Recycling fears

I’ve never visited a recycling plant. That would make a great school field trip, but at my age, I’d have to take time off of work to enjoy such an outing.

Anyhow, I fear that sometimes stuff I’ve put into the recycling bin ends up in landfills. That’s not just a fear on my part – it’s reality: here’s the link to a related story. In America, a lot of the difficulty comes from political gyrations on the part of our current government.

Another problem comes into play – how manufacturers create their products – many times, materials are mixed, so it’s impossible to properly recycle the package or product. If you look at the plastic bottle above that contained some cold brew coffee, you’ll see that the manufacturer of the coffee was kind enough to point that out.

But how many people would take the time to peel off the label? Maybe 2%, if we’re lucky!

I would love it if manufacturers would employ creative resources (and funds) to come up with easier-to-recycle packages and products. I know that some car manufacturers are moving in that direction (related story), but the rest of the product world has a long way to go.

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2 Replies to “Recycling fears”

  1. I’ve wondered this too, both points about whether the recycling we do here actually works (they have us throw plastic, paper/cardboard, and aluminum into the same bin. That seems very inefficient. We even try to cut the plastic part (opening) out of our cardboard milk containers, so we are going the extra mile, but is it worth it. Mixed-material items make it even more complex. We certainly need biodegradable materials instead of plastic over here. SG, for all its wonderful qualities, is very wasteful. Good post, thank you!

  2. Interesting (and kind of sad) article. It would explain why people on our Nextdoor Neighbor site report seeing our local trash trucks collecting all three of our bins (garbage, recycling, lawn waste) in the same truck. We’ve been paying extra trash fees for years in order for the city to recycle as much as possible. Is it doing any good – who knows? I do know that our local trash dumps are full, in spite of what the article quoted. Our trash is being taken farther and farther away as time goes on.

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