Recycling is BS

Went to california for a family trip, i was leaving the airport drinking a soda in a cup with a lid and straw. As we got to the exit there were 7 garbage cans each one labeled. Clear plastic here, Straws here, glass here etc... I threw the whole cup in the plastic bin and some woman started screaming at me about how i should have taken the cup apart and put each piece in its proper bin. I kept walked toward the exit. She started yelling at me louder, describing what i was wearing (i guess to bring attention to me). When i got to the door an airport employee says hey man dont worry about that chick, we only recycle about half of that crap, the rest we throw away. I told him to go tell her that and he just laughed.... So i agree with you, recycling is a bunch of garbage.
 
Mr. Bggs said:
Went to california for a family trip, i was leaving the airport drinking a soda in a cup with a lid and straw. As we got to the exit there were 7 garbage cans each one labeled. Clear plastic here, Straws here, glass here etc... I threw the whole cup in the plastic bin and some woman started screaming at me about how i should have taken the cup apart and put each piece in its proper bin. I kept walked toward the exit. She started yelling at me louder, describing what i was wearing (i guess to bring attention to me). When i got to the door an airport employee says hey man dont worry about that chick, we only recycle about half of that crap, the rest we throw away. I told him to go tell her that and he just laughed.... So i agree with you, recycling is a bunch of garbage.
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Reminders me of my friend who was shopping at outlets near Blowing Rock and Boone. A woman comes out of a store yelling at him for having his car running while he waited on his wife. Something about destroying the earth. He held the gas pedal down hard while she screamed.
 
Given the volume that eight people in our house produce, we do recycle, but if the recycling bin gets full I don't have any issue with throwing it in the trash.

I asked the guy at the dump about it once because I saw a lot of plastic in glass in the trash, he said that they have people who are paid to pull out the recyclables. I am totally about the idea of recycling and repurposing, but the current system is just another example of bureaucratic mismanagement.
 
Depends on the material. Cardboard and aluminum are very recyclable. Most of the aluminum in the US is recycled, because its cheaper to recycle it than mine and smelt it. Cardboard is easy to recycle as well. Most forms of uncoated paper can be recycled, as well as most metals.

Cheap plastics and styrofoam are not. I recycle, and I try to avoid packages that I know aren't actually recyclable.
 
I love the idea of reusing and repurposing. Recycling is half BS perception and this was confirmed by an industry exec in my extended family. I found it quite interesting to hear him explain how difficult it is to recycle stuff. It’s not profitable at all unless you’re talking electronics recycling.

We learned that the cleaning people at work were dumping both trash and recycling cans into the same dumpster every evening. This was brought to the company’s attention and they resorted to 2 different recycling cans in different locations (one close, one inconvenient) and both with a long list of restrictions. Guess what? ~10% of people recycle at work now.

The US doesn’t recycle because it’s not made easy IMO.
 
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My understanding is that China was buying our recycling by the cargoship full since the ships had to come back anyway. They sorted the stuff and made good use of the materials. A few years ago the percentage of trash really started going up, so they did some stuff, don’t know what that was exactly, but my recycler said at that point that they wouldn’t take glass.

I don’t know anything, but I’d think recycling would work a lot better if we reduced the amount of stuff we target, just get the metal and cardboard, maybe the glass if the economics work.
 
Penn & Teller had a great episode of their BS show on recycling. S2:E5. There are some clips on YouTube, but I don’t see the whole episode for free.
 
I have no idea when the box got to China. But the gf ordered some stuff from wish. It came in an inside out Amazon box
 
I recycle dinosaurs in my gas tank... Great way to get around.
I recycle air through my air compressor, and scuba tanks
I recycle dead trees and grass as mulch to feed worms.
I recycle food to waste in my septic tank, that breaks down and helps the grass grow for the wildlife.
I recycle metal as it rusts in the back yard and returns to the soil.

Wow, am I busy.
 
Metals can be recycled forever, plactics not so much.
Goofyfoot2001 said:
The funniest thing ever was the recycle bins at whole foods. They have four bins for plastic, paper and whatever, ever. The day after Amazon bought Whole Foods all the recycle containers were relabeled- "Land Fill".
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I recall the restroom used rain water for flushing, did they stop that too?
 
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It’s really hard to recycle much of anything right now. There are only a few places around here that do single stream recycling (mixed) and they charge more than the landfill to take it. The places that recycle cardboard it has to be clean cardboard nothing mixed in and it’s hard to guarantee that since we don’t load the cans. The minimum wage worker at Burger King doesn’t care that the trash needs to be separate from the cardboard. When it comes to metal by the time we deliver a separate can to a job site and haul it it’s ate up any money the customer would’ve saved so they don’t care about it either. Unless you’ve got a bunch of copper or aluminum there’s no money savings in it.
 
Spartan01 said:
Hey, here is an idea, and again, I'm just spitballing here- Make prisoners do it.
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There was a construction and demo landfill in Winston that only hired people from a halfway house. Kept cost down and there was always a flow of people.
 
The cardboard recyclers down the street from my office are going strong so while religious zealotry toward recycling is complete bullshit there is still something useful in there
 
I remember back in the 70’s, going to the “green boxes” with granny. Glass, paper (newspaper, grocery bags and magazines), cardboard and metal. There wasn’t everything comes in plastic like nowadays. Kitchen scraps went to the compost pile.
They were the real recyclers, todays actions are a joke.
 
Oil prices being relatively low right now so recyling many things is not as important to mfgs. Oil prices go up you will see it more than likely become more important.
 
Agree with oil low in price, plastics more expensive to recycle, requires additives. Metals can be recycled indefinitely, so many cars and trucks recycled daily.
 
Catfish said:
The cardboard recyclers down the street from my office are going strong so while religious zealotry toward recycling is complete bullshit there is still something useful in there
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No surprise with everything being ordered online.
 
BigWaylon said:
Penn & Teller had a great episode of their BS show on recycling. S2:E5. There are some clips on YouTube, but I don’t see the whole episode for free.
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Yep. The general conclusion was that if recycling was an actual fruitful endeavor, you would get paid for it, ie aluminum.
 
premise said:
Yep. The general conclusion was that if recycling was an actual fruitful endeavor, you would get paid for it, ie aluminum.
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Exactly. If it makes sense to do it, there would be a natural market incentive. If it doesn’t make economic sense, then it just doesn’t make sense.
 
We used to recycle at my house because it gave us an extra trash can for my wife's Amazon boxes. They more than double the price so we stopped doing it. The reason they told us is that China used to not care if the stuff was clean or not, ie leftover peanut butter in a peanut butter jar. They had to start sorting it before sending it to China because they switched to only wanting clean stuff.

When I lived outside Roanoke they stopped taking glass for recycling. The reason was that it was a huge negative cost as it is cheaper to make new glass than recycle it. The liberals lost it and Roanoke started taking it again, right along with a small tax increase. I'm with the camp of let's do waste to energy like Norway. They burn so much trash they have to import it.
 
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