More eco-technologies boost recycling industry

Throughout the world, ecological approaches to the production and consumption of necessities in the global environment are the rising trend. Re-use and recycling are resulting not only in greater benefits from reduced damage to natural resources or less pollution, but also from a thriving industry of recycling.

Environment consciousness is increasing shifts to good manufacturing practices, thus leading to more refining or reorienting of technologies. De-inking for paper recycling, replacement of synthetics with natural products, or of hazardous materials with safe ones, and other such processes have resulted in savings that have benefited industries.

Robin Murray, in Creating Waste from Wealth, cites that vegetable oils are replacing mineral oils in paints and inks as three-fourths of newspapers in the US now use soya-based, biodegradable inks. Plastics are being replaced by enzymes. PVC drinking bottles have been banned in Switzerland, and PVC in packaging has been removed in the Czech Republic.

Sonia Mendoza, non-government organizations’ representative to the National Solid Waste Commission, has readied such information in line with the efforts of the "green NGOs" to change MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando’s mind about recycling which, to him, is a "losing proposition."

Mendoza also provides information from the US Recycling Economic Information Study that the re-use and recycling industry in the US is five times bigger than the waste disposal industry.

As of 2001, the study recorded 56,061 enterprises employing 1,121,804 people with an annual payroll of $36,712,482. Estimated income was over $236 billion compared to the waste disposal industry’s $40 billion. In short, more are segregating and recycling than those who are merely discarding their waste for the garbage collectors.

Figures from the local recycling industry have yet to be consolidated, but a number of young but thriving businesses can be cited and must be promoted, especially in these times when unemployment rates are shooting up and companies are closing down.

Printing Images CtC Inc., a local company based in the Subic Freeport Zone (047-2526012, 0916-3053294) that buys and re-manufactures empty inkjet and laser printer cartridges, is one good example of a good manufacturing and employment practice.

The empty cartridges are cleaned with purified water to dislodge solids; the colorants for inks are free of surfactants and hazardous metals. There are no misting, no fumes, no volatile organic compounds, no aromatic compounds, no acids in the processing. The dyes are from plants.

"In fact, hair dye is more dangerous," says Susan P. Grimm, a Filipina chemist who develops the inks and other products. "I have to use environment-friendly materials because I deal with them everyday and I want to ensure that I am safe, and so are our workers," she adds. She and her husband, Norbert Grimm, own the company.