Many plastics in Bay Area blue bins end up in landfills. Here’s what is actually recycled
Many plastics in Bay Area blue bins end up in landfills. Here’s what is actually recycled
We have been scammed. They have wasted our time and effort on garbage that is just thrown away.
Recycling programs should just burn plastics in power plants at this point. It’s a waste to just throw them into the landfill.
To be fair, they're actually recycling #1 and #2 rigid containers. It's everything else that's not making it.
The better move is to avoid manufacturing other plastics for most consumer products.
If only people would remember there's two other steps before recycling. Not really helpful to corporate marketing strategies though now is it.
I don't think any amount of information or training can help in that front. There will always be a well meaning but lazy/ill -informed majority that think that whatever they toss in the blue bin will be recycled, whether it be a greasy pizza box or a plastic shopping bag full of unrinsed soup cans.
My city has a terribly underfunded recycling program, and if a bin is spotted without perfectly recyclable content it is flagged and left for the regular garbage truck to haul off to the landfill/incinerator.
I basically only bother putting glass and aluminum into the recycling bins because those will at least be scavenged by scrappers before the garbage men haul them off anyways.
On the bright side, I avoid buying things with plastic packaging, and reuse plastic containers that are undoubtedly contributing to the little pile of micro plastics that is growing in my brain.
At this point, I assume glass and most paper/cardboard and aluminum products are recycled.
I also assume all the plastic I put in there is getting dumped. I'm at least doing what I can to recycle while trying my best to avoid plastic when I can.
Edit- I glanced at the article, and only 5% of plastic is recycled. Just mind numbingly low.
Paper is tricky. It's fairly easy to recycle but it must be uncontaminated, which means that someone throwing recyclable paper in the blue bin alongside greasy cans or something waxy can contaminate the entire bin
Ah yes, the other landfill bin, the mechanism by which the plastics industry offloads responsibility for their pollution onto the public. We've been calling out the issues with recycling programs for decades and I'm glad someone is finally listening.