A Trip Through Recycling History

Although Alfred A. (Fred) Nijkerk has been involved in the scrap industry since 1956, he has journeyed back in history much further than that for his new booklet, “Recycling through the ages.”

The 54-page booklet, which can be downloaded as a PDF at the Web site of the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) at http://www.bir.org/pdf/RecyclingHistory.pdf, covers recycling’s history tracing back to the smelting of copper in 7000 BC in regions of what is now Turkey and Iran.

Chapters within the booklet describe the recycling activities of Earth’s great civilizations, including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians.

In Europe, the era of printing and movable type helped usher in increased metals, textiles and paper recycling activity.

Nijkerk’s book also visits the growth of scrap metal and recovered fiber recycling in more recent centuries, as the Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of far greater resource consumption—and thus more recycling.

Using a combination of photographs, drawings, engravings and text that uses humor and anecdotes, Nijkerk weaves the story of recycling into humankind’s wider history.

Nijkerk strongly makes the case for recycling as a bright spot in that wider human history. As he writes in his conclusion, “Without recycling, we would have cut down hundreds of millions more trees than we have already recklessly done. Without recycling, the Earth’s supplies of copper, lead, silver, nickel, tin and lead would now be entirely depleted.”