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Why on Earth wouldn’t we recycle?

By Dan Lee | Posted: Saturday, September 5, 2015 11:00 pm

Why recycle?  The answer to this question might seem obvious to dedicated environmentalists.  To others, it might not be as obvious. Whatever the case, rather than just assume that a particular course of action is the right thing to do, it behooves supporters of any course of action to provide plausible reasons as to why this is the way to go. Consider the following:

— Recycling aluminum cans saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from bauxite ore; a ton of recycled aluminum saves 40 barrels of oil and 20 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch television for three hours.

— One ton of recycled newsprint saves 71 gallons of oil, 7,000 gallons of water and 4.6 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling paper generates 95 percent less air pollution than conventional methods of making paper.

—  Recycling one ton of plastic saves 16.3 barrels of oil and 30 cubic yards of landfill space. The production of plastic accounts for 4 percent of energy consumption in the United States.

— Recycling glass uses 50 percent less energy, and generates 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution than conventional methods of making glass. (In the United States today, over 30 percent of the raw material used in glass production comes from recycled glass.)

— One ton of recycled steel saves 1.8 barrels of oil and 4 cubic yards of landfill space. A 60-watt light bulb can be run for more than a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling one pound of steel.

This is not just of significance for us. It is of even greater significance for our children and grandchildren. Every barrel of oil saved by recycling is a barrel that is potentially available for future generations. The same is true of bauxite ore and a host of other raw materials.

All of this is reason enough to recycle. There is, however, more to the story. In many cases, recycling is good for the bottom line. It is not just because, as the examples noted above illustrate, recycling uses less energy than, say, making aluminum from bauxite ore, or because recycling reduces landfill costs — all of which can be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.  Recycling can be good for the bottom line in other ways as well.

Take, for example, the experience of the DuPont’s buildings division, which manufactures Corian and Zodiaq quartz solid surfaces (widely used for counter types) and Tyvek weatherization systems. The company discovered that scraps of Corian could be crushed and made into a gravel that could be sold for landscaping.  They also discovered that leftover pieces of Tyvek cold be shredded and made into new Tyvek with no decline in the quality of the product.

 In an interview for the Gunther Report, Dave Walter, the DuPont executive who spearheaded the zero waste effort, noted that cafeteria waste was a “tough one” at first, but then they discovered that it could be turned into worm bedding and sold to bait stores, fishermen and gardeners.

Waste that cannot be made into anything else is burned as a fuel to produce energy. As a result of this campaign, the buildings division went from sending 81 million pounds of waste to landfills in 2008 to zero in 2012. The most pleasant surprise, however, was that the company now generates revenue from the recycled products that it sells.  This is in addition to the money it saves by avoiding landfill costs.

Recycling also presents new economic opportunities for entrepreneurs who recognize the significance of potential markets for products that are made from recycled materials. Take, for example, Perfect Rubber Mulch, a family-owned company based in Chicago whose motto is “Contributing to a Greener Environment One Tire at a Time.” As their name and motto suggest, they recycle old tires to make new products for which there is consumer demand.  These include rubber paver tiles for horse paddock areas and for landscaping and shredded rubber for horse arenas and for playgrounds.

With all of this going for recycling, how can we not recycle?

 

Source:  http://www.qconline.com/opinion/columnists/dan_lee/why-on-earth-wouldn-t-we-recycle/article_23d146ee-373e-5dbe-81be-c9fe657088d4.html

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Five do’s and don’ts of recycling

 Do

  1. Recycle virtually all plastics such as water and soda bottles, detergent and shampoo bottles, yogurt cups and butter tubs. In the city of Tucson program that would include bigger and harder plastics like old garbage cans, ice chests, buckets and certain toys like a Big Wheel. If it’s plastic and it fits in your bin, it can probably be accepted.
  2. Recycle all aluminum, steel and tin cans.
  3. Recycle glass jars and bottles. In the city program you can either leave the lid on or recycle it separated. Waste Management asks you to separate caps from glass and plastic containers for easier sorting.
  4. Recycle papers, mail, newspapers, cardboard, phone books and paper food cartons like milk and juice cartons. The city also accepts bound journals and magazines.
  5. Do the best you can to empty and rinse food containers. Oils and debris can contaminate the end recycled product.

Don’t

  1. Recycle plastic grocery bags in your recycle bin. To recycle those, take them back to the grocery store.
  2. Recycle Styrofoam. While it is a recyclable material and usually has the universal recycling symbol on it, most recycling programs don’t accept Styrofoam because it has no value as an end recyclable product and it is not cost effective.
  3. Recycle hazardous materials like hypodermic needles and medications. Those have their own methods of recycling.
  4. Flatten cans and bottles as it makes them harder to sort.

Source:
http://tucson.com/lifestyles/home-and-garden/blue-bin-or-green-tucsonans-making-wrong-choice-of-time/article_dfe10732-5cde-53c5-a0c5-d5bcbc041997.html

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Why on Earth wouldn’t we recycle?

By Dan Lee | Posted: Saturday, September 5, 2015 11:00 pm
Source:  http://www.qconline.com/opinion

Why recycle?  The answer to this question might seem obvious to dedicated environmentalists.  To others, it might not be as obvious. Whatever the case, rather than just assume that a particular course of action is the right thing to do, it behooves supporters of any course of action to provide plausible reasons as to why this is the way to go. Consider the following:

— Recycling aluminum cans saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from bauxite ore; a ton of recycled aluminum saves 40 barrels of oil and 20 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to watch television for three hours.

— One ton of recycled newsprint saves 71 gallons of oil, 7,000 gallons of water and 4.6 cubic yards of landfill space. Recycling paper generates 95 percent less air pollution than conventional methods of making paper.

—  Recycling one ton of plastic saves 16.3 barrels of oil and 30 cubic yards of landfill space. The production of plastic accounts for 4 percent of energy consumption in the United States.

— Recycling glass uses 50 percent less energy, and generates 20 percent less air pollution and 50 percent less water pollution than conventional methods of making glass. (In the United States today, over 30 percent of the raw material used in glass production comes from recycled glass.)

— One ton of recycled steel saves 1.8 barrels of oil and 4 cubic yards of landfill space. A 60-watt light bulb can be run for more than a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling one pound of steel.

This is not just of significance for us. It is of even greater significance for our children and grandchildren. Every barrel of oil saved by recycling is a barrel that is potentially available for future generations. The same is true of bauxite ore and a host of other raw materials.

All of this is reason enough to recycle. There is, however, more to the story. In many cases, recycling is good for the bottom line. It is not just because, as the examples noted above illustrate, recycling uses less energy than, say, making aluminum from bauxite ore, or because recycling reduces landfill costs — all of which can be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.  Recycling can be good for the bottom line in other ways as well.

Take, for example, the experience of the DuPont’s buildings division, which manufactures Corian and Zodiaq quartz solid surfaces (widely used for counter types) and Tyvek weatherization systems. The company discovered that scraps of Corian could be crushed and made into a gravel that could be sold for landscaping.  They also discovered that leftover pieces of Tyvek cold be shredded and made into new Tyvek with no decline in the quality of the product.

In an interview for the Gunther Report, Dave Walter, the DuPont executive who spearheaded the zero waste effort, noted that cafeteria waste was a “tough one” at first, but then they discovered that it could be turned into worm bedding and sold to bait stores, fishermen and gardeners.

Waste that cannot be made into anything else is burned as a fuel to produce energy. As a result of this campaign, the buildings division went from sending 81 million pounds of waste to landfills in 2008 to zero in 2012. The most pleasant surprise, however, was that the company now generates revenue from the recycled products that it sells.  This is in addition to the money it saves by avoiding landfill costs.

Recycling also presents new economic opportunities for entrepreneurs who recognize the significance of potential markets for products that are made from recycled materials. Take, for example, Perfect Rubber Mulch, a family-owned company based in Chicago whose motto is “Contributing to a Greener Environment One Tire at a Time.” As their name and motto suggest, they recycle old tires to make new products for which there is consumer demand.  These include rubber paver tiles for horse paddock areas and for landscaping and shredded rubber for horse arenas and for playgrounds.

With all of this going for recycling, how can we not recycle?

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Recycling Facts

The benefits of recycling might not be immediately and directly seen, however…

  • Recycling a four-foot stack of newspapers saves the equivalent of one 40-foot fir tree.
  • Every glass bottle recycled saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 4 hours.
  • Making cans from recycled aluminum saves 95% of the energy required to produce cans from virgin material.
  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire commercial airline fleet every three months.

Recycling efforts at CU have prevented over 235,000 fir trees from being cut down and has saved 415,000 gallons of gasoline, 98 million gallons of water, 843,000 pounds of air pollutants, 65 million kilowatt hours of electrically, and 67,500 cubic yards of landfill waste since 1980!

Why use a valuable material or product once, and then place it in your trash to be buried in a landfill? Instead, divert that material for recycling, and capture the energy and resources already used to make that product. Since recycled materials have been refined and processed once, manufacturing the second time around is much cleaner and less energy-intensive than the first.

By using recycled materials instead of trees, metal ores, minerals, oil, and other raw materials harvested from the earth, recycling-based manufacturing conserves the world’s scarce natural resources. This conservation reduces pressure to expand forests cutting and mining operations.

General Recycling:

  • In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children.
  • Recycling all of your home’s waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year.
  • Each of us generates on average 4.4 pounds of waste per day per person.
  • In this decade, it is projected that Americans will throw away over 1 million tons of aluminum cans and foil, more than 11 million tons of glass bottles and jars, over 4 and a half million tons of office paper and nearly 10 million tons of newspaper. Almost all of this material could be recycled.
  • One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.

Reduce and Reuse:

  • We fill 63,000 garbage trucks every day in this country-lined up they would stretch 400 miles. (Nat’l Audubon Society, 1994)
  • In 1995, the United States generated 208 million tons of municipal solid waste-an average of 4.3 pounds of waste per person per day. (EPA, 1996)
  • In 1991, there were more than 7 million copiers in operation in the U.S. These copiers produce nearly 400 billion copies per year (almost 750,000 copies a minute). (The Recycle Planner, 1992)
  • One out of every 10 dollars we spend at stores is for packaging. Packaging is 1/3 of our waste by weight or 1/2 by volume. (Worldwatch Institute, 1996)
  • If every household in the U.S. reused a paper grocery bag for one shopping trip, about 60,000 trees would be saved. (S.C. Office of Solid Waste Reduction, 1996)

Glass, plastic & metals

  • Recycled aluminum saves 95% energy vs. virgin aluminum; recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours (Reynolds Metal Company).
  • Recycled aluminum reduces pollution by 95% (Reynolds Metal Company).
  • Enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild our commercial air fleet every 3 months.
  • You can make 20 recycled aluminum cans with the energy it takes to make one new aluminum can from bauxite ore. (Windstar Institute)
  • Recycled glass saves 50% energy vs. virgin glass (Center for Ecological Technology)
  • Recycling one glass container saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for 4 hours (EPA)
  • Recycled glass generates 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution (NASA)
  • Glass can be reused an infinite number of times; over 41 billion glass containers are made each year (EPA)
  • We use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas every year (EPA)
  • Five recycled soft drink bottles make enough fiberfill for a man’s ski jacket. Thirty-six recycled bottles can make one square yard of carpet. (Colorado Recycles, 1995)
  • Annually, enough energy is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost 10 years.

Paper:

  • doublelineddraftOne ton of recycled paper saves 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water.
  • One ton of recycled paper uses: 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than one ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp.
  • Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees (35’ tall), 2 barrels of oil (enough fuel to run the average car for 1260 miles or from Dallas to Los Angeles), 4100 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for 6 months), 3.2 cubic yards of landfill space (one family size pick-up truck) and 60 pounds of air pollution. (Trash to Cash, 1996)
  • It takes one 15-year old tree to produce half a box of paper. Use both sides of all paper. (Midpoint International)
  • Recycled paper saves 60% energy vs. virgin paper (Center for Ecological Technology)
  • Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12’ wall from New York to California
  • Everyday Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That’s the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week.
  • If everyone in the U.S. recycled just 1/10 of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year.
  • It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times.
  • If we recycled all of the newspapers for one Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees or about 26 millions trees per year. (CA Dept of Conservation, 1995)

SOURCE:  http://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/recycling-facts

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A fresh look at garbage: How it’s made, and can be made into something better

Garbage is an unlikely topic for a terrific coffee-table book, but the authors and publisher have come close with “Make Garbage Great:  The TerraCycle Family Guide to a Zero-Waste Lifestyle.”

TerraCycle is a young company devoted to innovative recycling services as well as “upcycling,” an optimistic notion which holds that there’s a value-added world beyond the pyramid of reduce-reuse-recycle – that our everyday discards can be transformed into something betterthan the original item grown obsolete.

One provocative example: TerraCycle turns cigarette filters into plastic pellets that can be used in the manufacture of durable plastic goods, like park benches and shipping pallets (with the paper and tobacco scraps being composted, of course).

Another: making Target’s plastic shopping bags into those reTotes you may remember but which TerraCycle might just as soon forget, as the project lost a lot of money for a company that was coming to be known as “the Google of garbage.”

So I was eager to peruse the book’s selection of “more than 100 recycling tips and do-it-yourself projects.”

My emphasis added there and, as it turns out, in the wrong part of the subtitle, because the tips outweigh the projects by four to one.

But if you’re the sort of DIY-er drawn to fashioning a wallet out of a bicycle inner tube, or a garden planter out of eggshells, these 20-odd projects – some of them very odd indeed – may be enough. They might even stir you to better ideas of your own.

Quite a few look to be home-built versions of products TerraCycle has developed for mass production, like the coin purse made out of a drink pouch, or the tote also made out of drink pouches, which I guess are more durable than I realized. TerraCycle has even turned them into upholstery.

More durability than we need

Needless durability is of course is the biggest problem with modern garbage, as author and TerraCycle execs Tom Szaky and Albe Zakes explain in fascinating depth. So much of it lasts so long, and keeps piling up, and until we change our way of thinking about this problem it isn’t going to get any smaller.

But most of us don’t think about it at all, or not very often, even if we’re among those who contribute to the problem on an industrial scale.

Jerry Greenfield, a co-founder of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream outfit, provided a foreword to “Make Garbage Great.” Though his company stressed environmental values and social responsibility in making its products, he writes, there were some blind spots about waste:

I knew that in the production of ice cream, in the manufacture of its packaging, and in the countless plastic and wooden spoons we distributed, a lot of additional waste was generated …. I thought of all of these impacts as necessary, even when operating in the most thoughtful way possible.

My perspective changed once I read an advance copy of Make Garbage Great. … What is wonderful is that the format allows the content to be savored in small doses; it allows us to not only learn about waste but also how to purchase, reuse, and discard differently, all the while entertaining.

The story of plastics

The book defines garbage as “anything you’re willing to pay to get rid of,” which is a provocative construct on its own, when you think about it, because why acquire it in the first place?

Dividing the ever-growing torrent into eight distinct streams – plastics, metals, paper, textiles, glass, wood, rubber and organics – the book traces their histories and assesses their problematic present. From the plastics section:

  • Polystyrene was invented, or discovered, by accident in 1839 by a British chemist trying to distill sap from a rubber tree. The first truly synthetic plastic came along in 1856, when another British chemist, Alexander Parkes, tried to make a substitute for ivory; his “Parkesine” went nowhere until 1870, when the American inventor John Wesley Hyatt bought Parkes’ patent and introduced the world, ta-da, to celluloid.
  • By 1979 world plastics production surpassed steel production, thanks to such materials and products as polyvinyl chloride (1872), PET (1941), Tupperware (1946), and Saran Wrap (1953),  the last product repurposing a film that the authors say (without attribution or, alas, elaboration)  was “used by the army to help ventilate combat boots.”
  • “Between 1960 and 2000, Americans alone went from generating around 400,000 tons of plastic in the municipal solid waste stream (what consumers throw in the trash) to 24.7 million tons. … In 2011, that number skyrocketed again to 32 million tons, only 8 percent of which was recycled.”
  • “It’s a misconception that there are unrecyclable plastics. Everything is recyclable; it’s just a matter of finding someone willing to pay to do it.”
  • Indeed, “an alternative energy company called Ágilyx has developed technology capable of actually repurposing plastic trash back into crude oil.” But there’s no market for this in a world awash in new crude.

And that brings me to one of three serious shortcomings in “Make Garbage Great”: no footnotes, no references, no bibliography and, nearly as vexing, no index. You’re on your own to find out more about Ágilyx, or to return to this brief reference if you move on without marking your place.

A second weakness is a selection of upcycling examples that are occasionally inspiring – like the technique developed by Carnegie Mellon students, organized as Engineers Without Borders, to flatten plastic beverage bottles and turn them into cheap, durable, oddly beautiful roofing for poor countries – but more often kind of dopey.

Jerry Greenfield says he loves the bird feeder made by cutting holes in a large beverage bottle and sticking plastic spoons through the sides to make perches. But I bet he hasn’t made one for his own place. (Me, if it was hanging from one of my trees, I’d hope for a windstorm.)

Political solutions needed, too

A matter of taste, perhaps, but I think better examples of here-and-now possibility on a large scale will be needed to inspire new attitudes toward the flood of unrecycled plastics exhausting our landfills, killing our wildlife and forming massive trash gyres in our oceans.

Which leads me to the book’s third shortcoming.

Szaky and Zakes note that some localities are banning styrofoam and microbeads, two of the five plastic products they say a thoughtful consumer ought never buy; the others are bottled water, disposable dishware and products containing PVC.

But you can look in vain for discussion of how these political successes were won and how they might be replicated, especially with products less trivial in daily life than a styrofoam cup. Getting PVC out of stuff like shower curtains, pencil cases and other trinkets is a no-brainer; plumbing pipe and fittings would seem a different kind of challenge.

If you come to this book out of an interest in knowing more about garbage, you’ll be amply rewarded. If you’re seeking a zero-waste lifestyle plan, which the cover seems to offer, you’ll have to assemble it yourself from ideas gathered here and there, and it will take some patience.

I’m guessing you already take your own bags to the grocery and pack your picnic basket with real plates, glasses and silverware. You’re already avoiding disposable products where possible and recycling everything you can think of among the remains.

But that’s not enough, and we all know it’s not enough, and though it’s certainly true that every little bit helps at least a little, making serious progress is going to require more than getting people to sew eyeglass cases out of old blue-jeans pockets, fold foil chip bags into origami napkin rings (how many of those do you need?), or build their own room dividers out of 185 CDs, 500 plastic washers, 450 pop rivets and 70 feet of molding, plus assorted hinges, screws and other hardware.

(Somehow I feel the people who have pop-rivet guns and the people who would assemble this, um, interesting decor item are generally not the same people.)

“Make Garbage Great” is an informative and entertaining book, and it will stay on my coffee table for a while. But securing a lower-waste future is going to take more than the solutions it offers.

It’s going to take serious, deep changes not only in our personal lives and the post-consumer recycling sector – in which TerraCycle, I grant, has an interesting and potentially important niche – but also in our laws and therefore in our legislatures.

We can’t just build it out of discarded drink pouches.

By Ron Meador | 08/31/15
Contributed to MINNPOST

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Committee to take a closer look at construction and demo recycling

Though it has been in the works for years, a plan to require more construction-site recycling and reuse of materials hit a small road bump at the Planning Commission last week. Commissioners voted unanimously to send the proposed code amendments back to their Codes and Ordinances Committee, where they hope to get more input on the changes.

Ross Rathgeber told the commission that his family has been in the demolition business in Austin for the past 50 years. He was speaking against the proposed changes as they applied to demolitions and explained that the end goal of recycling 95 percent of materials from demolitions is not realistic.

“If you really want to kill redevelopment in Austin, you’ll implement this ordinance,” said Rathgeber, who estimated it would increase the cost of demolition by a factor of “four or five.”

Woody Raine, who is a zero-waste planner in the Austin Resource Recovery Department, explained that City Council initiated the code amendment in December 2014 but the city has been working on the ordinance for about five years.

Raine told the commission that debris from construction currently makes up 20 percent of what is going to landfills “at the very least.”

Beginning in 2016, the code amendment will apply to building projects over 5,000 square feet and all commercial demolitions. It will not apply to residential demolitions until 2020. In 2020, the ordinance will also apply to building projects over 1,000 square feet.

Initially, the city will require 50 percent diversion from landfills. That will increase to 75 percent in 2020 and 95 percent in 2030. Not reporting or meeting the new diversion requirements will be a Class C misdemeanor, penalized with a fine of up to $500 unless a waiver is obtained from the city.

Raine said that diversion costs about $20 per ton, which adds between 5 and 18 cents per square foot when building a new multifamily structure. Though he didn’t discuss the impact to single-family homes, he said that they would require an economic impact statement for household affordability before the 2020 and 2030 implementation of the new ordinance.

Rathgeber said the city already encouraged demolition recycling through its green builder program, which incentivizes diversion away from landfills. That ordinance, he said, was a carrot that rewards recycling. The new ordinance, in contrast, “is a big stick.” He explained that the average pier-and-beam house weighs 55 pounds per square foot, and a requirement to recycle 52.5 pounds of that material “cannot be done.”

“The impact on affordability is incredible,” said Rathgeber. “There’s so many regulations in this city now. We talk about the mantra of affordability – it just keeps piling on. … This room ought to be packed with builders and developers coming to tell you how bad this is. I don’t know why it’s not. This is a big deal. I don’t know why people don’t care.”

As for the percentages that Rathgeber found unrealistic, Raine said those percentages have been implemented in places like Florida, California, North Carolina and Illinois.

“Those are not numbers that are pulled out of the air,” said Raine.

When asked by Chair Stephen Oliver about how the ordinance might be approached better, Rathgeber suggested that a pilot program would allow the city to gather more accurate cost data and give time to speak to builders and contractors.

The city has been speaking with stakeholders since 2010, according to Raine. However, Raine agreed with the notion of a pilot program, saying it was “a very good idea.”

Update: Following publication of this article, Raine clarified that years of experience with the Austin Energy Green Building program has effectively served as a pilot program for the city.

Monday, August 31, 2015 by Elizabeth Pagano
– See more at: http://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2015/08/committee-take-closer-look-construction-demo-recycling/#sthash.RRtiy1eM.dpuf
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Trash Tutorial: The what and where of recycling plastic bags

kitereeves.fw

QUESTION:

Dear Sarah,
I have been shopping online quite a bit. I receive goods in plastic bags with [the enclosed] label. How do I recycle them?
— Pat A. 

ANSWER:

Pat included a piece of the plastic shipping bag for me to evaluate. The language on the sample reads, “In our effort to help save the environment, we are using fewer cardboard boxes and have packed your order with pride in a recyclable bag.” Next to this language is a chasing arrows triangle with the number 4 inside, and the letters “LDPE” below the triangle.

The good news is, this particular shipping bag is allowed in the grocery bag take-back recycling program called ReStore. ReStore recycling bins are located at large supermarkets, pharmacies and big-box stores. (Plastic bags are not allowed in curbside bins and carts, or in transfer station household recycling drop-off containers.)

Normally when talking about how to know if something is recyclable in Rhode Island, we say to disregard the numbers and the triangle.

In this case, because the item doesn’t fit the plastics rule of thumb (a container that holds fewer than 5 gallons), it needs more explanation. The plastic film rule of thumb has been that the film be: clean and dry; clear or somewhat see-through; and stretchable (at least a little).

In conversations last week with our plastic film customer Trex, they’ve let us know that all colors are now OK to include in ReStore collection bins, so we’ll be making that change to our Frequently Asked Questions on our websites.

If these criteria are met, the film can be recycled in the plastic bag recycling container at grocery, pharmacy or big-box stores.

Not all films have a triangle or number printed on them, which is why we developed the general rule of thumb that doesn’t mention them. But, if you are so inclined and have a desire for specificity, here’s the skinny: Numbers on plastics are resin identification codes (RIC) that manufacturers use to show the main blend of the material. So, “#2” is the RIC for high-density polyethylene (HDPE). A “#4” is the code for low-density polyethylene (LDPE).

Plastic film may not have anything printed on it, in which case use the film rule of thumb to guide your decisions. But if it does, here’s what to look for: “LDPE,” “HDPE,” “PE” or “Polyethylene.” If you see those abbreviations or the numbers 2 or 4, the film is recyclable at the market.

kitreevesBy Sarah Kite-Reeves
Special to The Journal
Posted Jul. 25, 2015 @ 12:01 am
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Recycling as Therapy

Submitted to:  The Washington Post June 22 2015

 

therapy

Not only is recycling expensive, but it’s also unnecessary. There is plenty of space for landfills. Not in the heart of New York City, or Los Angeles, but just look at a map of any state – most states have thousands of square miles of empty lands. Globally, we occupy only 3% of the land mass of the world.

What’s more, many municipalities pretend to recycle by asking people to go through the trouble of separating their trash, but then they simply send everything to the same dump.

therapy1

Waste Management and other recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around.

Now, isn’t that interesting – they pretend to recycle. So why recycle at all? I think it is because it is fulfilling a hidden psychological need.  The fear of global warming is causing depression and anxiety.

So if the fear of global warming is causing mental illness, people need treatment. Now, people affected could take Prozac or Paxil, which would make them perfect Democratic voters, but drugs are always a last alternative. Most psychologists recommend first trying cognitive behavioral therapy, where patients try working through thoughts and actions, which will improve their feelings.

And if pretending to recycle, or even actually recycling your trash (to no effect), helps liberals with their mental illness, there’s an independent justification for reycling right there.

So we don’t need recycling to cut costs (it doesn’t) or to prevent landfill space from running out (it isn’t). The only real reason we keep recycling is to help keep liberals from going off the deep end and being institutionalized.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.

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Our Army — Recycling too!!

Recycling Center paving Way to Net Zero 2020

Submitted by Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Brandenburg, 7th MPADSentinel Staff
October 2, 2014
FortHoodSentinel.com

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Senior commanders from across the installation visited the Fort Hood Recycling Center Sept. 23 for its environmental quality control council meeting.

The Recycling Center held the event as part of Fort Hood’s Net Zero 2020 campaign to help stop illegal dumping and to inform commanders of the benefits the center brings to the installation so they can disseminate the benefits to their Soldiers.

A Net Zero installation is one that reduces, reuses, and recovers waste streams, converting them to resource values with zero landfill over the course of a year. Fort Hood is a pilot installation striving to be waste free by 2020.

“The idea of being a pilot to reach Net Zero, I’m here to tell that’s not an option, it’s not a goal, it’s a requirement,” said Maj. Gen. Ken Cox, III Corps and Fort Hood deputy commander. “And it would be great to be able to say during our watch, ‘we made it a reality.’”

The Recycling Center is one way Fort Hood plans to meet that requirement. The center employs 40 personnel, and after covering its operating costs, and it returns as much as $150,000 per year back to the installation’s community. All of that money has gone on to sponsor various Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation events, such as fun runs, Fourth of July fireworks, golf tournaments and Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers events.

In 2012, roughly 48 percent of all garbage that went into Fort Hood’s landfill was recyclable.

“In 2013, if we took all the recyclables that went into the landfill and had processed it and sold it, it would generate something like a million dollars that could go back into the community here at Fort Hood,” said Brian Dosa, Directorate of Public Work, director. “That’s why recycling is so important.”

However, the Recycling Center needs help to keep its operating costs low. Unsorted recycling and illegal dumping are the two largest factors that reduce efficiency and raise the center’s overhead. The simple act of dropping off garbage or non-recyclables in one of their blue bins causes Recycling Center workers to stop the recycling process and sort out the materials and dispose of it properly.

“The other thing we’re real serious about is that we are the first line of defense to make sure products are turned in the right way,” said Michael Bush, recycle operations manager for Fort Hood. “We do not take military equipment. We do not take communication equipment. We do not take anything with a stock number.”

So, how does the Recycling Center plan on increasing patronage?

“Right now, there is a challenge going on; you get 75 cents a pound for your cans, which is 10 cents higher than the local market price,” Bush said.

Also, the unit that recycles the most aluminum cans until Nov. 14 will receive $1,000 for its unit funds.

The Recycling Center has also greatly increased the different types of materials that it can process. When it comes to recycling, people generally think of cans, cardboard and plastic water bottles, but the Recycling Center can process so much more – any hard plastics like coat hangers and milk crates, white packing Styrofoam, all types of glass, toner cartridges, athletic shoes and small household appliances. The center will even take old lawn mowers, wood pallets and Christmas lights.

The center also offers several services for Soldiers to use when they leave the Great Place. It offers a scale service for only a $5 charge and all of the boxes a Soldier can carry.

“There is no reason for any Soldier to go and buy cardboard boxes when they are (receiving a permanent change of station) or moving,” Bush said. “We give them away for free.”

With 2020 just five years away and Fort Hood’s Net Zero campaign in full gear, now is the time to recycle “We should focus on doing the right thing,” Cox said.

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Sorting Trash Into Blue Bins Isn’t Recycling

Recycling has really taken off: it’s hard to find a community in the United States that doesn’t have at least a modest recycling program. You might be tempted, gazing out on a nation awash in blue bins, to conclude that recycling has won that environmental revolution that started 25 years ago.

You’d be wrong.

Putting cans and bottles and newspapers in a recycling bin to put out at the curb is a fine thing, and the fact that more and more people are doing it makes recycling possible. But putting recyclables in a recycling bin isn’t recycling. Recycling is the process of taking those raw materials from your recycling bin and turning them into new things. If those cans and bottles and newspapers don’t get turned into new products — preferably new cans and bottles and newspapers — then recycling isn’t happening.

In other words, putting those blue bins out at the curb isn’t recycling any more than stocking grocery store shelves is cooking.

Lots of things can happen between the recycling bin and the factory to make your carefully sorted trash actually go to the landfill instead. Improperly sorted recyclables, broken glass ground into newspaper, contaminants like motor oil in plastic bottles, or food grease on cardboard can cause an entire truckload of collected recyclables to be discarded. So can the vagaries of the commodities market: when the price drops for scrap plastic, for instance, your liter soda bottles can and do end up littering riverbanks in other countries when the local processor can’t sell them.

Even when recycling does work well, it’s not always the best solution for handling our discarded things.

Take glass, for instance. Put a used beer bottle in the recycling bin and it gets hauled away, crushed, hauled some more, melted down at high temperatures, formed into new bottles, transported yet again, filled with another portion of beverage, then shipped to a warehouse and then to a store.

If that glass bottle was to be reused rather than recycled, we can skip many of those steps. Most importantly, the bottle would be washed and sterilized rather than melted down, saving a huge amount of energy.

Same goes for other items like grocery bags. Now that those ubiquitous plastic bags are being phased out across California, people are turning to more durable shopping bags that can be reused hundreds of times. Instead of theoretically recyclable single-use plastic bags getting hauled to a factory and recycled, with additional energy and resources needed every time you use a grocery bag, the reusable bag just goes between house and store in your car or on your bike at a minimal cost of energy and resources.

But wait: there’s an approach that’s even better for the environment than reuse or recycling: not buying the stuff in the first place. Given a choice between a theoretically recyclable single-use water bottle and a reusable water bottle that you might refill thousands of times before tossing it in the trash, the best choice for the environment may well be just drinking out of the water fountain without using any bottle at all. Even a reusable item, when it eventually wears out, will consume resources when it’s recycled or landfilled, and so will creating its replacement.

That’s why recycling experts created a sort of mantra decades ago, and it’s still relevant today. That mantra: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Those options are listed in declining order of priority.


Reduce: It’s best to consume less stuff, whether that means choosing an item with less packaging (or none at all,) or even just doing without something you don’t actually really need.

Reuse: If you have to buy something, make sure to get a durable, reusable version if it exists. Reusing items saves energy and resources compared to buying new ones. And that’s true for items from containers to cars to clothing to — even though it pains me to say this as a writer — books.

Recycle: If you can’t Reduce or Reuse, then this is the last resort before the landfill. Don’t take for granted that material labeled “recyclable” will actually be recyclable in your community. (Most plastic containers aren’t, despite those “chasing arrows” symbols imprinted on the bottom.) Make sure to sort your recyclables according to your local hauler’s directions. And if the products you buy aren’t made of recycled content, then you’re not “closing the circle” of supply and demand.

It’s not that sorting your recyclables and putting them out at the curb isn’t important: it’s crucial. But we can be doing so much more.

Source:  http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/reduce/recycling/why-sorting-your-trash-into-blue-bins-isnt-recycling.html