What is the difference between 0.3 tons and 500 pounds

The generation of tissue paper and towels includes facial and sanitary tissues and table napkins, but not bathroom tissue, which goes directly into the wastewater treatment system. Other examples include decorative and laminated tissue papers and crepe papers.

Homes, restaurants, other commercial establishments and institutions such as hospitals use tissue papers. Tissue paper and towels not including bathroom tissue amounted to 3. EPA did not identify any significant recovery of tissue products for recycling, although some composting of these items exists.

There is very little additional data available for tissue papers and towels. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of tissue paper and towels generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled. Paper plates and cups include paper plates, cups, bowls and other food service products used in homes, in commercial establishments like restaurants, as well as in institutional settings such as schools. EPA estimated that the generation of these products was 1.

EPA did not identify any significant recovery for recycling of these products, although there is some composting of these items. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of paper plates and cups generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled. Other non-packaging papers—including posters, photographic papers, cards and games—accounted for 3.

EPA did not identify any significant recycling of these papers. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of other non-packaging paper generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled.

Other commercial printing includes a wide range of paper items, including brochures, reports, menus and invitations. Both groundwood and chemical pulps can be found in these varied items. Generation was two million tons, or 0. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of other commercial printing generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled.

This category includes plastic plates, cups, glasses, dishes and bowls, hinged containers, and other containers used in food service at home, in restaurants and other commercial establishments, and in institutional settings such as schools.

These items were primarily composed of polystyrene resin. Out of total MSW generation in , these products comprised an estimated one million tons, or 0. EPA did not identify any significant recycling in See Table 18 in the Data Tables for more in-depth information. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of plastic plates and cups generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled.

This category includes plastic trash bags made of high-density polyethylene and low-density polyethylene for both indoor and outdoor use.

Out of total MSW generation in , generation of plastic trash bags amounts to about 1. The data in the table below are from to , relating to the total number of tons of trash bags generated, recycled, composted, combusted with energy recovery and landfilled. This category includes estimates of both infant diapers and adult incontinence products.

EPA estimated generation using data on sales of the products along with information on average weights and composition. The estimated generation of disposable diapers in was 4. This tonnage includes an adjustment for the urine and feces contained within the discarded diapers. The materials portion of the diapers includes wood pulp, plastics including the super-absorbent materials now present in most diapers , and tissue paper.

As for solar farms, the International Renewable Energy Agency forecasts that by , with current plans, solar garbage will constitute double the tonnage of all global plastic waste.

In reality, neither dematerialization nor recycling offers a solution to the heavy costs of a green energy future. But not anymore. However, the foundational requirement for any of those inputs has not decreased in absolute quantity, nor has there been a diminution of the importance of the reliability and security of the supply, and price, of those inputs.

For evidence that society is not dematerializing in any fundamental way, we need only compare two iconic products of this and the past century: the smartphone and the automobile. These two products characterize a cultural shift and an apparent shift in material dependencies. As one analyst put it, teenagers have gone from driving cars to the mall to purchase music cassettes to streaming music digitally.

Wealthy economies have become more efficient, and the rate of economic growth has outpaced a slower rise in overall material use.

But greater economic efficiency in material use slows the growth rate—it is not a fundamental decoupling of materials from growth. The world consumes over billion tons each year in materials for construction, food, fuel, and metal parts Figure 2.

Still, it is true that eventually—even if it is a century from now—there will be a slowing in demand for everyday materials as poorer nations approach a saturation level of per-capita use of food, homes, roads, and buildings. Moreover, the continual discovery of novel properties in elements drives entirely new demands for mining. A century ago, cars were manufactured using a handful of materials: wood, rubber, glass, iron, copper, vanadium, and zinc. The service sector had become the primary source of employment by the end of the 20th century.

There is no FedEx without trucks and aircraft; there is no health care without hospitals, magnetic imaging machines, and pharmaceuticals; there is no Amazon without data centers and warehouses. Powering the Cloud requires the use of sand and steel to obtain natural gas locked up in shale, as well as silver and selenium to get solar energy. Consider an important material-service linkage visible in energy trends.

Since the start of the digital age, circa , the average material intensity of America — measured in total pounds used per capita, not total pounds overall—has remained largely unchanged. In short, migration to a more service-dominated economy does not reduce dependence on energy, and derivatively materials, or the need for reliable access to both. Reuse is generally irrelevant, since the vast majority of all products in society cannot be reused, and this includes green energy machines.

The technical and environmental challenges, and thus the costs to reuse, more often than not are greater than those associated with using virgin material. Answer: nearly all of them will eventually show up in waste dumps. As we noted earlier, the International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA forecasts that by , with current plans, solar garbage will constitute double the tonnage of all forms of global plastic waste.

Similar scales are expected from end-of-life batteries used in electric cars and on power grids. It will exceed 2 million tons per year by If current International Energy Agency IEA forecasts are met, there will be over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastic turbine blades by Figure 4. They are no more likely to be effective in the future than they have been in the past.

Innovative engineering can lead to modest reductions in the use of some critical elements in electric motors and magnets.

But that only slightly slows the rate of growth in demand. For example: samarium enables smaller and more powerful magnets that are also far more stable at high temperatures. Lithium is, tautologically, the essential element in a lithium-ion battery; and copper remains the best option for electric conductors. Many materials, especially high-value metals, can be significantly recycled.

But we can consider the implications and lessons for green waste by looking at the 50 million tons of so-called e-waste generated globally from worn-out or outmoded digital devices that are also built using many critical and rare minerals.

The millions of tons of e-waste contain hundreds of tons of gold and thousands of tons of silver generally the primary target of recyclers, for obvious reasons as well as more than a dozen other elements. But as the scale of global recycling grows, many governments and some environmental organizations are beginning to focus on the serious health and safety issues that have been ignored.

Ghana, for example, is where Europe exports the largest quantity of its e-waste. It has been meaningful for people in Oregon to recycle, [ and ] they feel like they are doing something good for the planet— and now they are having the rug pulled out from under them. The challenge with recycling trace minerals is essentially the same as in mining itself: much depends on concentrations.

The concentration of useful minerals in e-waste and green waste is very low and often far lower than the ore grades of those minerals in rocks. In addition, the physical nature of trashed hardware is highly varied again, unlike rocks , making it a challenge to find simple mechanisms to separate out the minerals. Recycling processes are often labor-intensive hence the pursuit of cheap labor, sometimes child labor, overseas and hazardous because techniques to burn away unwanted packaging can release toxic fumes.

While technology, especially automation and robotics, will eventually bring more economically viable and cleaner ways to recycle, the challenges are daunting and progress has been slow. Even as Apple has championed recycling programs for its products—including inventing a robot to disassemble iPhones it can only do iPhones 64 and opening a new Material Recovery Lab in Austin, Texas—the company, along with many other tech companies, vigorously promotes green energy.

A recent Department of Energy vision for offshore wind never mind onshore wind farms in the U. But its limits are clear. The critical, and even vital, roles of specific minerals have long been a concern of some analysts, and the stuff of fictional dramas as well. Supply-chain worries about critical minerals during World War I prompted Congress to establish, in , the Army and Navy Munitions Board to plan for supply procurement, listing 42 strategic and critical materials.

This was followed by the Strategic Materials Act of By World War II, some 15 critical materials had been stockpiled, six of which were released and used during that war.

The act has been revised twice, in and , and amended in to specify that the purpose of that act was for national defense only. It is in seventh place today. In , the U. China is a significant source for half of those 29 minerals. The Department of Defense and the Department of Energy DOE have issued reports on critical mineral dependencies many times over the decades. But decades of hand-wringing over rising mineral dependencies have yielded no significant changes in domestic policies.

The truth is that depending on imports for small quantities of minerals used in vital military technologies can be reasonably addressed by building domestic stockpiles, a solution as ancient as mining itself.

The options—other than eschewing more green energy—are to simply accept more strategic dependency, or to increase domestic mining.

The U. This comes after decades of political, economic, and geopolitical anxieties over import dependencies for natural gas and oil, in particular.

As with agricultural products, where the U. China produces half. The quantities of imports will be unprecedented. The strategic implications of green energy materials have not escaped attention in Europe. The analysis points to three obvious macro trends:. As a consequence, it appears that Europe might embrace policies to encourage more domestic mining, an idea that would have seemed as unlikely a few years ago as the possibility of the EU encouraging more drilling for oil and natural gas.

Potential mining projects have been identified in 10 EU countries, including rare earths in Norway, cobalt in Finland, and lithium in Spain and Portugal. It is no small irony that, as the European Investment Bank puts in place policies to stop lending to fossil fuel industries,[ 96 ] it is implementing policies to lend to mining projects. In any event, environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic continue to push harder for expanding green energy. Conversion factors among electrical conductivity EC units 1.

Cavins, et al. Although is the basis used in this example, the conversion factor can vary between and This conversion factor is an average due to the variability in the type of fertilizer salts that contribute to the substrate EC in each sample, and it should be considered a broad approximation. Various acids to add to irrigation water for acidification 1.

Note: The table is an example from software called Alkalinity Calculator, available at www. It is an acidification analysis done on a water sample with a starting pH of 8. For your specific water sample, download the Alkalinity Calculator and follow the directions listed on the website. You will need to obtain a water report on your irrigation water prior to running the software.

You will need to know the water pH and alkalinity of your sample and have an idea about what end-point pH you want to obtain after acidification. The software also gives you information about the cost of the acidification treatment. Use the information above for modifying your fertility program. Amounts of nutrient sources to combine in making various fertilizer formulas 1.

To dissolve, use very hot water and stir vigorously. Sediment formation should not cause concern. Use crystalline potassium chloride if possible. NOTE: For example, an formula fertilizer can be formulated by blending together 1 lb of ammonium nitrate plus 2 lbs of potassium nitrate plus 1 lb of ammonium sulfate.

This formulation is determined by locating the formula in the Analysis column. Then the three numbers 1, 2 and 1 are located in the row after this formula. Each of the three numbers is traced to the X above it and then to the nutrient source to the left of the X. Formulas for additional fertilizer calculations. Miscellaneous conversions used in fertilizer calculations. Approximate weight-volume measurements for making small volumes of water soluble fertilizers. Materials and rates necessary to lower the pH level of greenhouse potting substrate 0.

Approximate amount of materials required to change pH of peat-based potting mixes 1. Pounds per cubic yard to change acidity to pH 5. Table 23A. Fluid Ounces per Gallon of Final Solution. Milliliters per Liter of Final Solution. Table 23B. A Commonly referred to as B Commonly referred to as Table 23C. Table 23D. Table 23E. Table 23F. Table 23G. Table 23H. Pre-plant fertilizer sources and rates of application 1,2. To provide micronutrients: iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum.

Only limestone is necessary in seedling substrates. Optional nutrient sources for seedling substrate include up to 1 lb 0. Horticultural grade vermiculite 2 size for seed germination 2 or 3 for transplanting. A 15 to 20 percent shrink occurs in mixing. Therefore, an additional 5 cubic feet or 4 bushels are used to obtain a full cubic yard.