I’ve always wondered how legit recycling is and if it’s worth the effort to personally do it. (I live in a high-rise and I can toss my garbage down a chute on my floor, but have to bring my recycling down to the ground floor.) In college I literally saw them dump the recycling bin and trash bin into the same truck, but I know I see dedicated recycling trunks around.
I was told “soiled” recycling can’t be used i.e. greasy used pizza boxes, is that true? Recycling dumpsters are gross, isn’t everything soiled?
When companies sell a product that’s “made from recycled products” how truthful is that? Is it their own recycled products or do they source it?
Whats the deal with the recycling triangles and numbers on a product? If I recycle a number that I shouldn’t, does it ruin everything else in that dumpster?
How does any one/machine feasibly sort recycling? It seems like a herculean task.
Recycling, fact or fiction?
In: Other
To a certain extent, especially with plastics it is.
Hard plastics ie bottle tops, drinks bottles are recycled. However even these are not indefinitely recyclable after a few cycles the polymer chains hare too damaged and the resultant product would be weak and prone to breaking. This is why you see containers with lines like “made of up to 60% recycled material” they need to add new plastic to help reinforce the old plastic.
Same with cardboard, it can only be recycled between 5 to 7 times.
Often once they are past the point where they can be recycled they along with soft plastics like cellophane get sent to a waste to energy incinerator.
Metals and glass however are infinitely recyclable and it’s financially worth wile to do so. Aluminium for example takes about 95% less energy to recycle than to produce new.
Unfortunately huge multinational plastics producers have spent a lot of money telling the public to recycle rather than reducing the plastics they make or moving to more ecologically sustainable packaging.
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