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
Recycling is gonna be different with different materials.
Metal and glass can be melted down and reused pretty much infinitely. Easy!
Paper involves mulching it back into pulp again, but this breaks down the fibers that it’s made of, so recycled paper isn’t as high quality and it can’t be done over and over forever. Still, completely usable for tons of things. *Grease* specifically makes it hard to recycle, although I honestly don’t know why. I’m sure you can google it
“Plastic” is a word we use for dozens of different hydrocarbons that have very different properties. Some can be melted down and reused pretty easily, others are much harder to.
Unfortunately this does make recycling plastics more awkward, because different locales have different levels of recycling capability. But that’s the point of the numbers – look up which ones can be recycled in your city. This also applies to those bags you saw put in a garbage truck with the trash. Every city handles it differently. Some are serious about it: in LA you can put all recycling in one bin and people will sort them by hand. It costs more, but it gets people to recycle much more. Other cities might truly bullshit it because there’s a mandate from the state to have a recycling program but the city doesn’t actually care.
“made from recycled products” is nice, I guess, but it really doesn’t mean much if there’s no regulation on what % that means. They might be recycling waste from their own assembly lines, or buying waste from others, it doesn’t really make a difference. Either way, they’re doing it when it’s cheaper than buying “new” raw materials. I’m fairly sure that your city recycling plant sells what they recycle to producers on the market in the same way.
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