RECYCLE
This post does not directly pertain to botany, but it does pertain to sustainability and resource management, so the environmentalist in me can’t let this one go. If you have any pro tips about recycling and personal waste management, please let me know! Comment, add to the conversation!
Seeing as we’re all inhabitants of the Earth, I think it’s important that we’re all aware of how we impact it and that we make a concerted effort to minimize that impact. We all create a lot of waste every day, from napkins to juice boxes to plastic wrap. Most of our consumer products have some sort of disposable packaging that goes from factory to lunch table to landfill. Yes, every time you put something into a trash bin, it will eventually be shipped off to sit atop a giant heap of trash somewhere else in the world, and that’s gross, isn’t it? Luckily, there is a way to minimize your contribution to the heap.
Let’s talk recycling.
There are so many objects in the average household that are recyclable and this goes far beyond steel cans and plastic bottles. The thing is, we often find ourselves faced with a conundrum when holding something like a glossy magazine or a yogurt container or an envelope with a plastic window. Can this go in my home recycling bin? If I’m in a public place, which of the four different recycling bins should it be put into? Sometimes it seems like such a pain that we just give up and toss it, toss it straight into a landfill. And that’s pretty sad. The point of this post is to demystify some of the cloudier aspects of recycling and to open up a conversation about how to live a more sustainable life style.
So here we go.
Metals
We do a pretty good job of recycling our metal products. In America, about 2.7 million tons of metal products are tossed per year and about 50% of those tons are recycled. We seem to be especially good at recycling steel and tin cans which is great because recycling one can saves 74% of the energy that would be used to make a new one. Pop cans are also frequently recycled. It only takes 60 days for a can to go from recycling bin to recycling plant and back to the shelves. Some sneakier forms of metal that you can recycle are aluminum foil and one time use cook ware. With all of these objects, be sure that they are rinsed and clear of food residue before recycling them.
Paper and cardboard
You’d probably be lying if you said you haven’t used at least one paper product today. Paper products make up 29% of the consumer waste stream, but hey, 63% of that waste gets recycled every year. That’s good, but of course we can always improve.
One urban legend is that you can’t recycle magazines, junk mail advertisements, or other glossy paper products. The truth is, you can recycle them. This is a common misconception derived from the early days of recycling when you couldn’t recycle glossy paper. Nowadays almost all community recycling programs in America accept magazines, catalogs, etc. They also accept shredded paper, but if you’re going to recycle it, put it in an envelope or a paper bag. That makes it easier for the machines at the recycling plant to sort it out. Shredded paper also works great for composting, so that’s another option.
Oh, and you know those non-plastic cartons that usually contain milk or juice? They’re called “gable-top” cartons or, if you want to be specific, “poly-coated paperboard containers”. They’re 80% high-quality paper fiber and 20% polyethylene, a plastic that makes the paper water resistant. Hardly any of these containers get recycled and that’s because you can’t just toss them in your run of the mill municipal recycling bin. The pulp has to be separated from the polyethylene before it can be reused in other paper products. Certain carton manufacturers have created a program where you can get a home collection container to recycle the gable-tops at no extra charge. Check out your area’s recycling program to see if this service is available.
Glass
This one is sort of tricky because not all glass can be recycled. In some places, your recycling program may not even accept glass at all because some glass can’t be made into other products or it’s just plain too expensive to recycle even if it can be reused. For example, green and brown glass is colored with chemicals that cannot be removed, so if a brown bottle wants to be reused, it can only be used to make more brown bottles.
There are also some specific glass things that you plain can’t recycle, like anything contaminated with dirt or food waste, heat resistant stuff like Pyrex, mirror or window glass, metal or plastic lids and caps from glass jars, crystal, and ceramics. That’s a lot. Be careful. Know what your recycling program accepts and what it doesn’t.
Plastic
Plastics are kind of tricky because there are lots of different shapes and colors in plastic products that all have different recycling needs. Black plastic is a real bugger and should never be thrown in the recycling bin. Black doesn’t reflect light; therefore, it goes undetected by the scanners used to sort materials at recycling plants. This stealthy black plastic can, and does, make its way through the plant and ends up contaminating other recyclable materials. Also never recycle plastic grocery bags. These guys can gum up the works at a plant for days. Lots of grocery stores actually collect used bags and the plastic is then recycled and used as plastic lumber. Just bring the bag back to the place you got it. One more thing, don’t recycle plastic bottle tops as they are small and tough to sort. If left on the bottle, it makes the bottles harder to squash and can create air bubbles in bales of recycled plastic that can explode and injure recycling plant employees.
If this sounds like a list of “don’ts”, you’d be right. There are lots of ways to mess up plastics. If you’re looking for some guidance on where to put what, recyclable plastic products have code numbers on the bottom. They look like the little recycling symbol, the triangle made of three arrows, with a number in the middle. Check with your municipal recycling program to see which numbers they accept.
Batteries and electronics
This one is kinda short. Just make sure you don’t toss these items into the recycling bin. Car batteries, incandescent bulbs, LEDs, household batteries, refrigerators, cellphones, etc. all need to go through different programs to be recycled. Check out what sort of services your municipality has for these items.
Finally…
I’m going to belabor this point for good reason. If you’re going to recycle something, make sure it’s clean and make sure it’s in the right place. That goes for all recyclable things. Make sure there’s no more cereal in the paperboard box, pasta sauce in the glass jar, and no more honey in the plastic bear before tossing everything into the recycling bin. One dirty plastic container can contaminate a whole bale of recycled materials. That’s about 1,000 pounds of otherwise recyclable plastic going to a landfill just because one person forgot to rinse. Yikes.
Making sure your recyclables are clean isn’t a huge time commitment, it’s a paradigm shift. It takes but a minute to run some water in that milk carton before giving it a toss. We’ve got to work together and then all of the little things will add up to less fill in the landfill.
If you don’t know if something should be recycled, look it up. There is so much information out there on the internet. County recycling programs usually have websites listing what they do and do not accept in great detail. If you still have questions, there are sites where you can live chat with a recycling correspondent from your area.
There are resources out there. Take advantage of them and do what you can to make this world a less trashy place.
(Here’s one cool resource: Earth911. This is a great search engine for finding what you can recycle and where)
Sources
“Select an Area.” What Can I Recycle. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2016. <http://www.wm.com/thinkgreen/what-can-i-recycle.jsp>.
“Severn Waste Services and Mercia Waste Management.” FAQs. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Aug. 2016. <http://www.severnwaste.com/envirosort/faqs/>.
