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Ok, embarrassed to admit this but I haven't really figured out
recycling yet. This is somewhat an east coast thing, because we
are
a little more conservative over here and a little slow to pick up on
the latest California trends. And it is also somewhat a learning
disability thing, because
I am a little slow on the uptake,
especially
when it comes to processing language, and because I live in a
world
of related phenomena -- social anxiety, co-dependence etc.
So I am proposing a simplification of the categories of recycling so
that I can understand them, or so that i could have understood
them
well enough to not have gotten to be close to half a century old
and
still not understand recycling.
Tonight I was out at a venue with what must have been a group of
several hundred ecologically conscious people, who divide their
recycling into "composting", "landfill", and "recycling," (this last
category created a circular
vortex in my mind that I spent an extra 5 minutes contemplating
and still
cannot figure out) and a
couple of extra categories like "medium grained paper" and some
other stuff.
Actually I'm not interested in understanding recycling as much as I
am interested in avoiding the awkward moment that I walk up to
the f-
ing
trash cans in my Seersucker or whatever and then have to stand
there for like 5 minutes trying to figure out what f-ing trash goes
in
what container, because I can't read or can't process the signs.
On
the east coast we basically drop things as soon as we cease to
have a need for them. It is a pretty simple rule but a lot easier to
remember than the phd level reading I had to do tonight to figure
out where to put my trash. And you hesitate because you know it
looks stupid to continue standing there staring at the signs while
your friends are yelling at you to hurry it up. But you also
suspect, at least enough to stop you from following the tried and
true east coast drop it when you feel it rule, that if you do go
ahead and drop it and it is in the wrong container that an Eco-
policeman will make an example and spectacle out of you. It
does not help of course that I am over sensitized to failure or that
I
am constantly waiting for someone to step into the space left by
my
mesmerized moments and remind me that it looks strange to them
for me to be staring for a long time at a two or three word sign.
For an east coast person who doesn't even get the metaphor of
recycling much less being comfortable spending a lot of time
considering any kind of waste, especially his own, and especially
in
as public a venue as the dropping off of trash from a meal in a
public
place. The rest of the folks from the table are probably now
waiting
for you expectantly, standing in an aisle somewhere and not being
happy with your mesmerization over the two and three word
categories for separating recycling.
So what about, and I know there are lots of problems that this
brings
up, but what about starting with something simple like SOFT and
HARD, so that compostables (and unfortunately paper, but this is
just a first step) could go in the soft trash and glass metal and
hard
plastic could go under hard.
This would be good marketing too because the vaguely sexual
connotation would be more memorable so that I would be able to
bring it up in my head on the way to the trash can so that I could
spend some time classifying the stuff before I got to the cans and
that way avoid the awkward reading/ processing/ spacey moment.
http://www.lbhf.gov...eet_tcm21-23390.pdf
[hippo, Jun 19 2012]
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I've handed out a number of m-f-ds lately and I feel
like
I've reached my quota for the time being, but as far as
I can tell this is just a thinly disguised rant. |
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//I am over sensitized to failure// Careful - they can smell blood in the water ... |
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{scurries back out of sight} |
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I'm going to bun this for the self depreciation. But I'd like to remind that wit hthe anonymity of the Internet a person is better off to claim they're a hypersexual millionaire than someone with social anxiety and codependency who cant read or process signs. That's cool too though. |
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What [rcarty] said. Also because the idea might actually
have merit in its own right if it improves existing signage. |
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I have a limited degree of belief in the idea of continents on the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean because i've only seen them
from space, but if they exist and there are recycling schemes
there, this stage might be transitional. We have been through
various phases of recycling here, ranging from sorting rubbish to
the current phase of sticking it all in an orange bag and having it
sorted by a Materials Recycling Facility. Consequently, you may
not need to worry about it for long. I would also say that when i
worked for a charity which allegedly recycled domestic waste,
they largely just dumped it in landfill and i'd be surprised if it
turned out they take a different approach nowadays. That job
was a major factor in making me the cynic i have apparently
become today. |
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Whatever happens in reality to the allegedly recycled waste,
there are two major problems with recycling. Firstly, if you have
had to resort to having someone else recycle your waste, that's a
failure because it's a last resort and every other stage leading up
to that has been unsuccessful. Secondly, when you put waste in
a bin or recycling facility of some kind, you are for some reason
giving away your property for free, which is a somewhat weird
and imprudent act. |
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//i've only seen them from space// |
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... because space travel is so much more convenient than queuing up at Heathrow? |
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Soft/hard? Where would burnt toast go? |
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// if you have had to resort to having someone
else recycle your waste, that's a failure// |
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I would disagree. In terms of efficiency, it makes
more sense to have waste collected, sorted and
recycled centrally. If recycling were taken
seriously, it would be transparent to the
individual - all waste would just be collected in
the way it was 30 years ago, and sorted at some
central depot. |
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In fact, I suspect that waste-sorting by consumers
is partly redundant anyway - someone, somewhere
has to re-check all the waste to ensure that
nobody has put a glass bottle into the plastics bin,
or a polythene bag into the paper bin. |
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That is close to the apparent situation here in Leicester, [MB].
Hardly any waste goes in the wheely bin here nowadays. In fact,
most rubbish in them is probably there by mistake. |
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<shrug> doesn't bug me much: everybody has those moments except those who figure it's not worth their time. |
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I live in a small town (pop. +/- 1,000) way out in the
middle of nowhere. We recycle as much of our waste as
possible, because various state and federal programs have
made it cheaper for small towns to pay for their refuse to
be hauled off to the recycling plant than for it to be
hauled off to the dump. |
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We have a Transfer Station where we bring all our garbage
(no garbage trucks here). At one time, the Transfer Station
was a maze of various bins and dumpsters for sorting out
the 56,000 different varieties of recyclable waste, and it
was up to residents to get everything in the correct bins.
This was bitter issue for many. So, after a typically rowdy
town meeting involving moonshine-spiked punch and much
discharging of firearms, we decided to switch to a
different recycling company that would take everything all
jumbled up and sort it out themselves. Now we have just
two bins, a great big one for recyclables and a smaller one
for trash. |
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This leads me to believe that people who don't like sorting
all of their refuse into separate bins are simply poor
shoppers. The solution is already available; you just have
to go and look for it! |
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Most recycling is a negative value proposition anyway. A
few things are worth recycling—aluminum certainly is, and
glass may be as well depending on the circumstances.
Plastic, on the other hand, is questionable, and the act of
recycling paper is the single most ridiculous waste of time
and resources that society nevertheless insists on
participating in. Paper is a renewable resource. Nearly all
of the paper currently made is made from trees farmed for
the express purpose of doing so. When all factors are
considered, it costs less in terms of energy and resources to
simply grow new trees for paper than to collect it, process
it, break it down, and turn it into an ultimately
substandard product. Landfill space, regardless of what
some might have you believe, is far from a pressing issue.
In the US, at least, there are numerous landfill sites that
/compete/ for the privilege of storing trash, and this will
be the case pretty much indefinitely. So forcing people to
sort out garbage into various types of recyclables is utterly
ridiculous. We should educate the public about what
actually makes /sense/ to recycle, and get them to focus
on just sorting those few items out. |
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I've settled on seperation by "flat vs other" to reduce the time spent getting off my ass to carry the recyclables to the curb. |
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a big colour coded label on each item, which then goes into the colour coded bin. I'm guessing that's far to simple though. |
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Anyway, it's a bit of lack of imagination, everything is burnable. |
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Break water in hydrogen and oxygen. recombines to flame of 5000 c-ish. Unless someone's throwing away old space capsule re-entry panels, it should be ok. |
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There are problems with economies of scale if recycling happens
in a domestic setting but this might be lessened by the kind of
energy invested and the nature of the result. Paper needn't be
recycled into flat sheets. It could be burnt - the fate of much of
the paper here - made into papier mache, "logs" or in theory
converted to alcohol or sugar. Polythene and polypropylene can
be recycled in an ordinary oven, so the issue there is how
efficiently they're heated. That also provides raw materials
unlikely to be easily made at home. |
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//i've only seen them from space// |
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I'm guessing HB is something of a magnet for our orbital cousins, being low bandwidth. |
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Suggest enormously larger flash banners from now on. |
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I can't figure out on the east coast of what / where you are! I've recycled for many years and it usually goes like this:
glass (separate colours)
paper (newspaper,cardboard or misc.)
aluminium
plastics
other metals
hazardous liquids (oil,paint, etc)
yard waste
I compost at home (veg. scraps,leaves,organic material)
garbage (it's what's left) Not much! |
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I agree with [Jesus] and [Max] that the burden of doing the tedious sorting of recycling should not fall to the end user. Where I live, the council has a recycling contract with a company which does automatic sorting of recyling. This is great for us as it means that paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, glass etc. can all go in one bag, mixed together, and they'll be sorted out by the flailing robot arms in the recycling plant. Compostable waste goes on the compost heap in our garden. |
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That also happens here. I think this problem is probably quite
local, though it may also be local in most districts. |
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Yes, some things are more local than other things. |
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In the better parts of the uncouth Midwest, We have the curbside system where in a garbage truck comes and picks up the recycling, and then another comes and picks up the trash. I would be curious as to how much energy the recycling trucks burn in such efforts. |
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[ytk] Plastics are really a mixed value proposition as well. PET and HDPE (1 and 2) recycle easily and simply. |
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Paper makes sense in certain situations, but I'll admit that post consumer is rarely one of them. Post industrial, and for that matter offices with large amounts of white paper do recycle economically. |
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Metals and glasses pretty much always make sense, just the expense of purifying raw materials for either is worse than recycling collection expenses. |
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Coincidentally, the ones that do make sense, plastic and metal are the easiest to separate out from an either a recyling waste stream, or even a combined waste stream. Post consumer paper is one of the hardest, as it's often contaminated with non-recycleable components. |
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And [Rayford] Not much if any more than similar trucks hauling raw materials from various sources. |
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I doubt that. Recyling trucks have to haul their contents all over the city; raw material trucks have decidedly shorter supply routes in large part. |
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I don't understand how they sort the jumbled up stuff!(That would leave me questioning if they really are recycling.) We sort our own things and put them in the specified dumpsters. There are special places for batteries and electronic items. Then one has to pay to leave couches, tires, mattresses and items like those. |
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Well, according to [hippo], the sorting is accomplished via
flailing robot arms. |
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As much as I'd love this to be true, I suspect it's rather
more a case of a long conveyor belt and a bunch of very
bored people wearing thick gloves and Tyvek suits tossing
stuff
into bins. However, I can envision some automated means
by which the process might be shortened: a big magnet to
pick out steel cans, a blower to sift out paper, a float tank
to separate the plastics, etc. |
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There are some people picking over stuff as it goes
down a conveyer belt, but it really is mostly
automatic - see page 2 of the linked pdf doc. Using
eddy currents to throw aluminium cans off the
conveyer belt was a clever thing to do, I thought. |
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Many locations have single-stream recycling now,
where you put everything recyclable in one
receptacle, and it gets taken to a facility where it's
sorted by robots. You still have to separate
recyclables, garbage, and compost yourself though.
(But food courts, dining halls, and other places that
have a compost receptacle usually have a sign with
photos of the things that go in it, and some recycling
receptacles have similar signs.) |
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A mall near me has recently switched its food court
from having receptacles for different kinds of waste
to having counters where you just drop off your tray,
and a person is employed to just stand there and sort
the waste. I guess that results in more accurate
sorting than letting the customers do it. |
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