I have to throw away my refrigerator and have just been looking for recycling centers. What did people actually do in the past, i.e. in the Middle Ages, when glass, candlesticks or cooking pots broke and could no longer be repaired?
Anything that could no longer be repaired – although repairs were quite extensive back then, there were jobs like tinkers for a reason – was actually collected back then and sent for recycling. Cooking pots and kettles were usually relatively expensive materials, often made of copper. Or they were made of ceramic.
But you couldn’t reuse them, right?
Not easy anymore. However, the ancient Romans were already using ceramic items that could no longer be used, for example as additives to terrazzo floors.
After the huge battles in the Middle Ages, a lot of armor and swords may have been scrap. How was exploitation organized at that time?
Even though feudalism was not a market economy, there were definitely market economy elements. If after such a battle the victors did not carry away everything that was of value, surrounding farmers, provided they survived the hostilities, may well have reused swords or something similar to produce agricultural implements. Steel is steel. And the blacksmith doesn’t care whether it was previously armor, a sword, a spearhead. Swords into plowshares, for real.
Does centuries-old metal still live on in any steel beams today?
Pfff, that’s a good question. Steel was often melted down and reused. But it might be quite difficult to prove. In any case, I don’t know what isotope test you could do. Over the centuries there have been mixtures in the per mille range. The use of steel has exploded since the 19th century and with it the production of new steel, i.e. from pig iron, has increased to levels that the Middle Ages were far, far away from.
Has recycling become more professionally organized as a result of industrialization?
Nope. It started the other way around. With scrap and rag collectors. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, items of clothing were first worn by the nobles, then altered by those of lower status, until at some point just before they became rags, they reached the very poor people. And what was then no longer usable was sold to paper mills by ragpickers at least since the 17th century. Making paper from forest wood is a relatively new development.
Dr. Schmidt explains the world
Stephanie Schoell
As a polymath of the nd editorial team, the science journalist Dr. Steffen Schmidt has an answer to almost every question – and if he doesn’t, he answers another one. All episodes to listen to: dasnd.de/schmidt
And how did the development from ragpicker to BSR take place?
The collection systems only come into play with the waste problem. In Munich, around the turn of the last century, a waste disposal company tried to recycle everything for the first time. What could not be used immediately was burned in order to generate process heat for the other recycling stages. And the ashes were then used for the cultivation of acidic meadows and moors, which was still highly valued at the time. Otherwise, much of the waste, at least in the first century after the Industrial Revolution, was dumped in a more or less disorderly manner.
Why can’t everything be recycled?
In theory you could recycle everything, but in practice it doesn’t make sense for everything in terms of energy and almost always economically. What I mean is: If dismantling an object is time-consuming, then the components must bring enough money when resold to make it worth it. Nobody else does that in capitalism. This only changes in times of emergency and in wars.
Does recycling always mean loss of value?
That is the question with so-called upcycling. Recycling with added value is not so easy to achieve. However, there does not necessarily have to be a major loss in value. For most metals, if they can be sorted reasonably well, this is comparatively low. All you have is the loss of value that was added to the metal through processing. Of course it goes to waste. But to come back to your refrigerator: There’s actually a regulation that isn’t all that stupid. I’m surprised you didn’t make use of this: when you buy a new one, you take the old fridge with you.
But not if I buy a used one privately.
Then not. This means that you have switched from a used system that was no longer very useful to a used one that is still usable. Of course that’s not bad from an environmental point of view, but yes, then you have the problem of transport on the cheek.
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