Recycle, do you?

[dlndavid]

With all the talk here on SB about things affecting our planet and what we can do to help, even if our individual efforts are small, they can be much more grand with more participation.
I for one do recycle and I even compost "kitchen" waste. The amount of "garbage" my wife and I throw out on a weekly basis would fit in a 5 gallon bucket.

Here are some interesting facts about what recycling can save or do.

Fact 14: Aluminum cans can be recycled into soda cans, pie plates, thumbtacks, license plates, aluminum foil, and many other items.

Fact 13: Glass takes over 1,000,000 years to decompose in our landfills or dumps.

Fact 12: Recycling a six-pack of aluminum cans saves the same amount of energy needed to drive a car 5 miles.

Fact 11: It takes 80 - 100 years for an aluminum can to decompose in our landfills and dumps.

Fact 10: Enough energy is saved by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.

Fact 9: Recycled plastic bottles are shredded, melted and turned into all kinds of new things such as clothing, carpet, pillows and more.

Fact 8: Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour! – yet only 1 bottle out of 4 is recycled.

Fact 7: Glass never wears out, it can be recycled forever.

Fact 6: Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.

Fact 5: For every six-pack of aluminum cans thrown away, the energy
equivalent of one beverage can full of gasoline is wasted.

Fact 4: Americans throw away about 35 billion aluminum cans every year.

Fact 3: Glass can be recycled into jars, bottles, jewelry, dishes, drinking
glasses, coffee mugs and many other items.

Fact 2: If the pilgrims had six-packs, we’d still have the plastic rings from
them today.

Fact 1: You can make 20 aluminum cans out of recycled materials with the
same amount of energy it takes to make one new one.

 

[Scubaroo]

Something that's really taken off here in Australia is the abolition of plastic shopping bags for groceries. I use the "enbags" - for about a dollar, you buy a reusable pvc or cotton bag to put your groceries in. They hang on a hook in the kitchen - I live within walking distance of the supermarket, so come shopping time, I just grab my bags and go shop with them. Only had them a few months and would have saved hundreds of plastic bags from landfill.

http://www.reusablebags.com.au/

Quote from the website:

For example, on 24 August 2000, a Bryde's whale died in
Trinity Bay, 2 km from central Cairns. An autopsy found that
the whale's stomach was tightly packed with plastic, including supermarket bags, food packages, bait bags, three large sheets
of plastic, and fragments of garbage bags. There was no food
in its stomach.

I remember when this hit the news - everyone's heard about turtles eating plastic bags thinking they're jellyfish, but killing a whale - that's a whole other kettle of, er, fish.

 

[SterlingDiver]

We have curbside recycling here (all clean metal, paper, #1, & 2 plastics). $3 a month for a XXL can and you don't have to sort. They pickup the can every other week. It is a real eye opener to see how little you throw away when you can recycle. I was also pleasantly surprised at how good you feel when you realize you are making better use of your resources.

Dave

 

[jbd]

Something that's really taken off here in Australia is the abolition of plastic shopping bags for groceries. I use the "enbags" - for about a dollar, you buy a reusable pvc or cotton bag to put your groceries in. They hang on a hook in the kitchen - I live within walking distance of the supermarket, so come shopping time, I just grab my bags and go shop with them. Only had them a few months and would have saved hundreds of plastic bags from landfill.

http://www.reusablebags.com.au/

Quote from the website:

I remember when this hit the news - everyone's heard about turtles eating plastic bags thinking they're jellyfish, but killing a whale - that's a whole other kettle of, er, fish.

The other thing I would like to see is the reduction in the use of plastic film for packaging or wrapping pallets of product. I would also like to see a reduction in the use of cardboard. The company I work for throw away huge amounts of these to materials every week. I don't know what the solution is but surely there must be one.

At home we don't recycle but that is because it just isn't very convenient, for lack of a better term. Where my mother and sisters live they have a very active recycling program.

I try to focus on reducing energy use. I have replaced almost all our light bulbs with ones that use only 25% of the energy of a standard bulb but they still give off the same amount of light. All of my lawn care and gardening equipment is "man" powered, no gasoline or electric.

I have dabbled a bit with solar cooking in the past and will try that again this year as well as implementing some solar projects this year.

Just wish my wife and kids were more interested in conservation measure.

 

[Boogie711]

There have been a number of studies which show that curbside recycling is actually MORE harmful for the environment than sorting everything out at the landfill or sorting station.

Most urban communities in Canada, at least, have a 'blue box' recycling program to collect recyclables. Great idea, right?

Wrong. Now, the municipality pays twice as much to collect stuff because they need two crews and two trucks. Plus, there are diesel fumes and everything else associated with twice as many garbage/recycling trucks on the road. AND, if participation is less than 100%, some of that effort is simply wasted.

It makes more sense to simply sort everything on site. BUT - then you don't have people in their fairy tale world believing they're "doing their part" to save the world. And as such, politicians don't like to endorse it because they are afraid they'll be seen as anti-environment.

After all, it's not about saving the earth. It's about making people THINK you're saving the earth - either others or fooling yourself.

 

[archman]

Last time I checked the figures on this, the U.S. had an outstanding aluminum recycling capability (>50%), while glass, paper, and plastics were far behind. With the plastics in particular, there are many problems associated with all the different types of plastic bottles. And paper's rather amusing. It seems that some municipalities collect paper, but don't recycle it. Rather they just move it to separate trash sites. But the public usually doesn't know this. Odd.

Public recycling hasn't really progressed much from 1980's era technology. The infrastructure's scaled up significantly, though. Nowadays you have to live in rural areas to not have a local recycling program. Even in most parts of Texas.

 

[simbrooks]

I set out a whole load of stuff for curbside - the only things they wont take are cardboard. I can get rid of plastics, paper, glass and any metals. I also take my plastic shopping bags back to the store and put them in the recycle bin there.

 

[MikeC]

There is a show on one of the pay cable channels called "Penn and Teller's Bull$hit!". They had a show about recycling, they said the same as Boogie did. According to their stats the only material that makes sense to recycle is aluminum. Everything else uses more energy to recycle and causes more pollution then making a new item. Penn and Teller claim that the US EPA used flawed data, amazing that the US can use flawed data, in deciding that recycling really works.

 

[archman]

Steel is also more efficient to recycle... by a very large margin.

 

[drbill]

Here in "green" California (at least on Catalina Island), we can't get our residents to source separate recycleables for some strange reason. Some of us do, of course, and place everything in blue plastic recycling bags. Our dump has a conveyor system on which all trash is tossed and we pay sorters to hand sort the stuff. Pretty ridiculous IMHO.

35 years ago I got the school I taught at to separate their recycleables from other trash. When it came time to send them off to the mainland, our local freight barge operator wouldn't take them without charging us. We told them they could keep all the money from the stuff. We ended up burying tons of the stuff in our dump, only to gig it back out 7 years later!

You would think here on Catalina where landfill space is very limited that people would make a religion out of recycling (and water conservation, etc.).

Dr. Bill