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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?
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.
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?
Plastic bags, for the same volume, also are lighter and less bulky. This makes them cheaper to transport and require less place for storage and less frequent restocking at the check stands.
Plastic bags also don't weaken when they get moist either from being set on a wet surface or because something inside leaks or condenses due to high humidity.
Not to say these makes them worthwhile, but those are advantages.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading