What is Decentralized Recycling? | March 23th , 2020.
Decentralized waste management is a way for your community to work together to help the environment. Rather than giving your waste to a big management company, you can sort it on your own. In this piece, you’ll learn more about this process and get introduced to a tool that can help you.
What Is Decentralized Waste Management?
The idea behind decentralized waste management is a community coming together to process waste. The alternative is sending the waste to a centralized processing facility, which is usually a landfill.
By taking ownership of your own waste, you help the environment and adopt a cleaner way of dealing with waste. Rather than dumping trash in someone else’s backyard, communities come together and address the problem.
The Benefits of Decentralized Waste Management
Sending waste to a large processing facility leads to a ton of added costs, fossil fuels, and logistics concerns. When a community processes their own waste, it changes the whole idea of waste.
When a community manages its waste at the source, it turns into a usable resource. People also enjoy the idea that the waste is in their own backyard, not someone else’s.
A Hidden Advantage of Decentralized Waste Management
When you start sorting and dealing with your own waste, you quickly realize how much waste you’re contributing. Very rarely are people faced with piles of their own trash and recycling. Many people just throw it in a trash can, take it to the curb, and forget all about it.
By having to process your community’s waste, you start to see different areas that you can improve. You might take it upon yourself to start cutting waste out of your life in different areas.
For example, maybe you’re throwing away a lot of packaging that comes with items you buy at the grocery store. This might incentivize you to start shopping zero waste to eliminate this stream of excess. The community might also have meetings to discover where reckless consumption is hurting the environment. Managing your own waste will help you realize areas where you can improve.
Remove “For-Profit” Waste Management Companies
There are some global giants in the waste management sphere. Of course, since their business revolves around managing waste, this means that they’re profiting from it. The more waste they process, the more money they make. This leads down a slippery slope of lobbying for more waste across the world.
The best way to minimize waste in other sectors is to take the money out of waste management. By processing waste locally, you’re removing the “for-profit” nature of recycling.
Recycling is a civil duty. It’s the least we can do to keep the Earth clean and green. Waste is not a machine for large companies to make tons of money. For many people, decentralized recycling is a moral issue.
What is Decentralized Recycling?
Decentralized recycling is essentially the same thing as waste management. The only difference is that items are sorted and recycled rather than disposed of. This can refer to glass, plastic, newspaper, metal, and so on. Rather than taking these items to a landfill, they are sorted and taken to respective recycling facilities.
If a community engages in a decentralized recycling effort, you’ll find labeled containers in the area. Locals are encouraged to bring their recyclables to this location and put them in the corresponding bins. This method saves a lot of time and money when it comes to picking up recycling. Rather than paying a big company to collect, sort, and transport your recycling, the only need is pick up.
The Big Companies Cut Corners
Recycling and waste management facilities are known to waste a lot and cut corners. This goes back to the idea that they’re looking to make money. A lot of people in the industry understand that big companies commit to low-quality solutions. The result is a poorer recycling effort and wasted materials across the board.
If you want to get more value from your recycled goods, then you should try decentralized recycling. When individuals do the sorting and depositing, they take more responsibility. When a community works together, the result is higher quality than using the services of a big recycling management company.
How Does Trashpresso Help?
Trashpresso is a modern-day solution to decentralized recycling. It’s a mobile unit that does the hard work for you when it comes to zero waste recycling.
The process itself is an upcycling process. This means that waste is put in and a high-quality product is the end result. In this case, Trashpresso makes architectural tiles that are used in a variety of applications.
How Trashpresso Works
Trashpresso is an interesting process. Take a look at the steps to better understand how it can help your community.
Step 1: Sorting
All single-use plastic are collected intelligently depending on their material property enabled by MW’s AI camera recognition.
Step 2: Shredding
After sorting, all the waste collected is broken into flakes, to improve storage and processing effectiveness.
Step 3: Softening
After the trash is shredded into flakes, different material flakes are heated up at different temperature. Different material flakes are heated up to material’s specific softening temperature to avoid off gas/ VOC
Step 4: Forging
While the material is warm, it is pressed into the mold with different pressure settings depending on the design of the mold / material flow index up to 25 tons
Step 5: Customizing
After the product is forged, it enters into the final stage. Sanding edges, buffing, adding personal touches.
The air filter is used to scrub toxic vapors that might come off during the melting process in the oven. Again, this is used to reduce the impact on the environment.
Powering the System
The whole system is powered with solar energy that charges batteries. In ideal conditions, no additional energy is required. The result is a green, low-emission process.
Conclusion
Amazing things can happen when a community works together. Decentralized recycling is a great way to help the environment, reduce costs, and create higher quality upcycled products. To learn more about zero waste recycling with Trashpresso, contact us.