Difference Between Recycling and Manufacturing.?

Question

Other than the obvious that we are fed everyday as the "Right thing to do" --No Short Answers, Please!

Some manufacturing processes are very clean and some recycling processes are very, very dirty. For example, I can manufacture a rug from fabric, very clean process with little waste. Or, I can recycle plastic bottles and make a rug, a dirty and energy expensive process with a high amount of waste.

When someone makes a Christmas ball out of volcanic ash, is that manufacturing or recycling?

If I pick up glass bottles, crush them up real fine and use them to make a border around my yard, is that recycling(glass), or manufacturing (pebble mulch) or littering (adding junk to the edge of my yard)???

If I put an old tire in my yard and fill it with flowers--recycling, manufacturing, or littering?

One line answers will earn a thumbs down...sorry, but this is a serious question.

Answer 1

One is reuse, the waste yarns from a rug.  That is repurposing.

Recycling is taking that bottle and diverting it from the dump and recycling it into a valuable (new) product.

The fact that is can be recycled again is also a good thing.  If we can at least reuse the product for 5-8 cycles, that would be about 100 years.  Not a bad step!

Answer 2

Also, one must consider where the raw materials have come from.  The rug production process using all new materials might in itself be very "clean."  But where did the materials come from?  It may come from cotton grown in Louisianna (probably with copious amounts of petro-chemical fertilizers and pesticides added), shipped by freighter to China to be spun into yarn (and maybe by something near to slave labor), packaged in Guam, shipped again to a manufacturer somewhere else that makes the rug.  The carbon footprint of the rug may be enormous, when you take the entire life of the raw materials into account.  On the other hand, if the process is using materials that would otherwise just be discarded and filling up a landfill, I have to believe it is (somewhat) better for the environment.  

It is a tough question though, and we may all have to do more research before just  buying something that says "recycled" on the label.  Along those same lines, here is another question that always nags me:  should I trade in my older car and buy something that is supposed to be more fuel efficient?  The way I look at is this:  it would take who knows how much more petroleum based products to produce a new vehicle that it would probably off-set any benefits I would gain in the greater fuel efficiency.  (Not to mention the fact that I would be in debt, whereas I now have no car payment.)  So I have decided not to buy the Prius but to keep my older car, but keep it in good condition, drive it less, use public transportation whenever possible and just be conservative.  

I think the heart of your question lies not in what you call something you are re-using but the fact that you are reusing it.  Also just to make it more clear--manufacturing is creating a product out of raw materials, recycling is taking existing manufactured items, breaking them down and forming something new out of them, and re-using is simply using something more than once, and maybe in more ways than one.

Answer 3

Manufacturing is just making stuff.  

Recycling is making stuff out of something that has already been used at least once.  

Christmas ball:  Manufacturing

Glass bottles:  recycling and manufacturing.  Almost returning glass to it's natural state (sand)

Old tire:  recycling.

Answer 4

Well just think of it this way, recycling is always better than not recycling.  resusing a tire for a flower bed, grinding glass to pebble mulch are both reusing products.  Yes it may be greener for your to make your rug with fabric if the fabric is all natural fibers.  But plastic MUST be recycled.  Think about how many plastic bottles you use in a month.  Water bottles, coke bottles, shampoo bottles, condiment bottles, etc.  We live in a society that manufactures products to be disposable, to be thrown away.  Lets not forget about the fact that plastic is a petroleum product that is not a renewable resource.  But think for a minute if you threw every bottle you used for a month into your back yard.  Now think if everyone in your household did the same.  And say we do that for a year.  How big is that pile getting?  Imagine all your neighbors doing the same.  How many bottles is that?   Now your neighborhood has just become a landfill.  That would suck!  We only have one earth.  Love it, take care of it.  REUSE, REDUCE, RECYCLE