Around 250 million years ago, gigantic clouds of rotten egg gas swept over and smothered the earth and caused a mass extinction. In recent years the dumping of construction plasterboard has seen this same gas seep out of landfills across the world.
The prehistoric rotten egg gas or hydrogen sulphide (H2S) followed massive volcanic eruptions. The result was cataclysmic and is referred to as the Great Dying.
Nearly all marine life was wiped out and about seventy percent of reptiles became extinct. The remains of dead life lay thick on the earth's surface and eventually turned to calcium carbonate rock.
Now millions of years later this mineral is used in plastics, nappies, iron, soy milk, paints and plasterboard. (Builders use plasterboard for wall and ceiling linings)
The calcium carbonate in plasterboard is called gypsum and global demand for this mineral is staggering.
In 2005 plasterboard was the most popular material in the world for the construction of interior walls and ceilings.
This was the peak of the world housing boom. Plasterboard was used from Australia, to Ireland, Russia, China and the US. It changed the construction industry. It was cheap, light, flexible, more fire resistant than timber and easy to use. Plasterboard became a building block of the instant home. McMansions, villas, flats and apartments sprung up all over the world.
In 2008 the world used about 80 million tonnes of gypsum. By 2015 this is expected to rise by at least 50 percent to 120 million tonnes.
All this use has caused quite a bit of waste; and that’s become an ugly problem.
That’s because for years scrap plasterboard was tossed into landfills where it was mixed with household food and organic waste. This waste reacted with the gypsum and caused hydrogen sulphide. The same gas, which some scientists believe, caused the Great Dying.
Although the amount of rotten egg gas, which leaked out of landfills, was miniscule in comparison to the gas clouds of the Permian Triassic extinction it was highly toxic and this concerned governments.
So governments across the world banned the mixing of plasterboard with organic waste. In future, they decided, dumped plasterboard would have to be placed into specially designed landfills.
At the same time many countries also decided to reduce landfills. This was because landfills used and polluted valuable real estate. Levies (or fees) were introduced to decrease the dumping of waste and targets were set for waste reduction. In the EU this means approximately 60 percent of landfills will close by about 2020.
So the plasterboard industry is faced with a problem. What can it do with its waste? Some companies have sprung up offering to recycle old plasterboard. These are efficient and well organised. But unfortunately new plasterboard only uses a small percentage (25 percent) of recycled gypsum.
Nonetheless gypsum recycling companies say they are able to recycle all of the gypsum they process. This is probably because landfills are still operating. So, many construction companies do not use recyclers. Instead they put up with the high levy costs and still dump plasterboard into landfill.
About 14.5 million tonnes of gypsum is dumped into landfills across the world.
But this situation is going to change pretty quickly. Landfills are not only going to be more expensive, they will have limited space. So landfills will not be able to take plasterboard.
Furthermore the amount of plasterboard waste will become monstrous. This is because the McMansions, the apartments and villas of the housing boom have not yet been demolished. But they will come down one day and with them so will the plasterboard. Hopefully by that time old plasterboard will be completely recyclable.
http://www.regyp.com.au/whyrecycle.html
http://www.gypsumrecycling.co.uk/6688-1_Whyrecycle/
http://www.theconcreteproducer.com/industry-news.asp?articleID=1097287§ionID=1419
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/products/roadmaps/pdf/plasterboard0909.pdf