cycle & recyclePaul Bulteel

cycle & recyclePaul Bulteel

6 7

. . . is another man’s treasure, as the popular saying goes. Referring to the extreme

relativity of values and the subjectivity of perception, the proverb might also be consid-

ered a perfect summarization of postmodern ideology. One of the first victims of postmo-

dernity was photography. Once heralded by positivists as representing the essence of

truth, photography soon lost its credibility. Framing the world and transforming it in the

process, the photographer turned out to be a mere image-maker, not unlike a painter.

Artists gladly jumped into the semantic void left by the disenchanted photographer.

Photography proved to be a better tool for making art than for seeking the truth. However,

by using photography, artists could play with the aura of objectivity that still stuck to the

medium. Moreover, by articulating and exploiting the objectivist claims of early and/or

naive photography, they could deconstruct positivist belief in new and high-tech media.

In this way, the growing awareness of the impact of mass consumption and technology on

the environment led to a new, postmodern brand of landscape photography.

One of the first artists to radically challenge the role of photography and the repre-

sentation of landscape was Robert Smithson. Fascinated by entropy and decay,

Smithson, a pioneer in the emerging land and earth art movement, made a contribution

to the legendary group show Artists & Photographs in 1970 that consisted of a large

square color print with a seemingly random close-up of plain rubble, manually torn into

four equal parts. With its large print run of about 1,200 copies, Smithson’s entropic still life

may have had quite an impact on both artists and photographers. Torn Photograph not

only canceled the traditional photographic print as such, but also raised questions about

the relevance of the traditional landscape format in light of a threatened environment.

The conventional landscape genre seemed doomed, unless presented ironically as a

bundle of idyllic clichés or as a cynical reflection on the banality of post-industrial, subur-

ban society. The posthumous, postmodern landscape hit the charts with the trailblazing

1975 exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. Instead of

being aesthetic taboos, elements such as entropy, erosion, pollution, exhaustion, and

overbuilding proved to be popular topoi in the emerging photography of the nineteen-

eighties. Large, sharp-focused images of blurry, suburban landscapes even became a

cliché in turn-of-the-century photography.

Today, thanks to virtual reality and the latest information technology, static land-

scape photographs seem for many to have historical value at best. Cameras in phones,

drones, and satellites produce a continually expanding archive of images that document

the ever-changing environment. Though it offers the illusion of comprehensiveness, this

growing archive also seems to produce less insight. Contemporary photographers have

to cope with this tension between information and saturation. And here the slow, still

image, resulting from careful framing and composing, is making a comeback. After all, it

implies a decisive vantage point and hence a personal choice. By carefully constructing

the image, the photographer becomes an author again. As an adherent of slow photog-

raphy, the Belgian photographer Paul Bulteel is such an author. In his series of urban and

architectural scenarios, the built environment is played out as a backdrop for social inter-

actions. Dwarfed by the intimidating power structures of shopping malls, train stations,

public squares, office buildings, mega-museums, and the like, human beings are reduced

to anonymous actors in an absurd, plotless play. Highlighting the uncanny aspects of

contemporary urban life, Bulteel adds a gentle touch of irony and criticism to his ex-

tremely well balanced compositions. His tableaux contain a myriad of details that invite

the viewer to become immersed in the scene. But by organizing and structuring the com-

ponents into rigid grids and geometrical compositions, Bulteel simultaneously provides

the necessary tools to cope with this visual abundance of detail. Whereas some of his

series, such as Figurants and Boxed, refer to the traditions and conventions of landscape

photography, others, such as Universes and Mirrors, appear to be inspired by the genre

of still life. In these post-human renderings, objects are the only players in the enigmatic,

almost abstract empty settings.

In recent series, Bulteel critically rereads classic landscape conventions in light of

environmental issues. In Reshaped, contemporary landscape appears as an absurd,

uncanny mixture of the natural and the cultural. Often revealing a tongue-in-cheek humor,

Bulteel elegantly explores the frayed edges where nature ends and culture begins, and

vice versa. Cycle & recycle, on the other hand, focuses on one theme: recyclable objects

and materials. The images show a wide array of multitudes in different architectural and

industrial settings: piles, pyramids, hills, and mountains of discarded things. Sometimes

these are neatly stacked in an orderly manner, but quite often they are randomly poured

into formless heaps. Bulteel’s systematic method of depiction results in a typology of

accumulation that even borders on the sculptural; while some of the photographs recall

the work of hard-core minimal artists of the early nineteen-sixties like Donald Judd, others

seem to refer to late sixties “anti-form” installations, not unlike the work of Robert Morris.

Consequently, the pictures in this book might trigger a variety of emotions. The viewer

may feel confronted with the fact that these waste streams are the product of his or her

own way of living. While some of Bulteel’s tableaux seem to express a feeling of loss, ruin,

and even catastrophe, others seem almost childishly colorful and joyous, while still others

suggest potential energy and even a sense of hope. After all, the discarded stuff in these

pictures patiently awaits new meaning and purpose.

Johan Pas

One man’s trash . . .

Johan Pas holds a PhD in art history and is specialized in contemporary photography and in the presentation and publication history of neo-avant-garde art. He researches and lectures at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.

12 13

20 21

55

88 89

108 109

148 149

164 165

Our industrialized societies, ever more hungry for material goods, leave enormous

quantities of waste, ranging from industry tailings to discarded consumer goods. When

badly managed, this waste destroys habitats on land, in rivers and in oceans, and causes

major health issues.

Not surprisingly, this topic has been a recurrent theme in photography. Often, and

rightfully so, photographers have documented the unacceptable human and environmen-

tal toll of waste—often but not solely originating from industrialized countries—being

dumped or primitively processed in the developing world. Some photographers have con-

centrated on the terrible scars brought to our planet by badly controlled waste streams.

Still other photographers have captured the eerie, unreal visual beauty of waste products

when sorted or compressed for further handling, often using close-up photography.

This series takes a different and complementary approach. The “cycle & recycle”

project brings a photographic view not only of the volumes and variety of waste streams

but also of the efforts taking place in Europe to recycle waste on an unprecedented scale.

Recycling waste by reprocessing it into new products not only avoids the environ-

mental impact of uncontrolled waste streams, but also entails much larger benefits for

society. Recycling make us move away from a linear “produce, consume, and dispose”

economy to a more circular economy in which a product at the end of its lifetime simply

becomes raw material for new products. Proceeding in this way reduces the pressure on

primary resources, requires less energy, entails much lower greenhouse gas emissions,

and may well be a key factor in managing climate change.

Ongoing recycling efforts in Europe are already impressive. A number of countries in

Western and Northern Europe lead the world in collecting and recycling paper, card-

board, cans, metals, glass, tires, plastics, textile and clothing, motors, transformers, wood,

refrigerators and washing machines, other household appliances, computers, tele-

phones, and all kinds of other manufacturing, construction, and consumer leftovers. This

often involves complex processes of dismantling, separation, cleaning, and reuse. Exist-

ing EU legislation and newly foreseen initiatives will further disseminate and deepen

these efforts.

This photography project is a personal initiative, carried out in full independence; it

was not commissioned or sponsored by any organization or industry.

Fifty companies active in reuse and recycling allowed me to photograph on their

industrial sites. These companies range from small-scale local enterprises to large multi-

nationals. The sites are situated in my home country, Belgium, and neighboring countries

The Netherlands, France, Luxemburg, and Germany.

Participating companies had a right of refusal for a number of reasons—in case a

photo revealed confidential industrial information, for example, or in case there was a

privacy issue with the individual(s) depicted, or a photo was perceived as harmful to the

com pany’s image. This right of refusal was used in only a handful of cases, each time

for very understandable reasons, and without any significant impact on the contents of

this book.

The openness of the participating companies and their managers has of course

been a key factor in the success of this project, and I thank them wholeheartedly. This

very openness illustrates the evolution from what in the past was an at times shadowy

waste-handling industry to a mature recycling industry in less than a few generations.

The series shows a number of examples of industrial or consumer goods entirely or

almost entirely produced from recycled material. However, a one-on-one identification of

end products with a specific recycled material is often not possible. Recycling consists of

a complex web of collection, sorting, dismantling, separation, mixing, reuse, and fabrica-

tion carried out during a multitude of steps in which a particular recycled material finally

becomes one of many components in the manufacturing process.

As Europe’s “make” industry is declining, recycled materials are also shipped in large

quantities to new producing countries worldwide, often as return cargo in the same con-

tainers that brought manufactured goods to Europe.

The European recycling story is impressive, but it is also true that a lot remains to be

done. Waste reduction and prevention remain a first priority. The countries leading in re-

cycling are high waste producers per capita as well. A key element in further progress is

product design that minimizes waste and maximizes cost-effective recycling. One can-

not ignore worrying reports about products being manufactured with less than optimal

lifetimes in order to boost replacement markets. Many European countries still have to

catch up with the most advanced ones. Moreover, Europe has a very open economy and

therefore little control over the environmental conditions under which imported goods are

produced, or the ultimate fate of exported goods. The plague of illegal waste export has

not yet been eradicated. And finally, we should not forget that recycling or reusing a prod-

uct, or making a product from recycled material, does not necessarily make it an environ-

mentally sound product, or a product that is beneficial to society as a whole.

Further progress is both possible and necessary. But is also true that if a number of

practices illustrated in this book were to become commonplace worldwide, at least one

of our major planetary environmental challenges would be much better managed.

May this book be a small contribution to that goal.

Paul Bulteel

About cycle & recycle

Paul Bulteel lives in Edegem, near Antwerp, Belgium. More about his work at www.paulbulteel.eu.

166 167

Captions

009 The residual fraction of household and equivalent waste.

Components such as paper, cardboard, beverage cartons,

plastic containers, cans, metals, batteries, electrical appliances,

tires, glass, wood, organic material, plastic foil, plastic flowerpots

and trays, soil, rubble, toxic waste . . . are deposited and collected

separately through nationwide systems and should ideally no

longer be present in the residual fraction. This residual fraction

will pass through an installation to separate components such

as residual iron and sieve sand. The final residue will serve as

solid recovered fuel (SRF) in incinerators generating electricity

and/or heat.

011 A controller takes a sample from a gas-fired aluminum

smelter for quality control. The smelter operates on approxi-

mately 80% recycled aluminum, supplemented by primary

aluminum. The cast aluminum billets will be extruded into profiles

to be used in the construction industry, among other things.

012 Steel disk brakes, obtained from dismantling discarded

cars, going to steel mills for reprocessing into new steel.

013 Rolls of paper entirely produced from recovered cardboard

and paper, ready to be transformed into corrugated cardboard

or other packaging material. Paper fiber can be recycled this way

up to seven times.

015 Glass shards from the specialized glass sorting and re-

cycling industry. The glass was originally collected from house-

holds and industry through a system of selective deposit and

collection. The glass will be melted in a glass factory to produce

glass bottles with a standard color for the beverage industry.

016 Recovered circuit boards. The finely shredded circuit

boards are melted in an oven in which the plastic carrier of the

circuit boards contributes to the fuel. After a number of pyro-

and hydrometallurgical processes, precious metals such as

gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rhodium as well as other

metals such as lead, copper, antimony, tin, bismuth, nickel,

indium, selenium, and tellurium are recovered.

017 After visual inspection, these used car tires may qualify for

reuse. The tires are braided and compressed to minimize trans-

port volume. The tires are shipped to specialized companies,

where they will be thoroughly inspected and prepared for the

second-hand market.

019 Mattresses in a specialized dismantling and recycling

installation. The mattresses originate from municipal collection,

retailers, hotels, and hospitals, and may not have been stored

or transported unprotected, as they have to remain dry in order

to qualify for recycling. The mattresses will be dismantled in a

process that is partly manual, partly automated. The different

components (steel, latex, polyurethane, textile) will be further

processed by specialized enterprises.

020 Tin ingots with a purity of 99.98%. The tin is obtained

from scrap alloys such as bronze through a pyro-metallurgical

process that separates copper, nickel, and lead along with tin.

Lead and tin are further separated using vacuum technology.

The weight of each ingot is approximately 25 kg.

021 Electric motors. These are shredded and separated in

fractions of iron and copper for steel fabrication or further refining.

023 Bales of polypropylene (PP) obtained from cutting

and unraveling recovered waste from the carpet sector. The

100% PP fibers are typically reused as a melted fiber in the

automobile sector. An example: the inner door of a car is

typically made from 50% natural fiber and 50% PP fiber.

025 Big bags made of polypropylene (PP). The bags are

shredded and converted into pellets that will serve as feedstock

in the plastics processing industry for new PP products.

026 Shredded granulate from non-recyclable, high-caloric

plastic waste. Among other things, the pellets are used for

co-incineration in cement ovens or limekilns.

027 Blocks of compressed aluminum scrap from a painting line.

Each block weighs approximately 200 kg and contains a small

quantity of gold-colored lacquer typically used for beer can

covers. In a specific recycling smelter, the lacquer is burnt and

the molten aluminum is cast into new blocks that can be used

to produce new cans, among other things.

029 Rubble from construction and demolition works comprising

stone and concrete debris that was cleaned to remove metals

and further broken in a crushing plant to obtain granulate of differ-

ent sizes. This end product is typically used in road construction

or other civil works, or as a raw material for concrete products.

031 Iron components from industrial constructions and pro-

cesses on their way to steel mills for reprocessing as new steel.

032 Particleboard, which is entirely produced from recovered

wood waste known as “urban wood.” Particleboard is mainly

used in the construction industry. Color codes refer to different

basic characteristics such as resistance to moisture or fire.

033 Copper cathodes, each weighing approximately 60 kg.

The copper originates from copper scrap mixed with blister

copper, which is obtained from copper ore refining and has a

purity of around 95%. After melting and purification in an anode

furnace and a poling oven, the copper is cast into anodes with

a purity of 99%. The anodes serve as input in an electrolysis

plant to produce copper cathodes attaining a purity of 99.995%.

These will be further processed into commercial products

such as wire, nuggets, rods, and profiles.

035 Edging produced entirely from mixed plastic waste,

typically used for ponds or flowerbeds. The plastic waste has

been collected from municipal container parks and washed,

dried, melted down, and recast in this format.

037 Bales of polypropylene (PP) extrusion waste, obtained

when extruding PP filament for weaving or tufting carpet. This

material will be cut and unraveled to produce fiber suitable for

the felt industry. The melted PP fiber will hold other, cheaper

fibers together.

039 Colored glass packaging waste collected through a

system of selective deposit and collection from households

and industry. Uncolored and colored glass is for the most part

already separated when collected. Before this glass waste can

be reused as raw material for the production of new colored

glass packaging, the color purity has to be improved and con-

taminants such as organics, plastics, metals, ceramics, crystal

glass, and heat resistant glass have to be removed. This complex

process takes place in a specialized glass recycling plant in

order to obtain processed glass, called cullet, which meets the

specifications of the glass producers.

041 Bales of compressed reusable clothing. The material is first

gathered through a network of collection points and then sorted

into different categories—trousers, t-shirts, dresses, bedding—in

three to five quality grades. The bales are mainly exported

to African countries.

043 Discarded coins punched from bimetal plate. The bimetal

is composed of a layer of copper on iron. Copper and iron are

separated in a pyro-metallurgical process. The copper becomes

available as anodes that can be further purified to copper cath-

odes in an electrolysis plant. The iron is released as cinder that

can be used in stabilizing concrete for road construction, for

making street tiles, or as a sanding product in shipyards, among

other things.

045 Bales of compressed polystyrene (PS) flowerpot trays.

These have been gathered through a system of selective de-

posit and collection from households and industry. Specialized

installations will wash this material and reduce it to granulate,

which will then be used as raw material in the plastics industry—

to produce new flowerpot trays, for example.

046 Used windshields from consumer market windshield

replacement. In the recycling plant, the glass is separated from

the plastic laminate layer that prevents the windshield from

shattering. The processed glass, called cullet, is used as raw

material for the production of new glass that can be used for new

windshields, for example, or for bottles and insulation products.

The metal is recycled in the metal industry and the plastic—

polyvinylbutyral (PVB)—becomes a raw material for roofing

and carpet glues.

047 Stacks of plasterboard produced solely on the basis of

recycled and recovered gypsum. Whether a by-product of

industrial flue gas desulphurization installations (mainly found

in coal- or lignite-fired power stations) or recovered from the

building sector and production residue, the gypsum used in this

production is not obtained by mining. The share of recycled

gypsum from the building sector and production residues is

typically between 10% and 20%. The cardboard covering the

gypsum core is a recycled product, color-coded for different

applications (such as fire- or water-resistant boards).

049 Beverage cartons collected through systems of selective

deposit and collection from households and industry. Beverage

cartons are typically composed of 74% cardboard, 22% poly-

ethylene (PET), and 4% aluminum. These three components

are mechanically separated in a specialized paper factory. The

cardboard cellulose is converted into paper products in the

same plant, while the aluminum and PET are recycled in other

industries. Typical applications for this paper include paper

napkins and towels, toilet paper, and cleaning paper for

industrial applications.

051 Radiators from dismantled cars. The radiators have a high

copper content and contain other metals as well. The different

metals (copper, nickel, lead, and tin) are separated in a pyro-

metallurgical process. Lead and tin are further separated using

vacuum technology. In the background, heaps of cinder from

the pyro-metallurgical process that can be used in stabilizing

concrete for road construction, for making street tiles, or as a

sanding product in shipyards, among other things.

053 Recovered aluminum from specialized ISO-certified

scrap dealers and aluminum processing industries. This batch

goes to a gas-fired aluminum smelter that operates on approxi-

mately 80% recycled aluminum, supplemented by primary

aluminum. The cast aluminum billets will be extruded into profiles

for use in the construction industry, among other things.

055 Containers filled with clothing and textiles obtained

through a network of collection points. The clothing will pass

a sorting line for selection, double inspection, and sorting into

different categories such as trousers, t-shirts, dresses, and

bedding in three to five quality grades, mainly for export to

African and Eastern European countries.

057 Wood fiber produced by chipping units that have shredded

and ground the wood and removed unwanted material through

manual and automated processes. These woodchips are

recycled for the production of particleboard for the construction

industry and the DIY market.