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?
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It’s not a hoax. But what can be recycled is more complex than some people want to believe. If the product can be effectively washed and it’s a recyclable material processed by your local facility and there is a buyer, then it will be recycled.
But you can’t wash paper product, so paper product has to be pretty clean when disposed. Most food containers made from paper product either get too soiled or have a coating that can’t be recycled, which is why paper food containers are universally not accepted for recycling.
That being said, paper recycling in the US basically stopped when China stopped buying used paper for recycling. Something similar happens with various plastics now and then.
Theres also usually a substantial oss of material as it’s recycled except for glass and aluminum. Which is a huge chunk of why those two materials are generally always accepted.
As for your made from x% of recycled materials falls under advertising so to lie would be false advertising. The numbers in triangles on plastic tells the recycler what type of plastic it is made from. Most places will sort them out at their plant. Plastics get chopped up into pellets and then shipped to be melted and pressed into new containers, but all have a limit on how many times they can be recycled. Aluminum has the highest number of times it can be recycled and retain its strength, it mostly just gets reformed into new sheets each time.
I live in a major city I think it is worth the effort, and it is more or less required. Our landfills cannot sustain us just throwing everything in it.
From what I understand I the 1st line of defense, where I just throw plastic and glass into a transparent bag, bundle up my cardboard and leave it in the recycling room.
Then the building maintenance guys sift through all that once a week, consolidate it all and leave it out the night before the truck comes.
At the recycling plant it gets a final sorting pass with humans standing around a conveyor belt before it goes into the recycling machines.
If you just throw recyclables in your trash and it is hidden from sight from other trash, none of this happens.
As for whether it is “worth it” or not is a somewhat subjective and complex issue. All I know is that I’m doing what is asked (which isn’t much tbh) and I wash my hands clean from the whole thing lol
I have worked in the recycling field.
Elementals(copper, aluminum, magnesium, etc) are ideal for recycling because they will always be less energy intensive than mining raw.
In terms of Recyclability paper comes next, not much to it in fact it helps to have paper waste in the new paper production. The only problems are transport and contamination. At the end of its useful lifespan the paper is compostable.
Plastics in general are recyclable but not Recyclable. They are just too light to transport efficiently, too many varieties to sort effectively, too hard to clean, too easy to contaminate, very hard to bleach. In general it is cheaper to use virgin plastic precursors than it is to recycle.
Alloys(bronze, steel, brass) are generally less Recyclable because the variety is great it also is a sorting nightmare. Effective at scale, but too heavy otherwise, an experienced recycler can differentiate alloys by touch alone but most people will not be able to to make at home sorting effective.
The same goes for bonded metals, Recyclable but needs specialized equipment that makes it infeasible.
Speaking of sorting nightmares, glass is very Recyclable BUT it is a giant PITA to handle and it must be sorted meticulously. Easier to use as aggregate for other things so it ends up being ‘upcycled’ rather than recycled.
Cloth and other fibers, recyclable, reusable or compostable if they are natural fibers. Otherwise it gets more difficult. Have not worked much with fabrics.
No, recycling is not a hoax.
Speaking as a European who works in the recycling sector:
Metals, paper, glass and certain types of plastics are heavily in demand. They also save a lot on emissions and resources.
For metals and paper, its expected that prices keep going up as requirements for recycled materials and low carbon emissions keep rising. Scrap metal is expected to skyrocket, as steel makers convert to arc furnaces which require scrap steel but have lower emissions.
For “easy” waste streams, like demolition waste, old cars etcetera we see high recycling rates and staggering developments in technology. Its very much a booming business.
The troublemaker is the waste stream that average Joe sees: Post consumer waste. Its a little bit of everything, in different shapes, packed in bags, mixed with food and shit and skin and piss. An old matress is 4 times heavier than a new one. Just from human.. byproducts.
Most of these waste products are recyclable. Coffee pads, dipers, matresses, and almost every type of plastic has found a viable recycling solution as a pure stream. But to get it sorted is difficult and expensive. These sorting technologies have often not evolved and scaled up to the point that they can compete with big oil and their massive subsidies.
So, sometimes stuff gets burned or landfilled.
Does that mean that sorting your waste at home is useless? No! The fact that these waste streams are now reliably there means that hundreds of companies around the world are developing ways to solve the problem. Because there is the potential to make a lot of money.
And we can see the recycling rates steadily rise, year by year. Its a matter of patience and politics. And thank god for the EU, which sometimes can have the balls to tell the big corps to go pound sand and implement new policies which drive the sector forward.
As a facility manager, I was given a tour of a huge trash/ recycling facility, who took our building tash. I saw huge structures with massive belt systems moving tons of material, magnets were pulling ferrous metals, water troughs were separating floating items, glass and aluminum were being separated and raking systems were grabbing and baling plastic bags. I saw huge rooms full of bins with aluminum, copper, etc. So this single stream system seemed to be in full gear doing what they claimed, at least in 2012, when I did the tour.
We have separate curbside recycling. Our local trash goes to a burner plant. I concentrate on metals and plastics for the recycle. Everything else gets recycled into electricity when it is burned.
Does your town/municipality/whatever not have a website detailing how your recycling is done?
This is the main thing I know: You need to look into the practices of the area to determine if recycling is worth it.
Some areas do actually recycle, and going the the process is worth the time and effort.
Some areas don’t recycle at all, but if you care you can find businesses that’ll buy your aluminum, glass, or plastic.
Some areas say they recycle, but it all gets dumped in the landfill anyway. This is usually just done as a means of fining inattentive citizenry.
Aluminum recycling is real. Plastic recycling is mostly to make you feel better about overbuying single use plastics. Yes, some plastic gets recycled. But only a small fraction, and it can only be recycled a few times before it still ends up in a landfill. Recycling has gotten better, but is still not enough to solve our trash/pollution problems. The words in “reduce, reuse, recycle” are in order of importance/impact. Reducing is by far the best thing you can do, then reuse what you can, and finally recycle as a last resort. Don’t rely on recycling to actually happen for most plastics.
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