of waste in the ocean and in rivers.

So even though recycling can harm the often lower-economic status people who work in the plants, it is a necessary part of our socio-economic machine. So the greater controversy regarding recycling is, “Who is profiting the most from recycling…and if it is such a profitable industry, then why aren’t the workers better equipped for safety?”

-Sol
“It’s always a pleasure to bring you original conceptualization and crisp new perspectives on the environment and the challenges we all face.”

This is our solar planet.