Recycling

[Reba]

I am in Michigan. I tied up papers in twine. Same thing for cardboards. I put them all in the bin along with plastic stuff, tin cans, glasses.

They accept only PETE 1 & 2 plastic items. I saw on TV that there are places that can accept other PETE numbers plastic items. Where do I find it? I live not too far from Detroit. The TV show said they do recycle PETE #5 into things like razor handles, etc. I eat alot of yogurt in those small tubs.

My sister-in-law in Lansing won a prize for following the recycling rules. I asked her, how did they judge that? She said that they look in people's garbage cans to make sure they don't throw away recyclables.

That sounds too Big Brotherish to me.

But I guess it's job security for the garbage inspectors, heh, heh.

 

[LadySekhmet]

Many apts do not do recycling because....IT COSTS MONEY! That's where it comes down to...money money money.

My old town of Boonton does recycling. All plastic, cans, glass are mixed together. They get sorted out later. Much easier on the costumers because they can just chuck every thing in one bin. Cans and similar materials are crushed and melted. Glass is just broken, and melted. ALL paper are recycled, all mixed papers. Some people say the circulars is "newspaper", but it's not...because it has colored ink, so it's made differently than newspaper. However, I think (don't take my word on this), newspaper and regular papers can be recycled together. Yesterday's News is a company that makes recycled newspaper cat litter. If a pellet gets wet, it expands..it's obviously a newspaper...and you know what's the sad thing about this is? After you finished using the litter, it get tossed out, not recycled. That's a bit dumb in my opinion.

Now, when I moved, I had to force my boyfriend to start recycling. I go every 1st sat and 3rd sat of the month to haul our stuff to recycling...and believe me, he didn't realize how much paper we waste by NOT recycling.

What really IRKS me is that people do not read the signs. "Flatten carboard", "Plastic, metal, Glass ONLY", or "Mixed papers". Then you look inside, and you see a huge cardboard box that is not flatten, papers mixed in with the plastic, metal, glass, or plastic bags in Mixed papers. How hard is it to do this?

Yes, Recycling has been around for years...but it will take years and years of educating the public. Have you ever look alongside of major highways and roads? See all the crap? I bet you $100 that you'll find something that could be recycled, yet when they're finally picked up (yeah, after 4 to 6 months being in the environment), they're just tossed out????

*rambling needs to end*

 

[RedFox]

Some places don't need you to sort recyclables so much because they have sorting machines. I saw them on TV and they use magnets, air jets and tumblers to sort out different kinds of materials to bale and send to manufacturers. At my home, we sort the things in boxes and drive them to the county recycling center near home to dump different materials into different large bins. They also charge money to toss trash bags into a big trash bin to encourage people to recycle as much as they can. But that is making people just burn the trash at home instead in metal barrels. That smells bad and burning plastics releases toxic dioxin.:-o