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Encouragement Without Education Backfires On Recycling Efforts (gizmodo.com)
Longtime Slashdot reader Alok writes: High contamination in recycled garbage, such as plastic bags mixed in with the recyclable plastic waste, are causing major problems for sustainability efforts in U.S. This has been exposed as a big problem recently, due to recent stricter China import rules on importing waste materials that led to changes in the sourcing pipelines. Cities such as Philadelphia have ended up processing nearly half of the recycling garbage using waste-to-energy incinerators instead, where they're being burned alongside garbage. "Today, the average U.S. recyclable load is about 25 percent contaminated," reports Gizmodo. "To make their commodities saleable, material recovery facilities started hiring more 'pickers' and buying more equipment to remove items that shouldn't be in the recycling, in addition to slowing down their processing lines." [C]ommunities like Philadelphia are going have to generate cleaner material that is more marketable," Scott McGrath, Environmental Planning Director at the City of Philadelphia Streets Department, said, adding that the city will be focusing more of its efforts on educating residents about what can and cannot be recycled. McGrath said if Philly can convince residents to stop tossing plastic bags in the recycling bin, that alone would be a big deal.
Anne Germain, Vice President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association, an industry trade group, said public education was something the recycling industry as a whole had let slide over the years. "We were more about encouraging recycling than saying stop doing this or that," she said. This, combined with the widespread adoption of single stream, has made the public increasingly enthusiastic about throwing everything in their blue bins, resulting in a lot of what Center for American Progress representative Kristina Costa calls "aspirational recycling," or attempting to recycle garbage. "Once you start saying more and more materials are acceptable, it seems that a lot of people start to think everything is acceptable," Germain said, adding that the increased complexity of packaging today compared with a few decades ago has only added to the confusion.
Anne Germain, Vice President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association, an industry trade group, said public education was something the recycling industry as a whole had let slide over the years. "We were more about encouraging recycling than saying stop doing this or that," she said. This, combined with the widespread adoption of single stream, has made the public increasingly enthusiastic about throwing everything in their blue bins, resulting in a lot of what Center for American Progress representative Kristina Costa calls "aspirational recycling," or attempting to recycle garbage. "Once you start saying more and more materials are acceptable, it seems that a lot of people start to think everything is acceptable," Germain said, adding that the increased complexity of packaging today compared with a few decades ago has only added to the confusion.
It's not as bad in the county I live in as it is in a certain nearby city, but they keep tightening up the rules on what is and is not 'recyclable', and then they want me to sit there at the sink and wash things out like a ziplock bag? Ridiculous. What I think needs to happen is more packaging, food wrap, and so on, needs to be made from biodegradable materials, preferably that enrich the soil, that you 'recycle' by putting them in the ground. More durable things of course can't really be made from materials like that but single-use things should be. Also things like these 'K-cups', single-use for making coffee, are just the stupidest thing I've ever seen. How hard is it, really, to use a coffee press, for instance, and wash it out after you're done using it? I've been doing that for years now, for a single 16-ounce cup of coffee, and it really doesn't take that much effort.
"Encouragement Without Education Backfires On Recycling Efforts"
Our local recycling program education was "dumbed down" so much it is laughable. They accept #1 and #2 plastics ONLY. This is not uncommon. But because "the populous" was too "stupid" to understand that, they completely removed that information and replaced it with this: "jars, jugs, and plastic bottles with caps". O M G. So that means a TON of plastics that ARE recyclable don't meet that stupid description, and a TON of plastics that DO meet the description are not. Biggest #2 plastic thing I have? Washing machine liquid bottle. Is that a jug? Is that a plastic bottle with cap? What a waste. Same thing with my large #2 liquid soap bottles and #2 plastic liquid deodorant bottles. The list goes on and on. All are recyclable... but not according to their horrible description.
I even Emailed them to complain, and they simply couldn't understand why I would be confused. Instead they quoted "when in doubt, throw it out" (AKA- no not even try to recycle half or more of your eligible recyclables).
Same thing on the "paper" side. Instead of describing the exact attributes of what they want, they changed it to: "cardboard, paper, food boxes, food & beverage cartons". What is a magazine? What is a windowed envelope? Many food "boxes" are heavily waxed, contain metal, or contain plastic... do those count? My protein drink "carton" is waxed paper but has a PLASTIC spout and cap on it. Is that acceptable?
Most trash bin "recycled" stuff isn't actually worth recycling, so a lot just ends up in the regular trash anyway. As not worth actually recycling, they instead burn it or bury it, just like the rest of the trash. It's a "feel good" program so that some people can pretend their doing something positive, while wasting everyone's time, money and scare resources in the process.
About the only thing most households deal with worth recycling which they may not actually naturally recycle are things made of metal. There's an easy way to check if that makes sense, which is if the local scrap dealer will pay you enough for it to make it worth you hauling it over to the dealer, then it makes economic sense to recycle it.
Where recycling and reusing actually makes economic sense, no one has to create a government program for it, nor fine people for not doing it. The major actual recycling in the U.S. is when people refurbish and reuse old homes instead of building new ones, sell their used cars, just about anything which gets run through a pawn shop or which is sold via craig's list, eBay and Amazon's used product sales, etc...
That's because if it actually makes economic sense to recycle or reuse something, then people will naturally do it because someone will pay them for it, rather than have to force them to "donate" their time and other resources in order to maybe break-even.
This price system is how we signal to others how much something is worth recycling. The price reflects the total resources something is worth to someone else, in terms of everything from raw materials and labor to transportation costs, etc... Municipal recycling programs are effectively systems for forcing people to accept a negative price (in the form of required time, cleaning, etc...) for their recycling labors, because what they're recycling isn't actually worth it in terms of resource savings. New paper products are mostly made from trees planted for the purpose, we aren't going to run out of sand for glass anytime soon, etc...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The big problem that needs to be solved is sorting. Sorting rubbish into different types for different recycling processes.
There is just no easy, efficient way to do it. You have to come up with a system that works for all kinds of materials and objects, that can handle contamination and things like other materials inside bottles or bags. It has to be cleaner and greener than making new stuff, and it has to be cost effective.
Arbitrary inputs, and many different sorting and separating processes required. The only good news is that it doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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