Environment: Gold in Garbage

Each day the average American tosses out more than 51 Ibs. of solid waste. Garbage is piling up so fast that cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco may run out of landfill dumps by the end of this year. The obvious answer is to re-use all kinds of materials that are now being junked. But so far, the U.S. lacks enough incentives to make "recycling" economically attractive. Americans have become so prosperous that old ideas like deposit bottles no longer work. Who besides tiny children wants to lug empties back to the store just to collect a few cents?

Fortunately, a new technology of profitable recycling may soon emerge. In Delaware's New Castle County, for example, a company called Hercules, Inc. has plans for a remarkable plant that would gobble up anything from beer cans to tires, shred the stuff into small chunks, separate the different materials, and disgorge salable granules of glass. steel, aluminum and shredded paper. Organic wastes would be turned into a rich compost. Useless refuse would be incinerated, or "pyrolyzed"—burned in virtually airless furnaces. The state of Delaware has put up $ 1,000,000 of the plant's $10 million building cost. If the Federal Government agrees to share the rest, by next year the plant could handle 570 tons of refuse a day while turning out 262 tons of reusable materials.

Edible Paper. In Manhattan this week, officials of the Aluminum Association and The Rust Engineering Co. announced plans for a $15.8 million recycling plant near Washington. The plan has been submitted for consideration to the nonprofit National Center for Solid Waste Disposal, Inc., which evaluates and promotes waste-disposal techniques presented by various industries. If such industries are willing to share the cost, the plant will serve as a "national laboratory" where municipalities and private contractors can shop for ideas.

The Aluminum Association is convinced that the Washington plant could turn 130,000 tons of refuse a year into 52,000 tons of raw materials worth $833,000 on the open market. Among them: glass to help surface highways and pelletized paper to be used as a blend for fertilizer, insulation products and additives in pet foods. The plant's incinerators would also generate steam for sale to utilities. If a city of 200,000 built such a plant, says the association, the net cost would be $286,000 a year, compared with $910,000 for handling the same amount of refuse by present disposal methods.