Recycling Scam

[mark_wpduet]

OK...
So a while back I watched a video recommended to me about how most plastics are not recyclable. I watched it and was horrified...I learned that when we throw plastics in the recycle.. those plastics could end up in some other country or the sea or recycling centers just send them to the regular trash anyway.

Now I see THIS video

I think I'm going to start throwing my plastics in the regular trash and just recycle things that I know can be recycled. Not because I'm lazy... but I'd rather my plastics go to a safe landfill than end up in the ocean or some other country.

Imagine going the extra mile to recycle your plastics and end up being a worse outcome than simply throwing it in the trash!

Landfills running out of room? According to this...not true.

What do you think?

 

[tolivac]

Often "recycled" plastics go to the landfill anyway.

 

[me]

Some plastics like PET drinks bottles are highly recyclable and can be reused for there original purpose. There's a effort to phase out and ban non-recyclable packaging from use in the UK and EU.

The local council here only collects plastic bottles, cardboard and metal tins and food waste for recycling in their street collections.

I've seen similar TV programmes reporting on plastic, electric appliances and other waste ending up dumped and set alight in third world countries, where they traced some of the plastic waste back to the UK from address labels on packaging and letters etc, and interviewed a rep from one of the councils responsible for "recycling" it.

Apparently under UK law the council had to go with the cheapest tender, and companies shipping it abroad to supposedly be processed by third world based companies, who took the money and dumped it were inevitably the cheapest, which doesn't exactly encourage investment in reprocessing plant in the UK.

The electrical waste was being burnt to extract the copper from the plastic parts by people gleaning the tips, producing clouds of toxic fumes and contaminating the environment. I believe a lot of UK electrical waste now gets shredded and processed in the UK, including appliances that might have previously been repaired and reused in the third world countries.

 

[donprohel]

I thinks that this sounds like advertising...

...although I do not know what interests it promotes.

It is true that plastics is difficult to recycle, and actually it is rather downcycled than recycled.

Nevertheless, at least some of the plastic can be recycled (and some countries are better than others at recycling it).

What cannot be recycled, can replace coal for steel and concrete production.

Of course, the problem of waste exported too poor countries for "recycling" exist and is well real.

And about landfills not being polluting, well, nice try, but try again

 

[parunner58]

Here, the county in Florida I live in sent out a letter late last year stating that in October 2024 they will no longer recycle anything. If you wish to recycle you can locate a recycle center and drive it there yourself. They reason is, that it is too expensive to recycle. 85% of our weekly recycle is cardboard, and a few aluminum cans,very little plastic. We do not buy water bottles, we all have refillable containers we use. Those are refilled at the refrigerator water dispenser. I have not yet investigated where the recycle center is from my house. I do know I pass one about an hour away, when I take my car in for service at the dealer.

 

[me]

Here's an item by The Guardian about waste disposal and recycling in England and Wales. About 11% of stuff put out for recycling is actually being burned.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Ten Cents to Trash!

I dislike our state government's lack of trust in our recycling containers for mostly carbonated beverages in that there is still a ten cent deposit on nearly all of them making people frantically wanting to redeem those for the return....

 

To me there is hardly anything outside of the consolidation of that kind of regulation that there is any kind of true recycling in any outcome as much as the endless recycling of a recycling system...

 

The machines and bins and transport of those items greatly offset any benefit of something that can easily be recycled without any charging for use of a vessel and mandating it be singled out from other recylebles via now a company in business for placing these machines in grocery stores adding to the expense of them also still having to be maintained...

 

 

 

-- Dave

[this post was last edited: 2/19/2024-21:18]

 

[ea56]

We should go back to the way it was in the 50’s and 60’s with reusable glass bottles that can be returned to any retailer that sells the product for a refund on the deposit. That would do away with a lot of the plastic waste. Why do people have to buy water in plastic bottles anyway? I haven’t bought a bottle of water in plastic in almost 20 years!

Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth in my youth no one would have ever dreamed of paying for a bottle of water. We used water fountains or planned ahead if on an outing or road trip and brought along a thermos or other vessel to carry water for the journey. And thats what I still do.

We as a society dispose of WAY too much plastic! And it’s mostly completely unnecessary.

And as far as recycling of plastic bottles and aluminum cans in the local where I live the is NO WHERE that one can return these bottles and cans and receive a COMPLETE refund of the deposit. The few recycling centers that are available only pay by weight of the cans and bottles returned, which comes nowhere close to the deposit that was paid by the original purchaser.

When my husband was still working he worked at a hotel. He once brought home 4 HUGE plastic garbage bags filled with empty plastic water and soda bottles for me to take to the recycling center. There were literally hundreds of empty bottles. I don’t recall the weight of these bags, but I do recall that after waiting over 35 mins I got eight dollars and some change which would have been about equal to 5 cents for 180 bottles and I ‘m sure that there were at least three times that many empties that were recycled. The consumer should receive the full deposit amount back, not a fraction.

Eddie

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Well, that's what I do at work as far as my drinking water is concerned--not potable, but frequent trips to the drinking fountain we have and it refrigerates the water, too...

 

Again, I see no point in containers for carbonated beverages in metal, plastic or glass having to be recycled any different than soup cans, ketchup bottles or mayonnaise jars...

 

I pay my environmental fee, if not for those gleaming red Coca Cola cans dominating the top of my bin, I wouldn't have very much to recycle...

 

My carbon footprint is small enough that I think the only trash I ever put out besides non-recyclable food containers is torn up inner-sleeves from my records of which I have new ones with exception of ones printed w/ musician credits, photos, lyrics, etc. and scratched up vinyl eschewed in favor of mint copies or CD's, and maybe broken full-sized CD cases, in which in effort for stroring more hard copy media or putting my CD's in LP covers I use those thin disc cases...

 

 

-- Dave

 

[fan-of-fans]

@parunner58

Mike, we had similar thing happen in my county in Florida.

Originally, we had recycling trailers throughout the county with separate compartments for paper, plastic, cardboard, glass, cans, etc.

Then about 6 years ago we received one trash cart and one recycling cart. A couple of years ago, we were notified that there would no longer be recycling pickup. The reason given was that too much trash was intermixed with the recycling, and much of it was not able to be recycled. We were told to just use the recycle cans for regular trash.

Each town in our county now has a designated recycling center staffed by an employee, in order to make sure only recyclable items are received. The centers are not as convenient, and I believe are only open one or two days a week in the morning.

I’m disappointed that our recycling program has been reduced to this.

I believe some stores (such as Walmart, Publix and Winn Dixie) still have recycling containers in front, although it may only be for plastic and paper bags. I know that I used to take the plastic bubble wrap to Publix as it was one of the few places that accept it, for recycling along with plastic bags.

 

[qsd-dan]

"We should go back to the way it was in the 50’s and 60’s..."

I've been saying that for 30 years. Let go back to glass and metal products, only using plastic where absolutely necessary. I've been using the same 1 quart glass bottles in my vehicles for many, many years and never broke one yet. Much healthier too since plastic leaches estrogenic compounds and other harmful substances.

 

[mark_wpduet]

Here's my question: And it's a simple question but a good one....

In that video I linked....I'm so confused with part of this equation. OK, so a lot of the plastics that get sent to be recycled the recycling center deems trash so they bunch it up and send it to the regular trash, right? So then WHY are some of the plastics that can not be recycled being sent overseas to countries like Malaysia to be piled up there??? It makes no sense. It's like being at a recycling center... the recycling center says "this is trash it can't be recycled..." We'll send this part to the regular trash and the rest of it overseas??? HUH?? Why not just send everything that can't be recycled to the regular trash... How is sending it overseas even remotely part of their equation??

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Maybe something like Tomra, another overseas company capitalizing on our recycling would know something or something needs to be exposed...

Their machines which take the deposit containers I'm sure add to our expenses ledger, as do the bins the smoothed up containers go into and transport of...

All the while we're disposing the refuse the stuff is carried in, that's not the ten-Cents per item, but more garbage or something else to be recycled than we're going to show for what ever anything the state mandates does...

-- Dave

 

[donprohel]

Sending trash overseas

The reason to send trash overseas is unfortunately simple, mark_wpduet / Mark: it is cheaper than anything you can do here, because trash is sent to countries where there are neither regulations nor controls.

On this side of the world, instead, even to send trash to a landfill, first you have to pay, and also you must ensure that you are not dumping dangerous or poisonous stuff

 

[mark_wpduet]

It should be illegal to send our stuff that was put into recycle bins where people thinking they are helping the planet... Only for it to be shipped overseas if they deem it not recyclable...

so am I correct if you throw it in the regular trash that it WILL go to a landfill here? Surely they don't ship regular garbage overseas...

How do they check through all the garbage if there's a dangerous chemicals before it goes to the landfill?

 

[novum]

We've had mixed recycling for years i.e. you've a 'green bin' which takes paper, cardboard, plastics and cans.

Most households also have a glass bin, and a compostable 'brown bin' which is for food waste, garden waste, compostable commercial packaging e.g. some of our bread wrappers and so on are compostable and also things like teabags are generally now plastic free and commercially compostable.

Then you've a general waste bin for everything else. You are charged per kg for waste.

We've just introduced a deposit return scheme, which is similar to what's done for a long time in Germany and elsewhere. There's a reverse vending machine in supermarkets, convenience stores, some garages (gas stations) and so on. You now bring your plastic drink bottles and cans to the machine and put them in and it scans the barcodes and checks the bottles for shape / quality.

There's a 15 cent deposit on each the smaller bottles and cans and a 25 cent deposit on the bigger ones.

That's returned to you as a barcode which you can use in the store where the machine is located. As yet, they don't have a fully electronic version which seems a bit nuts to be printing out barcodes, but anyway it is what it is.

The idea is that it might improve the quality of the waste streams and get more plastic back to proper recycling as it's being sorted and in good condition.

At present, a lot of our plastic waste is ending up in waste-to-energy i.e. being incinerated at high temperature, which is less than ideal, but probably better than landfill or sending it out of sight and out of mind to somewhere else in the world.

The problem is loads of items don't have the "Re-Turn" logo on them and the machines just flatly refuse to take old stock as there's no deposit paid, so a lot of people are having a bit of a frustrating first experience of using the machines.

Also, I'm not entirely convinced that 15 cent is going to motivate a lot of people to go to the machines with bottles. Plenty are saying they'll just absorb the cost.

It also doesn't work if you're reliant on online deliveries and you pretty much have to drive to a supermarket or similar location, so if's not ideal particularly for older people who might not drive anymore.

 

[me]

Unfortunately there's plans to roll out a deposit return scheme in the uk too, apparently we only manage to recycle 70% of drinks containers and the uk government hopes to get it up to around 90% which is what germany and other eu countries that operate a DRS achieve.

It's going to be much more costly to run, more time consuming and far less convenient than squashing them and tossing them in a plastic box for fortnightly collection. Only good thing is it has been repeatedly delayed.

 

[novum]

There’s no plan to remove the mixed recycling here, just you’ll lose 15 cents or 25 cents per bottle if recycle them in the green bin at home.

Explainer:


It’s basically exactly the same deposit return system used elsewhere.

And the somewhat cringy ad

 

[michaelh]

This whole thing really bothers me. They really pushed recycling when I was young. It was kinda fun!

Today, my recycling cart will be half full before I even put a bag of trash into the trash cart. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing based on these stories of our waste not really being recycled.

A few days ago I had bought some ice cream cones and coffee creamer. The ice cream cones used to have a paper top cap and the creamer used to have a foil seal. Each of the ice cream cones is individually capped with plastic and the coffee creamer now has TWO plastic caps on it, one to seal and one to pour. WHY?!