Recycling, a rant

[sailingharry]

This is perhaps the back end of the forum topic of "Provisioning: Food & Drink."

We are rabid recyclers. At home, we easily put out twice as much recycling as trash. On the boat, we religiously separate out our recycling. Again, easily twice as much recycling as trash.

We are 10 weeks in to a 4-month cruise from the Chesapeake to the Bay of Fundy and back. We have successfully disposed of our recycling once. Every other place we have been, recycling has been relegated to the dumpster. And then we start separating again....

Are we missing something? Are we the only people in the world who think recycling is good? Why can't we get rid of our cans, plastics, glass, and paper?

Grrrrr

On the bright side, the Canadians let us in! It's been a fun trip.

[rslifkin]

I've noticed the same. Many places have dumpsters, but nowhere to put recycling. Our home marina doesn't, so we end up taking it all home when we're local. It drives me a bit crazy.

[Paul L]

In most places recycling is a money losing proposition and needs to be subsidized by the local population one way or another. So not offering it for free to cruisers passing through is understandable.

We've cruised in remote areas and not so remote areas where it was months between any opportunity to unload garbage into a land based receptacle. In these cases we dump everything except for plastics as we go.

[thinwater]

The thing that drives me crazy is "wish cycling." Having built recycling systems of many types, this something few people understand.


The recycle stream is a feed stream. There are only outlets for certain materials. Other materials, whether they might be recycleable in theory or some other place, are just trash if they are not on the list, and putting them in the curbside can and "wishing" they could be recycled only drives up costs, both in sorting labor and disposal. For example, in my area, only the following are recyclable:

• Clean paper and cardboard
• Aluminum cans
• Steel food cans
• Water and soda PET bottles
• LDPE food containers (milk jugs, margarine tubs)

That's it! If it is not one of those, do NOT put it in the curbside can. Either trash it or find a drop-off center (which may/probably will trash it after you leave, depending on contacts and markets).



The following are not.

• Food contact paper or cardboard
• Paper towels and other "soft" paper.
• Paper with coatings, including plastic windows
• Glass
• Any other metals
• All other plastics, recycle logo or not.
• Blister packs. Looks like PET, but it is PVC.
• All other forms of plastics. If they are not one of the identified products, the sorters pull them out because they don't have the time to figure out the labels. Many of the recyclable plastics have no practical outlet, so they aren't actually recyclable in any practical sense.
• Other plastic food containers, such as a bakery products. They are not PET or LDPE in many cases.
• Other metal scrap

These things may be recycleable at the drop-off center, but not at the curb. And most of them will actually be landfilled by the drop-off center (really).


Not much more than 1/2 of what you "recycle" actually gets recycled. Really. Some of the recycling that is recorded was either burned or shipped to a recycler that separated 1/2 of it and landfilled the rest, so reported numbers are often inflated.



The solution is to USE LESS.

[dannc]

When we lived in the city, one truck with three guys picked up the garbage, while another truck with four or five guys, picked up the recycling. Never could figure out how running two trucks was "green."

Now, living in a rural area and we take our garbage to a collection center. At first, almost everything was recycled but then China stopped accepting our garbage so the collections changed.

Glass, cardboard and paper is still collected as it once was. There are still two big dumpsters that compress garbage but they added a third for "recycling" materials that are not collected separately like glass, paper, and card board.

There are signs up on the "recycle" dumpster on what materials should be dumped. I can't imagine that all of the compressed material in that dumpster goes anywhere but the dump. The labor cost, even if taken to a fourth world country, to pry apart the crushed and compacted "recycled" materials would be huge. I don't see how the revenue, if any, could cover the expense of recycling.

I have looked at county documents about the dump and recycling but can find no info.

Later,
Dan

[sailingharry]

Okay, I think I feel better. Or at least sort of. I'd rather think that we are doing our part. But if it's all a waste of effort anyway, at least I don't have to feel guilty about it going to the landfill.

Like so many green initiatives, the activists would have you believe that it is good. Like the old ads that said that recycling one aluminum can saved enough electricity to run your TV for several hours. Or way back in the dim dark ages, the Boy Scouts would collect newspapers as a fundraiser.

Kind of reminds me of the public service campaigns urging you to unplug your cell phone charger when your phone was charged. In reality, if you left your cell phone charger in for a year, it wouldn't save as much energy as running your air conditioner for 15 minutes.

Ah so

[HopCar]

Here in the Miami Fl area we have curbside recycling. The list is pretty much what Thinwater said with the addition of glass. My container is usually full of Chewy and Amazon boxes.

Most of the garbage is burned to make electricity. This is controversial. Is this much better than the old incinerators we once had?

For most of my life and many years before, cans and other metal went to the landfill. I wonder if it would be profitable to mine landfills for these metals?

[Mike OReilly]

My experience is exclusively Canadian, but one just never knows what will be recyclable from community to community. It seems to vary widely, even within close regions.

While cruising we collect our paper/boxboard, our tins/aluminum cans, and our plastics. But it's always hit-and-miss whether any of it will be recyclable when we land. The same is true as we move around the country on land. We house sit all over the place, and the recycling rules are also all over the place.

[SailRN]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

Kind of reminds me of the public service campaigns urging you to unplug your cell phone charger when your phone was charged. In reality, if you left your cell phone charger in for a year, it wouldn't save as much energy as running your air conditioner for 15 minutes.

Ah so

That doesn't sound like much, but I have many wall warts and USB chargers, largely idle drain, but multiply my maybe 20 items, including TVs, by a few billion people, and you've got something then.

[wholybee]

I am from California, but currently in Virginia. It is surprising how little people here care about recycling. Hell, just the amount of plastic bottles and trash floating down the Elizabeth river is surprising. You could probably just dump your trash in the river and I doubt anyone would care. (please don't)

[dannc]

Originally Posted by HopCar

...

Most of the garbage is burned to make electricity. This is controversial. Is this much better than the old incinerators we once had?

For most of my life and many years before, cans and other metal went to the landfill. I wonder if it would be profitable to mine landfills for these metals?

I can remember the garbage incinerator that used to be in Orlando and seeing the garbage trucks dumping their loads to burn but it was not making power. I think that incinerator just burned the trash.

Dublin, Ireland has a large incinerator that produces energy. The only thing similar to the Dublin incinerator and the old Orlando one, was the burning of garbage. The Orlando incinerator just burnt the trash and the emissions were not filtered in any way.

Incinerators would seem to be a viable way to get rid of garbage where landfills are expensive. South Florida would seem to fit that requirement. When I left South Florida, the Sample road dump was filling up and they were going to open another dump further west. Tain't no more room down there, so what are they going to do with the garbage? Ship it to the central part of the state?

No matter what path is decided people will complain.

One would think there is a quite a bit of recyclable material in the Sample road dump. Whether it makes money sense to "mine" it is a different question.

Later,
Dan

[thinwater]

I go for a walk most days, and I nearly ALWAYS carry a small trash bag with me. I generally fill it. Do the same. Doesn't matter that you didn't drop it. It makes up for the bag that blew off the deck, the stuff that blew out of your trash can at home, and some small bit of industrial waste that you commissioned.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

Like so many green initiatives, the activists would have you believe that it is good. Like the old ads that said that recycling one aluminum can saved enough electricity to run your TV for several hours. Or way back in the dim dark ages, the Boy Scouts would collect newspapers as a fundraiser.

Recycling started with good intentions, but has pretty much been revealed as a joke played on the public by industry. The joke was made plain when China and others finally stopped accepting exported "recycling". Aluminum, steel and some paper are successfully recycled, but plastics has been somewhat of a bust.

Basically, industry said "sure! we'll get choosier about packaging material, put the right logos on all our packaging (together with our green credentials)... and the customer and municipalities will do all the actual work of cleaning, sorting, processing. What - no practical way to actually recycle much of that, after all?? Not our problem." They're chuckling as most of us still go through the motions, even though we know it's broken.

New ideas needed.

Thinwater- respect. I have recently tried to pick up at least one piece of trash that wasn't mine, every time I go for a walk, but you have raised the bar.

[jeanathon]

Originally Posted by thinwater

The solution is to USE LESS.

Can I get an Amen!
Don't know why we don't go back to reusing glass bottles like when I was a kid and some countries still do. Oh that's right. Our politicians are bought and paid for... At least with all the microbreweries popping up in the states you can reuse your glass growlers. Of course now I have an excuse to finish that thing.

[seandepagnier]

Do you ever watch the people who collect the recycling?

In south carolina they dump both containers into the same truck mixing them together. This way people feel good about recycling without the extra effort of actually recycling anything.