4.9 Sustainable Development - Reuse & Recycling Flashcards
What does ‘reusing’ mean?
Reusing means using the product again in the same form
What does ‘recycling’ mean?
Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away, and turning them into new products.
Why is it better to reuse/recycle than extract raw materials?
- Extracting raw materials can take large amounts of energy, lots of which comes from burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are running out so we need to conserve them. Burning them also causes pollution.
- Recycling often only uses a small fraction of the energy needed to extract and refine the material from scratch. Reusing takes even less energy. Energy is expensive, so recycling and reusing can save money.
What polymer are plastic bottles usually made from?
PET
Describe how PET is recycled
- Plastic waste is first sorted to separate out PET objects from other plastic materials.
- The PET objects are then cleaned and shredded, before being melted down and then processed to make new objects.
Why is recycling PET, viable?
- It uses fewer resources and less energy than making ‘new’ PET.
- Recycling PET uses up to 75% less energy.
- Recycling also saves crude oil, a finite resource. For every 1kg of PET that’s recycled, you save about 2.4dm cubed of crude oil.
How is ‘new’ PET made?
By polymerising alkenes, which are made by distilling and cracking crude oil. All this processing takes lots of energy.
What happens to PET if it isn’t recycled?
It’s usually thrown away in landfill which takes up a lot of space.
Describe how PET bottles can be reused
They can be used to sterilise water. They’re filled with water and left in the sunlight. PET lets UV radiation through, which sterilises the water.
What are five things to consider before recycling products?
- The cost of it
- How much material is thrown away for it to be recycled on an industrial scale
- The demand for the products made from the recycled material
- Whether the material comes from a non-renewable or a renewable source
- How much energy is needed
What is sustainable development
Sustainable development is an approach to human and economic development that meets the needs of the present generations, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Aluminium cans can be manufactured from recycled aluminium or from new aluminium. Which two processes are avoided when manufacturing cans from recycled aluminium?
- Mining the aluminium ore from the ground
- Separating the aluminium using electrolysis
