American recycling is stalling, and the big blue bin is one reason why
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I say this as a UK taxpayer with 4 different bins and forthnightly collection -- it's just a farce. I don't get to choose how the stuff I buy is packaged, but somehow I'm responsible for dealing with it AND I have to pay for the privilege, while Coke goes ka-ching. That's unfair.
This ...
If you don't like dealing with recycling, consider the effort to be part of the cost of the product. I am all in favor of a "disposal tax" to be levied on goods to offset the societal cost of wasteful packaging, but it would still be passed on to consumers, and soft drink companies are hardly the worst offenders.
Yes, and then stopped. They just unloaded some of their costs on the community. They were then forced to try and clean up their act by public pressure.
To be honest, I'm not singling out Coke -- all manufacturers are part of the problem, even tetrapack-toting ones: the whole "package $item in small $something" concept is environmentally expensive, and all industries must be forced to bear as much of these costs as we can.
Why should I suffer all the costs of recycling?
More that I am paying for the same services but doing the right thing costs me far more in excess of the benefit to myself.
The confusing/complicated/ironic thing here is that thin(ner) plastic containers were seen as a _positive_ for resource use. If the point of recycling, after all, is to reduce what goes into landfills, or to reduce our petroleum or other resource use, then using less plastic in the bottles in the first place is a positive -- and one that indeed takes place from a focus on smarter practices at the beginning -- right?
But apparently it also destabilizes the recycling market.
Either way, I agree that the only solution is to somehow make the original manufacturers bear the environmental costs of what they produce -- which neccesarily means those costs will be reflected in the prices of consumer products too.
> I don't get to choose how the stuff I buy is packaged
I think an economist would say you do get to choose. You could have chosen a different product that was packaged better. Since the onus is on you to sort out the packaging, you should have incentive to prefer products with packaging that you don't have to manage.
It's been proven over and over again that "market-based responses" to environmental issues simply do not work: there will always be a critical mass of consumers who simply won't care. You end up trading the long-term future of our planet for immediate convenience, just because as human animals we are simply terrible at judging things in the long term.
That's all well and good until all of the products in X category have the same packaging. Then there's no way to provide a market signal. (Plus that concept ignores all nuance. Either something is the Biggest Deciding Factor Ever, or it gets lost in the mix. And even if it is the primary deciding factor, there's no way of going "The reason I didn't go with you was because of your packaging, rather than your price/functionality/willingness-to-spy/tantalum use." and the result would at-best get confused for something else.
So a policy that bans thin containers on the basis that they result in less profits for recyclers is the opposite of smart. The end goal is to lower the total environmental impact, not profitable recycling programs.
This forces people to recycle but we don't have a blue bin to just dump recyclables in.
In most places bags may also not be left on the street but put into underground trash collection bins or large metal trash containers. (http://www.direkt-einkauf.ch/cgi-bin/resize?tab=23&col=7&id=... or http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/3/0/1/30114820/6/topelement.j...)
Every neighborhood has a recycling station within walking distance. The consist of containers for the different types of glass, metal and plastic (PET). (http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/10116873.jpg)
Paper is picked up for free but must be correctly bundled and it is only picked up one a month. Same with cardboard which is picked up on a different day. (http://www.stadt.sg.ch/home/raum-umwelt/abfall-entsorgung/pr...)
Many people also have a compost in their yard.
For electronics there is a law that any retailer that sells electronics must also take them for recycling even if you didn't buy it there.
We have something similar here in Denmark, but it would break down for apartments (since we can't have separate bins there is no reasonable way to prevent others from justing filling up) so those just get a big bin for all the garbage. Unless you are in an urbane place though, good lucking finding a recycling station within walking station.
I've lived in a bunch of apartment complexes that have a huge shared dumpster for recycling, right next to the one for trash. Sometimes they have separate recycling dumpsters for paper/plastic/whatever. Sometimes it's just one for all recycling.
I have NEVER seen the recycling dumpster contain only correct recyclable items. And when the trash dumpster gets full (which happens very frequently some places), the shit really hits the fan and people just blatantly dump regular trash into the recycling.
I always wondered how any of this mixed trash and recycling could ever be efficiently processed.
Electrics must be taken to the dump.
No idea how metals are handled.
We burn most of our waste and use it to power heating.
But if the people in the US can’t even handle a separation between one recycling bin and a waste bin, I don’t think that more separation would be doable there.
See the comically long URL for the leaflet given to householders.
http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&bl...
Similarly I worked at a company with 10000+ employees in SV. Even though they had green (compost), blue (recycle), black (trash) everywhere I never saw them have the correct stuff in them even though said company prides itself on hiring smart people.
That leads me to believe recycling by requiring each and every person to separate their own trash is not really a solution at all.
My understanding is some cities separate it at the dump. If true that seems like a much larger win. It will likely be correct far more often and only a few entities to check up on that they're doing it right.
The submitted article is about seperation at the dump, and how it doesn't work.
The process still works, it's just less profitable than it used to be.
It makes sense from at least some angles, moving concerns about compliance and contamination to the facility.
2. Majority of people are too lazy and stupid to care, that's why they went to the single bin. I used to live in a large condo complex in the US where I was essentially the recycling police. No matter what I tried to educate the building, I still found tons of non-recyclables in the blue bin.
Composting seems like a big win but how is this easily accomplished is urban areas?
Prior to January, composting was optional but composting service--that is, having the green bin of any size--was mandatory. Composting itself became mandatory, primarily because restaurants were just chucking the food waste, and if the trash hauler sees a bunch of food getting crunched up with the trash bag, a red tag will be left on your garbage bin. (There used to be fines but Seattle Public Utilities hit its composting target so fast, the $1 "oooh you dun did it now" fine has been suspended.)
My anecdotal experience is that it works rather well if you're prepared. I keep a small, charcoal-filter-in-the-lid compost bucket in the kitchen, lined by compostable bags purchased from Bartell's. When the bag gets full or too smelly, I drop it in the compost bin just outside my back door. Once a week, it goes out to the curb with the garbage with minimal fuss. The medium-sized bin I have costs ~$7/month.
I don't normally call these things out, but it confused the hell out of me when I was reading it.
Also I couldn't imagine having something that smelly in my kitchen or having to buy special bags. My parents have backyard chicken so it is mostly the same deal (except milk products, raw eggs and chicken goes in the bin) but it gets emptied every day so it hasn't gotten any opportunity to start to smell.
If the compost container kept in the house has a lid with a charcoal filter on it, there's very little to no smell. The small container gets emptied into the big container once every couple of days. As for the bags, I have to buy trash bags, so I buy mostly trash bags and some compost bags. Everybody sells them and they're in a bazillion different sizes (moreso than regular trash bags). I actually buy the tall ones to serve as liners for my compost bin that sits outside--so I don't have to hose it out--and then smaller ones to go in the compost container inside. That way everything stays clean with little fuss.
This seems to imply that if these items were in a compost bin instead of a landfill they wouldn't be producing that methane? That seems implausible to me; is there a reasonable explanation?
I think that there is already plenty of will to sort recycling correctly, but a lack of detailed information. The mindset of people running these programs seems to be stuck in a decade or two ago where the main goal was to convince people that recycling is important.
I was thinking about making an app for this, but never got time.
I'm not sure I appreciate the "do-gooders mess it all up again" vibe in the middle of the article, but the US has always had a weird relationship with recycling for whatever reason.
I'm glad to see food recycling raised as a solution, they do that where I live and it makes a lot of sense compared with having it decompose to methane in landfills (though some landfills do try to capture the methane and then burn it for ebergy its better to get it at source).
A carbon tax (ideally one covering other GHGs like methane) would probably sort out the recycling market along with the million other markets it would fix, but the time for the obvious and sensible solution is not quite nigh, though since even the oil and gas corporations are advocating it now in Europe it may not be too long now.
The blue bin should be for cans and cardboard, and that's it. Everything else is pointless.
Mine went along the lines of it's recycled if it's paper but not if it's certain types of paper unless it has a recycle logo on it but then not if it's has any food residues. The list went on like that for multiple pages. Handily it was in around 12 languages too, but I was in London (and technically an immigrant, so I suppose the multiple languages were for me).
Then there's the fine for having an empty bin on collection day but also a fine for having the lid ajar from ever so slightly more than the bin holds - you were allowed up to 1/4 of an inch (yup, documented in the explanation leaflet) (and they have private contractors going around at 4am to check that and issue fines before anyone gets up in the morning).
Plus, of course, once it's all collected, the council send it all to landfill and don't bother recycling it at all. [1] And still do it after being caught. [2] Or they just dump it in Africa or China instead of landfill/recycling. [3]
There are endless examples of the bone-headed UK public sector approach to recycling which makes it a waste of time. Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud.
I don't think you're being fair trying to blame it on some sort of illiterate proles.
[1] http://www.courier.co.uk/Wealden-council-sending-residents-r...
[2] http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10467239.Council_aga...
[3] http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/538317/Britain-sends-ton...
Well my comment was based more on what I see at semi-public bins. Stuff like people throwing alu foil into bins marked "food waste" & similar complete disregard of even attempting to do it right. You just need one or two people doing that & the entire process can be scrapped.
I agree with you that it is not, but cooking foil could reasonably be interpreted as being food waste because it's involved in cooking food and likely to have bits of food stuck to it.
If you travel round the world, different places have very different lists of what is permitted. In London, bones were a no-no for food waste, but in Toronto, the organic waste bin allows bones, pet litter, used diapers, paper plates and even paper towel with cleaning products in it - all in regular plastic shopping bags (so no need for cellulose bags like in the UK). Frankly, I have no idea how they sort that lot out - I hope no-one actually touches any of the stuff.
The whole process is so complex (in every location) that is is almost impossible to get right and that is the fundamental problem getting an effective recycling regime to work. (Though, Toronto does have a handy trash guide on their website to help you pick where it goes http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=03ec...)
It was all so much simpler in my remote rural past where anything organic was eaten by the dog, anything flammable was burned for heating and the remains (essentially a few tin cans and glass jars) went into the trash (in theory, that was easily recyclable but it was before it was a Thing).
oh I hope thats not whats going on. That would be closer to lack of common sense than rule confusion.
The tricky cases I understand - as you say the rules are difficult - its the obviously wrong stuff that gets to me where people chucked it in the closest bin.
1 says that in exceptional circumstances, the council will pick up both recycling and landfill waste in the same truck. They acknowledge this is wasteful, but it's only in exceptional circumstances.
2 isn't about the waste that the council collect from homes, its about the waste in council office buildings not being perfectly sorted. Unfortunate, but this seems more of a gotcha than a real complaint.
3 states that local Chinese refuse isn't being collected because the employees who would do so are leaving for better paid jobs sorting imported recycling. Apart from the surprising lack of available labor in China, this is how its supposed to work. China has been a major importer of recycled paper which they use for packaging of their manufactured goods for example.
Recycling seems to be one of the bogeymen that a certain type of press knows will anger their readership so they make up stories about it to wind them up.