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Americans, even with our high level of consumerism, are handling our trash in a responsible way, for the
most part. Further restrictive regulations here will have little impact on the world.
It's not very responsible when I see zillions of soda bottles tossed inside regular trash cans (such as are commonly found beside pumps at gas stations, on sidewalks and entrances to shopping centers, theaters, etc.) ....or just thrown out on roadsides. I can go to the gas station on the corner by my house, on any warm day, and pull out 30 or 40 discarded plastic bottles which would otherwise get bagged in the regular garbage. Every single day. And I live in a "progressive" state.
It also irks me the amount of thick heavy-duty plastic packaging wasted on very tiny portions of things like mini-applesauce, mini-fruit cups, tiny energy drinks bottles, and "lunchable" cracker/cheese kits for schoolchildren, and tiny pocket tools. Yellow and green vegetables sliced up and wrapped in foam packaging, because consumers are too lazy to slice them at home. (and Styrofoam is basically not recyclable. It's coded "5" or "6", and when you google "foam recycling" there basically may be only one or two locations in an entire state that even accept foam).
And very tiny portions of things like sunscreen, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, etc. wrapped in thick packaging (that actually occupies more space than the contents do) distributed as part of advertising promotions, or left in hotel bathrooms.
I don't know where you live, but very much of rural America has no residential recycling at all.
Last edited by slowlane3; 07-16-2019 at 02:18 PM..
It's not very responsible when I see zillions of soda bottles tossed inside regular trash cans (such as are commonly found beside pumps at gas stations, on sidewalks and entrances to shopping centers, theaters, etc.) ....or just thrown out on roadsides. I can go to the gas station on the corner by my house, on any warm day, and pull out 30 or 40 discarded plastic bottles which would otherwise get bagged in the regular garbage. Every single day. And I live in a "progressive" state.
It also irks me the amount of thick heavy-duty plastic packaging wasted on very tiny portions of things like mini-applesauce, mini-fruit cups, tiny energy drinks bottles, and "lunchable" cracker/cheese kits for schoolchildren, and tiny pocket tools. Yellow and green vegetables sliced up and wrapped in foam packaging, because consumers are too lazy to slice them at home. (and Styrofoam is basically not recyclable. It's coded "5" or "6", and when you google "foam recycling" there basically may be only one or two locations in an entire state that even accept foam).
And very tiny portions of things like sunscreen, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, etc. wrapped in thick packaging (that actually occupies more space than the contents do) distributed as part of advertising promotions, or left in hotel bathrooms.
I don't know where you live, but very much of rural America has no residential recycling at all.
Then you put the bottles into a "recycling" bin and they collect it, bundle it up and put it in a landfill. The market for recyclable plastics is basically gone and most of the "recycling" ends up in landfills.
We have recycling in our community, but they give you a tiny bin that holds less than a bushel. It is usually full by Friday and our pickup is on Thursday.
Sometimes when they pick up recycling, they do not bother making a separate trip. They throw the trash in the truck and then toss the recycling bin stuff in with it and compact it all together. I saw them doing that when we lived in California too. There we had a huge recycling bin. We separated everything very carefully and then sometimes (not all the time) they dumped it together with the trash into the same truck. Other times they would pick up the recycling separately. It was dumped on a conveyor belt and a bunch of people sorted it by type. Most was plastic. The plastic was weighed, bundled and shipped off to a vendor who then puts it into a landfill because no one wants it.
The interesting thins is when they started the recycling program there was a big increase in our monthly fee for trash. In other words, they were paying people to process it and take it. So ultimately they were paying extra for a company to receive te plastics and then put it in a landfill rather than the city's contractor just putting it into a landfill to begin with.
When you see a building or complex advertise "99% of the waster materials form this building are recycled" What it really means is 99% of the waste materials from this building are given to a recycling company who then recycles a little bit of some materials (mostly metals) and then either burns the rest or puts it into a landfill. But since they are a recycling company we can claim we are recycling and pat ourselves on the back and smile.
For the most part municipal recycling seems to be a sham. They pretend it is being recycled so people can feel better about themselves, but it is mostly going into landfills or being incinerated.
Plastic is not 100% dumped or burned. a bit of it is sitll being recycled but it is a tiny bit. If we were to do a better job collecting plastics for recycling, it would really make no difference. there is only so much demand and then the rest is treated like any other waste.
For the most part municipal recycling seems to be a sham. They pretend it is being recycled so people can feel better about themselves, but it is mostly going into landfills or being incinerated.
And very tiny portions of things like sunscreen, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, etc. wrapped in thick packaging (that actually occupies more space than the contents do) distributed as part of advertising promotions, or left in hotel bathrooms...
I think a lot of over-packaging is to make it harder to steal things, small things in a lot of packaging. Doesn't make it better to have the mess around, but I do think that's a reason for it.
About 12% of recycled plastics ends up being incinerated. It would seem better for the environment if that stuff were simply interred underground.
I would not want to see the results from the underground idea. We had what was referred to as a stump dump: yes, it had more than just plastic buried underground. Last year is started smoldering and to put it out has cost our residents a fortune. Not directly costs, but the amount of city and state funds that had to be used. Thank God the fire is not out.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Effective and efficient incineration > power generation of plastics is the prominent method for many 'developed' / reasonable countries to 'reuse'. (i.e. petroleum based products burn quite well)
Need to 're-think' efficiency of 'recycle'.
I should have saved the big technical write-up when I introduced the use of 30% post consumer regrind plastic into my products in 1991...300T / month in each of (4) WW manufacturing plants.
Effective and efficient incineration > power generation of plastics is the prominent method for many 'developed' / reasonable countries to 'reuse'. (i.e. petroleum based products burn quite well)
Need to 're-think' efficiency of 'recycle'.
I should have saved the big technical write-up when I introduced the use of 30% post consumer regrind plastic into my products in 1991...300T / month in each of (4) WW manufacturing plants.
We've come so far.
The trouble is that the people that push recycling want to make life difficult for people and for people to feel guilty.
I would not want to see the results from the underground idea. We had what was referred to as a stump dump: yes, it had more than just plastic buried underground. Last year is started smoldering and to put it out has cost our residents a fortune. Not directly costs, but the amount of city and state funds that had to be used. Thank God the fire is not out.
Effective and efficient incineration > power generation of plastics is the prominent method for many 'developed' / reasonable countries to 'reuse'. (i.e. petroleum based products burn quite well)
They just closed down the incineration plant in Detroit because of air quality problems and the fact that a lot of people who lived around it claimed it made them sick.
I have heard Canada takes some and burns it. If that is true, we can continue our "recycling" programs and send it to Canada to burn.
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