Efficiency, savings, and environmental protection: a brief history of recycling and waste sorting plants

The history of waste recycling is very ancient: ever since, human beings have tried to recover as much as possible the objects and materials no longer usable, and attention to this was particularly high in societies where raw materials and manufactured goods were scarce, expensive and difficult to obtain, and recycling was therefore essential to avoid wasting precious resources.  

In the last century, when the advent of plastic and the greater ease of obtaining goods made the amount of waste produced increase exponentially the theme of recycling became crucial in the entire industrialized world, and it became essential to organize recycling activities in an organized and structured way, to avoid waste, environmental pollution and risks to human health.

The Industrial Recycling: An Ancient Story

If it is true that a long time ago human beings produced a smaller amount of waste, it is also true that the history of semi-industrial techniques for the recovery of raw materials is very ancient. Just think that already around 1200, in Italy, there was a rudimentary system of “recycling” of rags and textile products that were used in the paper industry. The textiles, once they had ceased to be used, were recovered as a raw material and subjected to a process of cleaning and processing. Italy played a very important role in this rudimentary “recycling chain” necessary to produce paper (which at that time was extremely rare and highly sought after, and was not yet produced from plant cellulose).

We are talking, of course, about production chains that were very different from those we face today, because the production criteria were completely different, but this example testifies to how ancient the history of recycling is, and how the recovery of waste has always contributed to the development of human societies.

A long time later, with the advent of industrialization in the 19th century, the problem of waste management began to become increasingly pressing, not only because the amount of material to be disposed of was becoming increasingly large, but also because it was clear that waste had a commercial potential that could be exploited, and that it was a shame to waste. 

Recycling, in addition, was essential to protect the environment and human health. With the development of the chemical industry, for example, it soon became clear that the by-products of chemical syntheses could not simply be disposed of in nature or in water, because they polluted the environment and harmed people. Moreover, these polluting materials contained within them costly and sometimes difficult-to-obtain raw materials that it was convenient to recover. The awareness of this state of affairs led industrialists to seek systems for "recycling" their waste, even at the cost of subjecting them to elaborate processing in order to extract the precious components (a bit like we do today with the treatment of WEEE, which are manually disassembled to recover the precious metals present inside).

Recycling Techniques in the Modern Era

In the 20th century, the recycling of used materials became even more widespread. Techniques for the recovery and reuse of metals were refined, which were particularly precious for industry, but the real revolution came with the massive introduction of plastic products on the market, whose lifespan was significantly shorter than that of the previous iron, glass or ceramic products. The invasion of plastic products has brought with it, as a collateral effect, the birth of a new attention to ecology, resource saving and environmental protection.

Over time, it has become increasingly clear that used products cannot simply be disposed of in landfills or worse incinerated, but that it is necessary to start structured processes for their recovery, aimed at:

• Containing urban space dedicated to landfill
• Avoiding the indiscriminate dispersion of waste in the environment (littering)
• Limiting the waste of natural resources
• Saving energy 
• Recovering useful or precious materials
• Starting a virtuous cycle capable of improving the quality of people's lives

To achieve this result, it is necessary to develop advanced technologies for the recovery and recycling of raw materials, but this is not enough. It is also necessary to sensitize the population about the importance of proper waste separation, and to set up a chain that allows for the precise separation of the different materials present in the unsorted waste component, in order to obtain accurately selected raw materials, ready to be sent to recycling.  

For this reason, recycling selection plants are today an important resource available to public administrations: thanks to their structure, they allow for the precise differentiation of the different types of waste, significantly limiting the amount of material sent to landfill and allowing for the recovery of more raw materials, ready to be resold or reused.