Trashed
April 3, 2019 9:14 AM   Subscribe

 
This makes separating trash/recyclables, breaking down boxes, etc. feel odd, like performing a hopeful but ineffectual rite.
posted by salt grass at 9:31 AM on April 3, 2019 [10 favorites]


Almost every day at work in a trash-strewn DC suburb, I go out for a mid-day walk and collect some plastic bottles. Over the course of a week, I probably get 20-30, just going for the easy ones, and it doesn't even make a dent - a block away, there's a tributary of the Potomac that probably has 100+ visibly bobbing, consistently, with many more embedded in its mud. And then there's the plastic bags.

Single-use plastic is just another way for corporations to shift work and risk onto the public, and we need to start turning the financial screws hard.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:54 AM on April 3, 2019 [26 favorites]


Seems like sending recycling elsewhere led to it being taken for granted.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:00 AM on April 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


Time to rebottle instead.
posted by ocschwar at 10:24 AM on April 3, 2019


An important and overlooked factor is the switch to single-stream recycling beginning in the 1990s, which increased contamination rates and led to China dominating the recycling industry, decimating domestic recycling businesses in the process.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:38 AM on April 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


An important and overlooked factor is the switch to single-stream recycling beginning in the 1990s, which increased contamination rates and led to China dominating the recycling industry, decimating domestic recycling businesses in the process.

This is literally a major point in the Nib link up top, did you read the article? The article was really good.
posted by epanalepsis at 11:07 AM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Apparently single-stream recycling in my city is still okay-ish-kind-of, but I have to say that communication about best recycling practices is not good. I quite earnestly want to recycle in the best way possible in my household, but trying to figure out what is more and less acceptable is really difficult. Before writing this comment I google up a recent-ish (there's not date on it, but context clues indicate it's from the past year) vertical from the local newspaper about our recycling and already learned a lot. Why was this not communicated to me by the city? No idea. We receive a mailer every year giving our pick-up dates that also outlines what materials are recyclable via single stream but I had no idea that the blue bags we're supposed to use are a) purely optional (you can apparently just toss your stuff in the bin directly, no bag, and it's fine) and b) gum up the works at the sorting facility and have to be removed from the process by hand and are then sent to a landfill. Meanwhile, the City still says "use blue bags for recycling". This is bonkers.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:53 AM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


Torontonians can get a free app , developed by city staff, that is a pretty useful guide about what can and can't be recycled or composted. It might be worth checking the app store or or city web site/general info line to see if one's available in your area.
posted by maudlin at 12:04 PM on April 3, 2019


I'm pretty sure my area went single stream. We had two bins, one for paper and one for plastic/glass/metal... but when we needed a third it was an everything goes bin. I figure something is still 'working' because there are people going around fishing out aluminum cans and plastic to make some money. So I still feel OK sorting my plastic and aluminum into easy to find and carry bags. They never actually make it to the truck that picks up the recycle bins, they vanish over night.

I do think re-bottling should return to being a thing. When I grew up there was a Pepsi bottling plant in town and we'd go and buy pallets of sodas and take back the bottles. It was also a quick way to get a bit of change for the video games at the store.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:21 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


The Nib link hints at the erosion in people's confidence in the system. I wonder about the larger picture of fatalism working its way into conversations about the environment, about climate change. The problem feels too big and the damage seems too far gone. Some officials lie about where the recycling goes, diverting some to landfills, so why bother?

Denmark seems to have a system worth looking into, privatizing for optimizing implementation, and using government as a tool for regulation and enforcement of packaging, how it has to be reclaimed and reused. It requires society to commit to separating waste and to be able to trust that the system works as promised.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:38 PM on April 3, 2019


This is a timely set of articles for me - I recently moved to a single-stream recycling area after spending my whole life in a "separate your glass from plastic from newsprint from cardboard" locale and it has definitely felt... weird, like literally every week when I haul my recyclables out I'm like, where does all this stuff go? I hope whoever is sorting and cleaning this stuff on the other end is getting paid a living wage, etc.. Turns out we'd just been outsourcing the problem to someone else until they'd finally had enough, which is.. disappointing if not exactly surprising.
posted by btfreek at 1:17 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


I kind of wish both links put more of a focus on putting the onus on producers to make products that can be reused or recycled more easily.

Currently I'd like to bring attention to that, see what experts say about its impact, see what politicians say about it.
posted by tychotesla at 2:35 PM on April 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


I remember when reduce, reuse, recycle was the watch word and now only one of the Rs is used, cause recyling can be spun into a for profit business.

I basically only trust my coty’s (Limited) composting project. Who the hell knows where the plastics collected end up? One recycling project in Italy was just dumping it in the sea.

Recycling programs cannot be for profit cause they won’t innovate new ways to recycle they’ll just inivste new ways to make money, a Green New Deal project could be the creation of waste management or demands for zero plastic packaging, reusable materials and the like.
posted by The Whelk at 7:15 PM on April 3, 2019


I think the other unintended consequence of the switch to single-stream is that it made recycling thoughtless.

When we had multi-stream recycling, you had to look at the container, or at least consider it, when you decided what bin to throw it in. Sure, it meant some people just wouldn't bother, and tossed it all in the trash, but I think it made the people, who were inclined to at least try to recycle, more aware of what stuff was recyclable and what wasn't. And "recyclable" became something that products advertised.

Single stream doesn't require the same degree of thought; if it looks vaguely recyclable, people just toss it in the bin. Really, I think what happens is if it's not one of the things people know isn't recyclable (food scraps, yard waste, etc.), it gets tossed in the blue bin, because it feels somehow better to do that.

Fast forward until now, and we've gotten people out of the habit not just of sorting recycling, but also of thinking whether items are recyclable, outside of very broad categories. Nobody looks at the number stamped on the bottom of plastic containers. There's an assumption that broad categories of products will be recyclable, like it's a sort of solved problem. Until it isn't.

I'm not saying that single stream was necessarily bad. It obviously raised recycling rates a lot, and while China was willing to buy all our trash and hand-sort it, maybe that was the right thing to do. But now that hand-sorting isn't an option, I think we're going to have to go back to multi-stream and teach ourselves how to be more aware of materials, especially in packaging.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:41 PM on April 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


and in the meantime, southeast asian countries like mine becomes the new dumping ground. right now, lawmakers are basically playing whack-a-mole with the proliferation of illegal recycling processors, even as we just announced our own ban and others too.
posted by cendawanita at 9:17 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm not saying that single stream was necessarily bad.

I am. See the related Vox video, Why you're recycling wrong. Why is "when in doubt, leave it out" so hard? Now we know -- "Aspirational Recycling."
posted by Rash at 10:13 PM on April 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


In my area we have recently been instructed to ignore the resin identification code on the bottom of plastics and instead place only plastic bottles and jugs in our cart that have a neck that is narrower than the base. However, very few of my plastic items fit that description, and I feel so angry having to toss plastic containers in the trash knowing this decision was made based solely on what types of plastics are most valuable in the marketplace. But at least it has made me come up with ways to reduce my use of these other plastics in the first place.

Meanwhile, one city in Japan has moved from incinerating their trash to creating a nonprofit that recycles almost everything. If we value recycling, I think this is the sort of model we’re going to need to adopt.
posted by woofferton at 1:26 AM on April 4, 2019


In my area we have recently been instructed to ignore the resin identification code on the bottom of plastics and instead place only plastic bottles and jugs in our cart that have a neck that is narrower than the base.

In my area we have been instructed to ignore the resin identification code and place only items used in kitchen and bathrooms. We're given an exhaustive list of recyclable materials with example photos - it's 14 pages long - which nobody reads. I despair.
posted by epanalepsis at 8:29 AM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Which is why this shouldn’t be put on the back of the consumer.
posted by The Whelk at 8:59 AM on April 4, 2019 [5 favorites]


Might be better just to use less in the first place.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:56 AM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


At least in NYC, the sanitation department was being extremely aggressive about recycling fines for a while. After the third threatening letter from my landlord, I just started throwing anything vaguely recyclable-seeming in the recycling bin. It was obvious that something like a food-stained piece of cardboard, or a piece of non-recyclable plastic would still get me yelled at even though it should go in the trash.

It seems like the whole system is pretty broken, incentives are all screwed up, and regulation on the manufacturer side is the only real solution.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:29 PM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Why the world's recycling system stopped working - "China's refusal to become the west’s dumping ground is forcing the world to face up to a waste crisis." (viz. cf.)
posted by kliuless at 11:16 PM on April 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


Time to rebottle instead.

Many years ago, I took some recycling to the collection point behind a health food store in Atlanta. There was a sign explaining that there was a problem with finding a new contractor to take plastics. It concluded: "Take it home, wash it out, and use it again; that's recycling, folks!"
posted by thelonius at 4:01 AM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


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