Commonwealth Edison "The Hidden Resource: A Report on Recycling"

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You You You It takes three yards of garbage to make one ton Approximately now of course different garbage weighs different amounts We know it's growing.

We know every time they put up an apartment building our yardage goes up a little more We know that each person generates four and a half pounds per day In refuse that includes everything not just the stuff they eat throw away Stuff that cartage done itch that's used to manufacture it and everything You can figure as the population increases, this is a tremendous problem with no answers You Now that machine over there He's picking up cover He's stocking it up here for wet days when we can't get up and down hill and then about two o 'clock He'll start to cover the garbage.

In other words, we'll pick one side that's already packed and up the grade And then we'll start running the machine right in and he'll start covering he puts the dirt right on top of the garbage We open at about four to five in the morning and we closed promptly at 330 nobody gets in at 330 at all We get in the normal day about 150 loads and they range from Private cars all the way up to these 50 -yard transfer trailers Truck comes in you see it coming in He just backs up and dumps and then we push the load over the hill in about a six or an eight Inch layer and then compact it all day The job is done right and you cut this open 20 years from now you'll read the newspaper I've done this Only thing it shows you that there isn't any decomposition is what I'm driving it In other words people think this will disappear.

Well, that's foolishness.

It's it's never gonna disappear.

It'll always be garbage Is it business like to think that we can handle all this waste and garbage in a better way than we've done in the past So that we won't be using up our resources the way that we've done in the past We think so You can take recycling paper, for example We find ourselves at Edison using a great deal of recycled paper And around here we find the question asked more and more is it competitively priced? Well, it may not be quite there yet But at least it's in the range or at a point at which that we feel we can justify the premium To use recycled paper rather than the conventional type and we think other companies are coming to the same kind of conclusion Somebody once told me how many acres of trees are needed for just one issue of the New York Sunday Times I don't remember the exact number but it's enough So the paper is worth plenty to recycle and enough to make the energy our young people are putting into recycling equally worthwhile Well, I think that the boys and girls have been our mainstay as far as volunteers are concerned and they definitely show the most enthusiasm And many of them helped us even build it We were out here with kids doing the actual building of the recycling center So I think it's been a real good opportunity for them to learn a lot about how these things work They're also learning a lot about the community and how hard it is to get volunteers I think a lot of us think that for good projects in communities volunteers are readily available and they're really not and the kids are beginning To learn that themselves and putting pressure on their parents to come out and help and it's been a very effective Way to get the kids involved and to get the community involved The clear goes in the clear and the brown goes in the brown in the future you don't have to take the paper off Okay, paper can be left on bottles green green.

There's a green but container too.

Now what about something like this? No, it's got a seam.

It's not a long.

All right, if it's just a top it's a bottom.

Right? No seams means it's aluminum Okay, make sure you have to check on with the glass is make sure there are no metal rings on any of the glass Sometimes there'll be a metal ring Doing this because I've been worried about Oh Right here Well, we get approximately $20 a ton for the glass and approximately $18 a ton for the cans And $200 a ton for aluminum, but we haven't reached a ton of aluminum yet The bins represent about 40 to 45 dollars in glass and about 20 to 25 dollars in cans If our volume if we were really used to the extent that this community is taking home non -returnable containers We would be flooded we couldn't possibly handle it and I don't even think the city could really handle the kinds of Volume that we're talking about the very very long range This this kind of an operation will not possibly deal with the problems that we're having We'll have to go to some kind of back to the manufacturers and in some way have them Re -evaluate their processes and procedures so that we have containers that are either biodegradable or returnable There's two lines of thought in that some people are proponents of returnable bottles other people are the proponents of the non -returnable bottle We feel that the non -returnable bottle is a lot safer because it's made for one trip We know it only goes one trip the returnable bottle is made for 10 trips and sometimes it can go 20 trips our thought on the ecology fact is that the only answer to the solid waste problem is separation and recycling and Until we come up with and the municipalities come up with systems which will separate total garbage into various recyclable Substances you know the only answer right now is recycling which we're doing a lot of In the past year and a half we've recycled over 10 million bottles of course our daily production is about 4 million bottles The reason I am still strongly working for it even though it doesn't look like It's really gonna solve the problem in the long run it's because I think people become educated to exactly how much Garbage there they have in a week or in a month Why because we're on a little bit of a Ship and when we've used up what's on here.

There's no way of getting any more We're in what you might describe as a society that's accustomed to throwing things away Whether it's paper products or cans or bottles or old cars That seem to wind up somehow in the garbage heap But bit by bit we're working out good hard -headed Businesslike ways and means to bring things back to life in a usable form We Have three cranes feeding the conveyor and then the conveyor drops them off into the machine the machine is operated by a 4000 horsepower electric motor and We have a 2500 volts coming into the plant On a good day the machine is capable of 800 automobile 6 to 800 automobiles There's a series of hammers on a rotor they travel at 450 rpm and then there's a set of greats animals that are beneath this and As the automobile falls the hammers beat it beat the automobile through the greats and it takes about 12 seconds Devour the automobile And if we can devise more ways to recycle this material to bring back to life materials Which are finding themselves in diminishing form? Then I think we've helped perform a very valid and important service And I think business by and large recognizes this responsibility It's a responsibility not only to meet standards and regulations It's good business in many cases and it fits in with people's concerns as citizens very definitely Person has to get concerned you wonder what the possible solutions to this are I mean? Education you just get better schools.

That's very easy roads you build better roads, but what are you gonna? Do with garbage? It'll take some dollars and a lot of effort It'll take some dollars and a lot of effort, but it can pay off even in strict dollars and cents And the young people who brought this to the forefront are giving all of us an incentive to pitch in I Think we're beyond the stage of talking Now it's a matter of placing ourselves on the line and working toward the solution Well, I mean it's not that much fun, but it has to be done by somebody

Identifier

F.2005-05-0018

Date Of Production

1972

Abstract

A sponsored film produced for Commonwealth Edison on the importance of recycling in Chicago. Includes footage of trash men picking up garbage around Chicago- a trash dump, the Hyde Park-Kenwood Re-Cycling Center and the Prolerized Chicago Corporation.

Run Time

0:11:32

Format

16mm

Extent

420 feet

Color

color and B&W

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Genre

Sponsored

Form

Short

Subject

Industry
City and town life
City planning
Ecology

Related Collections

Subseries II: Film Group Sponsored Films

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Sponsor/client

Commonwealth Edison

Main Credits

Mike Gray Associates, Inc. (is production company)

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