Does anyone still recycle?

Lots of stuff.
Empty #10 cans...Chemwipes...Used Greenie pads, dot.gov issued ink pens, about 10,000 reams of paper, boxes, basically anything that doesn't go through a human, through a garbage disposal, or is considered to be hazardous waste (like any petroleum product, chemicals, batteries, etc)
I cannot say for dead certain that they still use their TDUs since I haven't been on the inside of a boat in over 10 years but I'm thinking that there's no reason not to.

The USN are the good guys, believe me!!!
Many other entities simply treat the ocean like a large garbage can for all of their shipboard trash.

TDU cans?
Not the Marine Environment's biggest problem.

 

I bought many #10 cans of (Italy or Spain) tomatoes here because local fruit are not quite their equals. They went to a remote place where rain (throughfall) amounts were to be mapped over a complicated canopy and terrain 'space'. Which my pals seem to have not done.

With one large can and a few smaller items you can make a stove design linked to Girl Scouts. Did that also and can report that candle wax+cardboard fuel is sooty. It tells you clearly to go outside for cooking. Carbon monoxide, sadly, is more subtle. But as a general rule, where there's smoke there's ire.

 

dot.gov issued ink pens contain some chemical that termites mistake for trail-following pheromones. A durable source of minor amusement

 

It's optional here in my hometown. Recycle if you want, but not required. My guess is 30% in my hometown do recycle. Our landfill in this County can only be utilized by our County residents and it's incredibly massive. Which is why I don't think they really care because it has like another 50 years of expected life before it's full. The closer it gets to being full, the more they will recycle. They do capture the methane (well Cummins does) and utilizes it to heat a plant just down the road.

As for the "clean plastic" thing mentioned earlier. We utilize probably 90% recycled plastic where I work to make our product. Any scrap we produce obviously just gets ground up and ran back through. But it's "clean" plastic. The damage "dirty" recycled plastic can do to a mold / injection mold machine is incredible. We once had a part which utilized milk carton plastic - recycled of course. We received 1 bad batch and the press was down for 5 weeks with mold damage so sever it was out nearly 90 days. Obviously - thousands upon thousands of dollars in lost revenue. So I can't say I don't blame the Chinese or any manufacturer.

 

Japan is notorious for overpackaging. I've seen individual cookies and crackers, each wrapped, in plastic trays that are in cellophane bags.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

As far as packaging for most produce goes, if many people stick with locally grown food, much less packaging are needed. And less fuel for transportations too. Better yet, you can grow your own food right in your backyard for zero packaging, zero transportation fuel.

 

Heres my recycling killing story... I'm in California, the most over-regulated state in... the world. I had a chain of auto shops that sold tires. We have to pay companies to take our used tires. When my used tire hauler raised his rates, he explained all the tire recycling centers are stockpiling tires because nobody's buying the material. They don't want any more tires. So, the price to accept them goes up. I read in the news that our county was using recycled tire crumbs as base for roads. The Dept of Transportation was using whole used tires as retaining walls. A company was just granted a huge contract to re-do sidewalks with pavers made of recycled tires. Used tires are used as ground cover in playgrounds. People were finding creative ways to use them in landscaping, like planters and pots. Well, I needed a 3ft x 250ft retaining wall on my property. I can help the environment AND have my retaining walI! I hired some laborers, borrowed heavy equipment and went to work filling used tires with dirt. Code enforcement comes out and puts a stop to it, not because it violates any building codes. (This is Haz Mat code enforcement, not building code enforcement.) They made me stop because, "Used tires are bad for the environment. That's why they are considered hazardous materials and you have to have a permit to handle them" he says. How does my use adversely affect environment? "It leaches into the ground water." You effin idiot. Used tires don't leach into the ground water. They're considered haz mat 1) So you have a paycheck. I pay a fee for this permit at each of my shops. Everyone pays a fee when they buy a new tire. The people who haul them pay fees. The people who process them pay fees. 2) Stockpiling them in the open becomes breeding ground for vermin. 3) When left in the open in large quantities, they're a fire hazard (as in the Simpsons). Even then, you are legally allowed to stockpile less than 400 tires. Isn't it your job to know this? This is a supervisor not just an inspector, by the way.

The lesson of the story is this. It's all economics. The only way to successfully encourage recycling is if the government can make money out of it. If there's no money in it for them, there's no incentive. Not only will they discourage it, they will make it illegal. If you want to make a successful recycling campaign, show the government how they can make money out of it. Not only will they encourage it, they will make it the law.

 

Yap, it is so much more rewarding growing your own food than trying to buy food shipped from God knows where. I just wish we live in more temperate climate. Our garden season are too short to supply year around veggies and fruits.

 

Has anyone else noticed that the #1 recyclable that seems to be tossed all over the place are water bottles? I don't think a week goes by that I'm picking up a couple of the bottles from in front of the house and tossing them in the recycle bin.

 

Shredded tire mulch can kill plants it is spread around with the stuff it leaches out.

It is BS hassling you over a use for old tires that the state itself does.

My town doesn't take the #1 plastic water bottles are made out of.

 

They can (and I think some states DO) put a 5 centavo deposit on the water bottles.
Of course, it would add $1.80 to the 36-count case price of Dassani, which Big Cola would have a problem with....but the Ammunition Can Pickers of America (ALCPA) already do a very effective job of grabbing up cans and glass bottles.

I would be very curious to find out what REALLY happens to all of those plastic water bottles....

 

Some years back a licqour store employee (BC government run) told me the domestic beer bottles are cleaned and reused (I'd assume several times, till they get too burnished, or get a chip), the import beers are crushed to glass powder. Can't recall what happened to that powder; might have some application.

 

I have always looked a recycling bins as garbage bins of a different color that gave certain individuals ethical permission to make waste. I'm no saint and I (unfortunately) create trash as part of my life, but recycling or not recycling, I treat everything I throw away as waste for the purposes of reducing it. We compost most food refuse in our house. Our trash output is a small 20lb bag every two weeks. Our recycling is more voluminous, unfortunately. We recycle paper and plastic and glass and metal. So all junk mail (I fight vehemently to reduce that, but I still get several pieces a week that go directly into the recycling without even being opened) gets recycled, paper bags get mostly burned as kindling in the winter (we heat with wood a lot), used as packaging for various shipments (instead of packing peanuts and as an outside wrapper). We try to use very little packaged food, so few milk cartons, juice cartons, etc. (we do not consume those things that much). Most of our food comes from the farm, so very little packaging there, but in the winter it gets worse. Every two weeks we have a garbage and recycling pickup. As I said, a 20lb bag of trash (usually way under 20lb in weight) is usual and a container of paper and container of plastic/glass/metal is generated. I constantly try to reduce that. Constantly. It's on my mind every time I buy something. But I am an exception in this society of ours, rather than the norm. Until it becomes a norm to think beyond the Starbucks latte, we'll have a problem.

As for legislating some sort of solutions, I believe that is the absolute worse way to go. Free market forces are kind of like forces of nature. You can't legislate against (or for) them any more than you can against (or for) gravity. We try all the time and almost every time it's not successful unless the legislation is aligned with free market forces. The only way to reduce waste is to make it unprofitable to waste. If anyone can figure it out, it'll take, otherwise we are doomed to be wasteful.

 

We've gotten sodas imported from Mexico that had thick glass bottles with obvious wear on them.

 

Such a regular journey: open mail box, pull out junk mail, walk 10 feet into house, drop in recycle bin.

 

Does anyone remember far back to when most pop/soda beverages still came in glass bottles? These were re-used, and many showed wear indicating that they had been around the loop numerous times.

35-40-ish years ago, I was specifically choosing bottles over cans for price reasons, when an 8-pack of 16 oz bottles was priced locally the same as a 6-pack of 12 oz cans, before bottle deposit. Then I moved to an area not offering the bottles at all, and for other reasons very sharply reduced my consumption of that stuff. The market changed significantly while I was mostly not consuming.

I suspect that a few product liability disasters from bottle washer failures (dead mice and other debris allegedly not getting properly flushed out), went an extremely long way towards causing this disappearance. Then add in the problems of some bottles possibly having been diverted to toxic non-food applications before re-entering the beverage cycle, and occasional glass breakage. Better quality control and product liability push towards single use containers, and handling and transport costs push towards lighter containers. Aluminum was much lighter even in the original versions, and the modern can designs are far lighter still.