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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.
You want me to use clean water...which is scarce enough that it has its own problems...to wash my garbage so someone can make money off of it by selling it to China? If you want to sell my garbage, you find a way to clean it yourself.
We used to carefully sort and fill multiple recycling containers with paper, glass, metal, etc. But then they wanted to have only one pickup container, and call it single-stream. So now we're supposed to throw everything in there together. What did they expect?
The ravine at the end of the road takes everything without complaints.
Have gnu, will travel.
Starting around age 6 I was inundated with with messages of "reduce reuse or recycle" "#1 and #2 plastics, metals are recyclable" "captain planet" "ozone hole". We did experiments testing the pH of the "acid rain" in our yards and entered in a database we accessed via dial up on our Apple IIc class computer. We then took all this home and parroted it to our parents and when the recycling bins started showing up on the curb in ~1991 we made our parents recycle. Where i am from the cost of municipal waste handling was offset significantly by recycling. By the early 2000s you could put nearly everything recyclable in the bin and what you couldn't put in the bin you could easily drop off. In 2012 I moved to Utah in our first neighborhood only about 5-10% of homes had blue bins. I asked a long time resident. Turns out the HOA took the recycling bins away because people were just using them as an extra trash cans. I have been diligently recycling since ~1991 and in 2019 I can't help but doubt it's effectiveness because of the people around me. It's disheartening.
What's the problem? You're simply burning the plastics anyway. Find better things to do with it, make pellets out the stuff and melt it back together in useful forms. Pack it up and sell it, better yet, give it away as a cheap form of insulation.
It's what China does anyway, they pack up our garbage and sells it back to us as "green recycled" furniture. If you have purchased cellulose insulation you'll find plenty of plastic worked into it.
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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.
I don't know how the rest of the world works, but recycling makes no sense here in Canada.
We get 2 recycling bins. "Paper" and "Containers".
Where you do put cardboard boxes? Is cardboard paper? Not sure, but I guess a box is a container. But what about paper containers?
Are cloths just containers that contain people? Wood definitely is not paper, but you think you could recyclable it without first building it into some form of container.
You would think that you would separate recyclables by material type not use. Why would a glass vase be recyclable but a glass coaster not be?
TL;DR: Either give up or just shove everything in the "Container" bin because pretty much everything is a container.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
they gave me a recycling bin and then cut back on garbage service to try and force me to use it. So half the time the regular garbage can was full (often one the same day as pickup from the overflow of last week). Eventually folks got tired of it and used the recycling bin as trash pickup.
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We used to have paper bags that were made from trees grown for the purpose but that upset some people.
So you had a whole bunch of people that felt really good about getting them banned.
Oops fewer tree farms bu now we have lots waste plastic bags that are nearly useless to begin with and can't be reused at all.
"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?
Go look in recycle bins in minority neighborhoods and compare to majority white neighborhoods and report back. The truth may hurt but it's still the truth. We can discuss why this is the case but facts are facts.
If it is too exspensive for government to sort recyclables from non recyclables why should we bear the cost with our time.
An AI enhanced sorting machine perhaps with spectrometer will ultimately solve this.
Controversy and disappointment for another ritual of the green religion today. It's almost like these schemes designed by people with a deep emotional need to feel good about themselves are all completely pointless.
You just described every religion, ever.
Oh, there's another effect of this type of thinking: Liberate your wallet from all that pesky, naughty paper (yes, I know it's actually cotton in the USA)
Long Live Crane Paper Co!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
In my condo complex, people honestly don't understand that some bins are for recycling and some are for trash. Signs are up in multiple languages and yet you'll see a christmas tree or old sofa tossed into the recycling.
people honestly don't understand that some bins are for recycling and some are for trash.
The problem is apathy, not ignorance. Some people do care, but enough people don't, that they screw it up for all of us.
Recycling is not going to work if it relies on mass altruism. We need to either make it profitable (as it is for aluminum) or we need robots to sort the trash.
Save the environment by running twice as many fuel burning trucks to pick it up... Every bill increase is blamed on 'increased recycling costs'... The whole thing is a mess and a boondoggle.
About as hard as washing out a goddamned ziploc bag, you hypocritcal son of a bitch.
I would love to know how to recycle properly, but nobody can codify the rules. It changes not only state-by-state and town-by-town but also by what company does the recycling.
And they don't even tell you what's recyclable; instead of telling us a plastic code, it's by shape, which makes no sense. Wouldn't it all be shredded during the recycling process? Why would shape even matter with that?
And instead of separating types, they simply combine everything and sort later on, which might make sense in transportation costs, but is immensely more costly down the line.
They did this to themselves by enacting bad policies!
It's 75% cotton, 25% flax in the USA. It's _very_ good quality paper, that is one factor that makes it difficult to forge. US paper has a very distinctive "feel", which people handling money often notice before they notice the print on forged money.
So if you make recycling shit more difficult than just throwing it in the trash, fuck it...I'm throwing it in the trash. *You* fucking figure it out...it's not my job to sort rubbish so the waste company can make more $$$...they already have a guaranteed profit percentage built into their city/county contract around here, and have for decades.
I suspect it would be better for the environment to burn all this stuff for energy rather than ship it to China to be processed. Those cargo ships are very heavy polluters. Somebody should do the math.
With fire.
I think only metal, paper, and glass is worthwhile to recycle anyway.
A warm feeling obviously isn't enough because it's not directly connected to actually doing things right. How about 10% by weight of my plastics back as 3D printer filament? Plus the threat of losing access to that service if I keep contaminating it.
The problem isn't that they don't understand, the problem is that they don't give a shit.
Start handing out fines and you will see improvement. Some people don't function properly without being beaten when malfunctioning.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For me the problem is much more:
- I work full-time.
- I pay full taxes.
- One of the things my taxes cover is waste collection and recycling (there's a specific line on a specific tax).
However, for some reason, *I* then have to clean (hot water, scrubbing, soap) and sort (time, effort) my rubbish. I'm all for "community spirit" but I'm also for "I'm *paying* you to do that... either make me do it, or make me pay you to do it, not both".
Then some company gets paid to run ANOTHER set of truck full of rubbish around every house in the city... pick up that stuff separately... take to a separate place... sort it again... to heat it up... to generate a poorer-quality recycled plastic, etc.
(Ironically, there's then a *third* truck that comes on *yet another day* to put up "compostable" rubbish... leaves, food, etc. but not meat, and no eggshells, and no wrapping, no branches or bits of wood, and make sure you bag it in only in authorised compostable bags that you can buy from the council website here...)
Oh, I can get fined / my rubbish punitively NOT collected / etc. if I don't do it properly.
Plus - as the US in this story here - even then, most of the stuff we do that for *does not* get recycled. It gets shipped abroad, to a country that doesn't care and landfilled (but just with a lie on the paperwork). People have been putting GPS trackers in garbage for years now, and it mostly ends up in landfill abroad.
In terms of green credentials, we're really making things *worse*. Not just running three times as many trucks, but cleaning everything twice, sorting only to lump together and then re-sort, and then it ending up in landfill.
I know why. I know exactly why. I got into my local paper for knowing why. The councillor in charge of waste disposal... just happens to OWN the waste disposal / recycling companies. It's a "declared interest". So he actually profits... not just from selling us little silly bags but by having the council pay his companies to do his bidding. Anything good he gets to cherry-pick and recycle (i.e. get paid to give it to a company that actually recycles it). Anything else, he pays to landfill and charges the council, which we pay for from our local taxes.
Check the arrangements in your area, it's surprisingly common. It's a money-making exercise that DECREASES the environmentally friendliness of the whole exercise, without substantially changing the amount that goes into landfill at all.
If we were smart, we'd collect it and burn it. Like the Swedes do. Or is it the Finns? One of them. They have to IMPORT rubbish to burn to fuel their homes because their process is so good that it's cheaper to burn most random rubbish and clean the air that comes out than it is to try to recycle it properly (once you've cherry-picked the easy stuff, which I believe they still do).
If we were really smart, we'd *TAX* products based on how much packaging they contain, while giving *credit* to those places that actually make something out of rubbish that *isn't* just landfilled. If you did it right, one would pay for the other. We'd all pay no more. It would be much more green. Our usage of plastic entirely would drop. And we'd come up with new and innovative ways of using basic packing materials.
I had the same thought when they introduced the charge for bags in the UK to counter the one use thing (even though they are basically universal bin liners anyway), why not just switch the material of the bags to something that is recyclable and boom, problem solved. It's probably more expensive and might get charged anyway but at least you could then recycle them. Or what ever happened to paper bags? At least they are biodegradable.
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What the hell
All recyclables there go into one blue bin, with the material types separated ta a central facility. The sorting process still requires some human assistance, but at a steadily diminishing rate with time as automation improves.
Start with some sever fines or jail time for people who intentionally sabotage recycling and you won't see christmas trees and sofas in the recycling anymore.
That requires catching them first.
It's _very_ good quality paper, that is one factor that makes it difficult to forge. US paper has a very distinctive "feel", which people handling money often notice before they notice the print on forged money.
Boss of mine almost 20 years ago gave me a $10 at a restaurant to pay his part of the bill. The instant my fingers touched it I knew it was bogus. I called him on it. He took it back and gave a real one.
Our currency paper is made by Crane. They recently split off the consumer stationery. I have a couple of different thank-you cards from them, and half-letter sheets. Even their consumer cotton rag paper is amazing. I only use this stuff for my closest friends and for select, worthy business. Everybody else gets a text, or a call, or good old Hammermill paper. (I don't use Georgia Pacific, as they've sent production of printer paper to China *and* are part of the Koch emprire. Hammermill is still USA-made.)
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
So everyone at every household has to sort out plastic bags and every other damn thing. The cumulative cost of that is enormous. Much cheaper and more effective, as events like this show, is to fix it in far fewer places and figure out a new way to handle plastic bags in there to prevent them from clogging the machine as it is designed now. I'm sure some some person somewhere has an answer to this, it is just taking a long time to implement since the small number of waste companies have far more focused political clout than the widely dispersed households who are asked to bear the cost. It is a story as old as the hills.
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Our money-paper maker already makes plastic (and finished bills, even) for other countries.
As for giving up *our* paper, I'm for not changing the paper. Feels nice. Way nice. And I think part of that traditionalism as something that differentiates us from countries that are all too willing to throw away the past in favor of some buzzword-worthy "future"
Money should be paper.
Cars should have stick shift as an option.
Meat should come from cow, not labs.
Guns should be steel and wood, not plastic.
And so on. ;o)
Pennies before 1983 sounded different., Now they sound like monopoly money. I don't want my paper money feeling like monopoly money too. Keep it that precise blend Crane makes now.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
We're harangued about how we are dumping plastic in the ocean, how we need to ban plastic straws and other terrible plastic products, because America is destroying the oceans.
Well, I have two main thoughts on that. One is that 'Murrica could be taken out of existence tomorrow, and it wouldn't put a dent in the plastic problem, with the possible exception of microspheres.
Second, when people are being browbeat about how they are destroying the planet because of their plastics, yeah - you are going to find a lot of plastic bags in the recycling bin.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or, more likely, when the fines are handed out, we'll see public outrage and lawsuits. My wife was an environmental scientist, and I still have to fight with her to recycle properly.