Does anyone still recycle?

LOL.....

Post thief!

 

Plano recycles at residences, but most apartment complexes don't. That peeves me because I generate more recyclables than trash.

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For recyclers or wannabees, this site might provide useful information:

Earth911.com - More Ideas, Less Waste

 

I try to recycle.
But to be honest, while my apartment complex supports it, it is pretty confusing.
The signs on the bin proclaim acceptable items like plastic, cardboard, etc...
then direct warnings about not accepting many plastic and cardboard items.
I've tried to decipher the circle and slash hieroglyphics, to comprehend either what exactly is acceptable as recyclable OR what combination of items if thrown out will cause a temporal rift opening a gateway to hell. All I can say is last time I was near the recycling bins I smelled sulfur.

 

Recycling [sic] back on in my area!!!!

I've never felt the least bit guilty about throwing away thin-walled water bottles or cardboard because let's face it......they go to the landfill in most states anyway but recycling cans and some thicker plastics(**) is still real-world viable and over the last two months I've been saving them in my office.

Good to see the familiar green bins out on the curbs again!

(**) Gatorade bottles are not recycled but rather re-purposed.

 

Just cut back on the drink cans/bottles brother.

If the quality of the stuff coming out of the tap bugs you, assuage your concerns with some sorta filter system.

My better half procured a canister filter system that set us back quite a few C-notes. It's ok. I think I can tell the difference, nixes the slight chlorine bouquet, maybe.

 

The correct way is glass returnables

too bad we are too paranoid to be using those

Plastic is best turned back into diesel fuel, unfortunate we have mental problems with doing the 1 thing that pollutes least.

 

Type 1 (PETE) and 2 (HDPE) plastics, Aluminum cans and steel cans go in one container.
Cardboard in another. If I had much paper, it is in a third.

At the main Recycling center, I can recycle electronics.

There is curbside recycling but I don't use it, I prefer to drive.

 

I actually re-use as much cardboard as I can, but then I work in a CO where I'm constantly mailing circuit packs back to one of our depots.....sometimes in Anazon, WalMart, diaper, paper, and other 'non-telco' boxes.....

 

when I ran a craft business I would collect cardboard AlonG with packing material and used almost all of it up In no time.

 

With all the personal shipping happening, maybe residential architects should start thinking about packing nooks. And secure drop-off boxes.

 

Newspapers, cardboard, cans and bottles, and that's all they allow.

 

We have an outfit in Port Coquitlam, called Happy Stan. They take most everything: old barbecues (sans tanks?), lawn mowers, copper wire, any kind of scrap metal, small appliances.

Return-It (all over town), take some of the above, also plastic, styrofoam, tetra pack (IIRC) plus any deposit bottles.

And our curbside pickup takes a lot of the above.

 

MY ISSUE with the whole recycle thing is that they want stuff clean --- understandable.

But, WATER is a precious resource and it is NOT unlimited.

My wife will use a gallon of water to rinse out a container for recycle and think nothing of it. And then more water is used to recycle it. Not a plastics engineer, but wondering how much water it takes to make virgin plastic.

I think that in a lot of cases it is a zero sum game. Add in recycle time, transport, meh....

I DO recycle paper, aluminum with no issue. Glass goes straight to the trash.

 

You know how they say: "best insurance is the kind you don't use"? Well, best recycling is the kind you do not produce by reducing the use of packaging. Buy in bulk, use filtered water at home vs. bottled water (better for you, anyway) and in general be cognizant of packaging of the stuff you consume. Choose products based on amount of packaging (or at least make it one of the criteria). In general, it's much smarter to generate less trash than to figure out what to do with too much trash.

As for me, I do recycle, but I too am sensitive to the water usage and really do not go crazy with rinsing the containers. I am sure they undergo a cleaning process and if my rinsing is not enough, well, then I failed. But I tried. I do recycle just about everything and we do compost food scraps and so our actual garbage generation footprint is very small. I see my neighbors put out easily 4-5 times the garbage I put out (we have those town-sold garbage bags, so I can just count the bags, which are all the same size). Maybe others recycle less, not sure, but I am amazed at how little garbage our family generates on most days. As for recycling plastics and paper, I am not too hopeful that anything good happens with that, but I go through the motions anyway. My main goal is produce less to begin with as that is much more realistic impact than sorting the trash in separate bins.

 

The problem here isn't the home recycling process, it is your wife's profligate water use for such cleaning. Does she do the same for dishes or cookware that must be washed by hand? If so, here is a productive place to save lots of water. And energy for water heating too.

A modern home dishwasher cleans two full racks of various stuff with at most 5 gallons, or 3.5 gallons with an Energy Star rating. Models older than 2013 will use more, but still significantly less than most people use for hand washing. And for some people, much much less.

If she is using much more water than this for an equivalent amount of stuff, then start saving water by putting recycle items in the dishwasher along with the regular dishes and flatware. Other recycle things that don't fit can be washed or rinsed with any left-over gray water.

 

Probably quite a bit of water goes into getting the raw materials. Ores get washed, and drilling requires mud(a watery mix of clay and other minerals) to lubricate the drill bit. It is the mud that is pressurized to break rock layers in fracking.

Refining petroleum takes a lot of water. Mostly for cooling, but it is also used in some of the chemical processes. This study reports 0.34, 0.44, and 0.47 barrel of water to every barrel of oil, based on the refinery type; Estimation of U.S. refinery water consumption and allocation to refinery products - ScienceDirect Other studies had it as high as 1.9.

When there was many jelly jars to clean, I did it in a bucket outside, with rain water if available. Then dumped the resulting sugar water on the compost pile.