Recycling

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(Analysis on Fabber Materials vs. Recyclable Materials)

How do Fabbers Contribute to Pollution?   (Page 1)

Pollution is a major issue in the world today.  One of the biggest issues in pollution is solid waste. Fabbing technology, with its extensive usage of solid materials, is also contributing to the accumulating solid wastes in the world. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that in 2001, U.S. residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 229 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste.

[Courtesy of: Environmental Protection Agency.]

From the chart above we can see that the three main types of materials used by fabbers: plastics, metals, and polyester take up 11.1%, 7.9%, and 7.1% of the total waste generation in 2001. That is a total combined of 26.1% or almost 60 million tons of solid wastes coming out of those three categories. In the following table, I have a quick breakdown of the three category of solid wastes approximated to pounds.

Table: Compiled and designed by Kevin Zhang.

The total amount of solid waste produced from that area alone is over 119 billion pounds. To put that into perspective, that is more than two and half times more than the combined weight of the entire population in the United States. Of the plastics used in 2001, over 80% are thermoplastics, which means about 45 billion pounds of the solid wastes are originated from thermoplastics. According adhesivemag.com that more than 78 million pounds of thermoplastics resins were used in 2001. If we compare 78 million to 45 billion, the amount of solid plastic waste that fabbing technology has contributed it is less than one fifth of a percent of the total count. The similar situation is applicable to the metals and polyesters. Overall, today’s fabbers do cause their share of harms to the environment. However, just by sheer numbers, fabbers’ damage to the environment and contribution to pollution as whole is still very insignificant. The real problems will surface when fabbers become a household product or reach any sort of magnitude in terms of popular usage in the society.

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QUICK LINKS (Specific Table of Contents): Section I: Introduction Section II: Present (YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN THIS SECTION) Section III: Future

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