CONFUSION AT THE RECYCLING CENTER
I was a Sesame Street kid. I remember when they toured LIVE and came to the Bergen Mall in NJ. All my little friends and I wanted to know where Mr. Hooper was. Sadly, he had just passed away....
My trip to the recycle center today got me thinking about Sesame Street. And then, well then I got suspicious.
It just doesn't seem possible that something so easy could be working...
Let me explain:
I took a car load of recyclables to the Fairfax County Recycle Center (Ben's county -- it was mostly his stuff.) Basically there is one bin for almost all paper goods like cardboard, chipboard, newspaper, junk mail, catalogs, magazines, etc (food stained paper products a no-go). And then there was a bin for the various glass, cans, and plastic. That's it -- you basically just have to sort into 2 piles.
Meanwhile...back north, at the PA recycle center that I go to a lot (up there, the garbage collection is not covered in your taxes, so you have to pay a private company to pick it up. The more they pick up, the more you pay ... a great motivator to get folks to recycle more), I have to sort the recyclables into some 10 categories: clear glass, green glass, brown glass, #1 plastic, #2 plastic, cardboard, chipboard (think cereal box), newspaper, all other paper, and then, finally, cans.
Why the difference? I get suspicious of the recycling places that mix almost everything together because I wonder - who is doing the sorting? Are they even sorting it at all? Is it possible to melt all the plastics, cans AND GLASS together to make something useful? Why not have the people bringing those products at least PRE SORT them? I guess I carry suspicions because I remember seeing a story once about a community that was supposedly "recycling". BUT, when the trucks came at night to pick up the curb side recyclables, it turns out, they were just mixing it in with the garbage!! With the BIG PUSH for everyone to go green (have you noticed how "in" it is right now to be green???) I wonder if all the effort is really taking shape, or is it a matter of it just "feeling good" to say we're going green. I hope going green isn't just a fad...
Any recycling experts out there? I am thinking of the Sesame Street song that I used to dance to in my Grandma's house "What about garbage? Where does it go? What if you could follow it? Where would you go?"
Labels: CANS, PAPER, PLASTIC, RECYCLING, SESAME STREET, SORTING RECYCLABLES
posted by Kim M. @ 2:01 PM
4 Comments:
Yes, I have heard stories that all the recycled material is mixed up with your normal household trash again.
However I know that we got to recylce and seperate trash strictly where I live. Because we too need to pay for each can of garbage that is being picked up and it gets quite expensive.
I use the Fairfax center off the parkway at 66. that may have been the very one you visited.
You can recycle plastic and glass together in huge dumpster size bins. I'd imagine to separate them they could drop them in water as glass would sink and plastic float, but i don't ask I just use the bins.
Makes sense though because they ask for clean containers yet I doubt they are all the time.
Thinking about it I'd crush the containers together, drop them in a vat and dredge off the top. The plastic is shredded in water so even if glass were embedded it would again fall to the bottom.
But I really have no idea how they do it.
Hi, a person who goes by the name "soilscreener" saw the video on youtube and left me this comment: Good question. Some recycling centers have sorting conveyors where all the material is either machine or hand sorted. However, many more don't have those facilities, so they require the public to pre-sort their stuff. Simply depends on where you live.
Hope this helps!"
In Bowie, they collect your recycle stuff once a week, a different day than trash. We have one bin for newspapers, junk mail, magazines, kids' school papers that we don't need to keep (they all go together); and another bin for cans and plastic (they can go together). The plastic must be a "1" or a "2" on the bottom. We are very fortunate that we don't have to cart them to a center. Our life is just so hectic that I don't think our stuff would make it. I know that's sad to say. I feel guilty when we miss the weekly pick up.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home