Innovative Impacts: Recycling

This whole discussion raises an important aspect of the Autonomous Transportation system: opportunities for innovation. It’s impossible to predict the actual uses and impacts of a revolutionary new technology. However, let’s look at one possibility, Recycling, and see what innovations might emerge, and how they would affect our lives.

Recycling is important. For example, the items we recycle reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions equivalent to taking 39 million cars off the road; 78% of that saving is from recycling Paper & Paperboard. [http://www.statisticbrain.com/bottled-water-statistics/ accessed 5/25/2016]   

Recycling prevented 110 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste from being dumped into landfills in 2013. Containers and Packaging were the majority of the recycling, saving 39 million tons; however, we still dumped another 37 million tons of Containers and Packaging, and that doesn’t count all those that littered the landscape. We did fairly well by composting and recycling 21 million tons of Yard trimmings. But Food & Other Compost were hardly recycled at all, dumping 35 million tons into landfills.

Today recycling takes time and energy, and as a society we don’t do it well: all too much winds up in our monstrous mounting mountains of trash. An even bigger problem is the proliferation of hazardous wastes: electronics, fluorescent and CFC light bulbs, paints, pesticides, medicines, and an ever growing list of items requiring specialized treatment. Recycling is a pain, even assuming you have single stream collection. You have to decide whether a particular item is recyclable, or trash. Or perhaps you should keep it, because you might find a use for it later (a constant debate in our household because I’m a packrat and my wife is not). Or perhaps the item is valuable enough that it is worth trying to find a buyer and get it to them, or perhaps you should donate the item so someone else can use it. Or if it’s hazardous waste, then you have to take it somewhere else.

If the item is recyclable, then you need to clean it before recycling: you don’t want recycling stinking up your house, and the recycler doesn’t want food and other contaminants. You need a place to keep the recycling, and you have to take each item there. Since we went to single stream recycling, our volume of recycling exceeds the volume of our garbage, so this is a nontrivial exercise. Then you have to remember to take the container out so it can be collected, and bring it back in afterwards. If you are gone on recycling day, or if you forget to take it out, the volume of recycling may overflow your container. Some things are too big to go in the container, so you set them next to the container, where they blow away, or get soaked in the rain.

So let’s take a look at what readily available, inexpensive transportation might have on recycling. You could just drop an item into a container, tell the system what it is, and off it goes for “recycling”. You don’t even need to decide where to send it, because the system will figure out where best to take it, possibly even getting a payment for you. Thus you don’t have to decide whether it is hazardous waste, garbage, trash, or if someone might pay you for it, and if you want to donate the item, you can designate a charity. You wouldn’t need to clean items, because waste food could be collected for composting, and people will innovate new mechanisms for harvesting the energy in food residues (perhaps, bacteria), making the cleaning process a net benefit instead of a cost.

As these innovative cleaning mechanisms become more effective and efficient the balance of disposable vs. reusable containers will shift back to reusable. I remember when the milkman brought glass bottles of milk to the insulated metal container on our front porch, and collected the used bottles for cleaning and refilling. Americans spend $11.8 billion annually on 30 billion non-reusable bottles of water; an estimated 80% end up as litter, and landfills are overflowing with 2 million tons of discarded water bottles. It takes 3 liters of water for every liter of bottled water, over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture these bottles, enough to power 100,000 homes. The average cost of a 1 liter bottle is $1.45, divided among: Retailer $0.67, Transportation $0.47, Water Bottle Production $0.16, and Profit $0.15. [https://www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts-and-figures accessed 5/25/2016] Efficient remote cleaning saves the water you would have used to clean the recyclables, the energy for hot water, and your time and mess – water savings and water recycling are another fruitful area for innovation with the new transportation system, but we will wait until later to follow that thread.

Randall Monroe has created an XKCD comic about bottled water [https://xkcd.com/1599/]. I’ve taken the liberty of embellishing his scenario: the empty bottles collecting, and problems with municipal plumbing (Leaks, Lead, Chlorine, and unintended contents).

The combination of efficient centralized cleaning and efficient transportation may lead to shared dishwashing: you just put your dirty dishes into a container; they are whisked away and returned clean. The cleaning processes would treat each type of dish, pot, and other vessel appropriately – for example, we don’t put our nice pots in the dishwasher because it dulls the finish, and large items, like flower vases don’t fit in the dishwasher. Remote cleaning will likely extend to clothes, towels, and other categories. This saves you the hassles, and the costs of washing machines, water heating, water, and of course your time and energy.

Even more intriguing is the potential for delivering locally produced customized beverages to you whenever and wherever you want them. Because there is no need for a physical store, anyone can set up a business selling customized beverages. Shared comments will help you find what you want;  ratings will assure continued quality; and you can send the beverage off for testing before it gets to you, assuring it is safe, healthy, and as advertised. The same approach can be extended to food and other items. Fast efficient transportation has the potential to provide each of us not only with better, cheaper goods and services, but with rewarding vocations and avocations.

Here is a diagram of how customized beverages could operate with the Autonomous Transportation System.