Why I Don’t Recycle

[Float On]

Curbside isn't offered in our area.
We don't have trash service but take our own to the transfer station about every 6-8 weeks for $5.
I compost.
We collect our recycling out in the studio in big rubbermaid bins and take glass, paper, cardboard, plastic 1-5 (up from just 3-4), metal cans to the recycle center. They can't accept shredded paper and neither can our big trash service recycle pick up at the church. They provide a nice "How to recycle almost everything" list https://www.bransonmo.gov/DocumentCenter/View/696 and there are always follow up articles about how much was recycled, where it went, what it became. Apparently our glass goes to make fiberglass insulation.

Interestingly enough when we had our glassblowing studio they couldn't accept our glass scrap. The COE of art glass is usually 90 or 96 and bottle glass is in the 80's.

[oldhat]

Dont you view legislating “carbon” taxes on plastic bottles as onerous and overstepping the boundaries of public safety legislation?

No. Or, to be more precise, I support the idea of using legislation to promote behavior that mitigates environmental damage. The precise nature of that legislation can be debated. All legislation seems onerous or out of bounds to someone.

Wouldn’t that do what most legislation of this type does....hurt the low income population.

Debatable. In my example, it's a deposit, not a fine. Everybody--poor people especially--would be much better off if they drank less soda, anyway.

I view peer pressure in the same light as I view trespassing on property. Wouldn’t it make more sense to spend the resources to educate people rather than impose your will on them.

It's not trespassing for an elected government to regulate what people can do with their private property. So far as the environment is concerned, some people still insist on believing that they can do as they please without affecting everyone else. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in anymore. You're not allowed to pollute the Common.

Didn’t we learn anything from prohibition laws and the war on drugs?

False analogy. While it's true the so-called War on Drugs is an extended exercise in delusional thinking, it's an attempt to regulate private behavior in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that the cure is much worse than the disease. If you can show me overwhelming scientific evidence that an environmental law does more harm than good, I'll oppose it.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Debatable. In my example, it's a deposit, not a fine. Everybody--poor people especially--would be much better off if they drank less soda, anyway.

how that actually works out is it likely benefits the poor, as they are the one's who collect the plastic bottles and recycle them for money. How it works out middle class people who don't care about recycling for either the money or environmental reasons either, can't be arsed to recycle and throw their bottles in the trash etc.. Other people who need that income go through the trash and take them out to recycle. Or my boyfriend just leaves bottles in visible places and says they will get recycled, I have taken at times to doing that too, because someone will come along and collect them. Utopia perhaps it isn't (I don't think in utopia we would be going through each other's trash for small sums of money) but neither can it be reduced to "hurting the poor" at it probably actually represents a net benefit to them.

[ApatheticNoMore]

The part i dont get about recycling is when people dont have curbside pickup and have to drive their own stuff to the recycling facility. How can it be even vaguely logical for every person to drive to the recycling place with a bag of plastic.

well many cities don't even do trash pick up for apartments, the landlord makes sure that gets done (by scheduling private trash companies), but recycling not so much, very few of them do this.

[Chicken lady]

Rob, nothing breaks down in landfills if the are operating as planned. Nothing.

[catherine]

Well, what a coincidence! This morning was my Master Gardener's class and the topic was Solid Waste Management. 3 hours on landfills and recycling! So now, I am enlightened. I know all about the recycling process from county pick-up to private hauler to private sorter to private processor to private purchaser of neatly baled paper and aluminum and paint and hazardous waste and electronic glass and metals.

At least in New Jersey.

I haven't necessarily changed my mind. I challenged the lecturer's 5 "R"s because instead of the first "R" being "Refuse" she labeled a FIFTH R as "Reject": Choose the more environmentally friendly option over the lesser. So I said, your fifth R implies that you are substituting one purchasing choice for another rather than choosing not to consume at all. And she said, "That's true. I can see how it sounds that way."

And then to hear how many people are involved in the business of recyclables, and how much money there is involved--it corroborated WS's assertion that it takes a village and a large carbon footprint to turn that bottle or that box from Amazon into something somebody will pay for. I suppose having stuff recycle into the free market is better than being in the landfill--or is it?

So, I'm even more sold on the idea of de-coupling. One of the prissy members of the MG group was complaining about the metal components of her electric toothbrush, to which I whispered under my breath to the person sitting next to me, "So don't buy an electric toothbrush."

We have SO far to go in terms of grasping the idea of "enough."

[Williamsmith]

Well, what a coincidence! This morning was my Master Gardener's class and the topic was Solid Waste Management. 3 hours on landfills and recycling! So now, I am enlightened. I know all about the recycling process from county pick-up to private hauler to private sorter to private processor to private purchaser of neatly baled paper and aluminum and paint and hazardous waste and electronic glass and metals.

At least in New Jersey.

I haven't necessarily changed my mind. I challenged the lecturer's 5 "R"s because instead of the first "R" being "Refuse" she labeled a FIFTH R as "Reject": Choose the more environmentally friendly option over the lesser. So I said, your fifth R implies that you are substituting one purchasing choice for another rather than choosing not to consume at all. And she said, "That's true. I can see how it sounds that way."

And then to hear how many people are involved in the business of recyclables, and how much money there is involved--it corroborated WS's assertion that it takes a village and a large carbon footprint to turn that bottle or that box from Amazon into something somebody will pay for. I suppose having stuff recycle into the free market is better than being in the landfill--or is it?

So, I'm even more sold on the idea of de-coupling. One of the prissy members of the MG group was complaining about the metal components of her electric toothbrush, to which I whispered under my breath to the person sitting next to me, "So don't buy an electric toothbrush."

We have SO far to go in terms of grasping the idea of "enough."

I lean towards Bae’s suggestion that these landfills will some day be worth going back and getting the resources. In the meantime, I will do my best to adopt a minimalist attitude and I think I have a lot of room for improvement. Can we have a carbon tax on electric toothbrushes before we do it for bottled water? I don’t use electric toothbrushes.

Okay so I have to go back and do the math but how many bottles of water make up a gallon? And how Many plastic bottles would it take to make up a plastic gallon jug. This is hard work.

I dont drink my tap water. There are too many superfund sites that have polluted the water table. That’s what you get for living in an unpopulated County. The urban areas send their crap to you.

[Teacher Terry]

Here a separate truck picks up recyclable stuff. It showed on the news how it is someone's job to pull off the conveyor belt the stuff in recycling that does not belong there. Even when we didn't have recycling I just took it myself. Travel mugs are great to use in place of plastic bottles. I know the excessive packaging is to prevent stealing but there must be a better way then to enclose stuff in a million layers of plastic crap-ugh!

[catherine]

I lean towards Bae’s suggestion that these landfills will some day be worth going back and getting the resources.

This is scary, but they said that they do archeological digs from time to time in the landfills to see the rate of decomposition and have found perfectly preserved hot dogs. Scary.. if you're a hot dog lover.

As for the water, we sure have our share of Superfund sites in NJ, so I share your concern about drinking tap water.

[catherine]

Here a separate truck picks up recyclable stuff. It showed on the news how it is someone's job to pull off the conveyor belt the stuff in recycling that does not belong there. Even when we didn't have recycling I just took it myself. Travel mugs are great to use in place of plastic bottles. I know the excessive packaging is to prevent stealing but there must be a better way then to enclose stuff in a million layers of plastic crap-ugh!

Here's another thing I learned, which interested me because it's a cause of weekly fights with DH, who throws plastic bags in with the bottles and cans. Apparently, at least in my county, throwing plastic bags in with the recyclables is BAD because it gets caught up in the sorter that thinks it's paper because it's thin, but then the machine breaks down. Or, it makes it through the paper stream and becomes part of the bale, but there is so much plastic bag entwined that it takes a worker one hour out of every day to hand-pick as much plastic as possible out of the bales before they are sent, presumably, to China, where China is now putting their foot down on the amount of contamination they get in their product.

So, if your county is like mine, don't throw your plastic bags in with your recycling. You CAN take them to the supermarket where they have bins for plastic bag recycling, but many counties don't permit #4 or #5 plastic bags in their curbside pickup.