Recycling

[old2soon]

        Been about 3 weeks since I'd made a recycle run and bein as it weren't rainin and the wind weren't crankin up I grabbed the recycle bags and boxes put em in the cage and drove to the recycle center here in Willow Springs. Halfway up the hill I realized the gate was closed and locked the city truck wasn't out there and the 2 over head doors were closed. Hmm? Drove to the City Offices and the nice young lady informed me it was indeed Closed and No she did Not know When or If it would reopen.  Seems as like they-city-can not Even Pay someone to come git our recycle "stuff". 
         I have no idea if this not taking recycle "stuff" is indicative of a larger national problem or just indicative of a southern Missouri problem?
         Now what i used to recycle will most likely now go into my garbage cans helping to fill the land fill much quicker! 
          Anyone here sides me that recycles having or have had a similar issue? I wuz up until today tryin hard to do the "right thing"!  Curious mind and likea dat! RIDE SAFE.

[Patrick]

At least you took the stuff back with you. Around here most would have left it at the gates.

[f6john]

We had recycling pickup in our neighborhood up until this summer when the powers that be said it was a losing proposition for the county. It does seem to be that the market for our recyclables has tanked and therefore recyclables has become trash and like you is now going to a land fill. A business opportunity for someone, I don’t know, maybe?

For the time being at least, I can still take excess garbage items to some dumpsters at the street department garage but who knows how long that will last.

[cookiedough]

why not just keep it another week or two am sure you cannot have that much stuff to not just keep it and take it down later right?

All small towns (around 1200 population each town nearby) has one day a week curbside pickup of ONLY GARBAGE and we have to pay 3 bucks per sticker per bag.  All recyclables since such a small town has to be taken down either ONLY Wednesday 4-7 p.m. or Saturday 8 to noon is all they are open.  So, if I forget when getting home at 6 p.m. after work on Wednesday,  sucks I have to plan my Saturday morning even though only takes 15 minutes to get down once every few weekends on a Saturday morning.  Never had curbside recyclable pickup and never will most are for larger cities like Madison, Verona, etc.  

This town village board better start waking the F up though since a lot of long time village people are getting upset at the new rules the idiots on the village board coming from yuppier bigger towns want to implement like ONLY 2 hour parking downtown is all which is total B.S.  never needed ever plenty of parking mainstreet downtown all day long all 100 yards of it.  Then idiots in charge want to consider sidewalks in our entire subdivision which is 1/2 the town on this northside NEVER had, NEVER needed.  Then heard talk of burning barrels being not allowed to burn as well been doing that forever no issues.  If 2 of the 3 proposed village idiots suggestions get passed,  a lot of village people including myself are gone out of this one horse town.   Taxes went up near 500 bucks and my house is very small, a lot of other homes heard went up 600-1 grand which is like a 15-20% jump in ONLY 1 year vs. most years at most 1-3% tops.  Someone on the village board is pocketing the money I think or they are NOT controlling spending and need some common sense.

If 2 hour parking ONLY,  what are the drunks who hit our 6 bars downtown going to do??  Drive drunk moving their vehicles every 2 hours to another angled parking stall only to get a ticket from the rent-a-cops in town looking out for them driving.    Not like the cops will ever enforce the rules to begin with.

[Sorcerer]

China was buying the USA recycling and paying good money. Then about 2-3 years ago they got picky. It was becoming, even for China, to expensive to sort the useable materials from the garbage that came with it. About 18 months ago China stopped buying from the USA. At one of the buildings I maintain the residents are to lazy to walk 10 feet past the recycling dumpster to the garbage dumpster. In order to get the recycling drivers to pick up, I have to every day, sometimes multiple times a day I check it and remove garbage and any plastic bags. All it takes for the driver to reject the dumpster is one grocery plastic bag. After a weekend when I am not there, I may have to empty half a dumpster out to sort out plastic bags and garbage. The recycling used to work relatively well until they went to commingled container. With the amount of my time invested on my part it would most likely cost less or be a wash to do away with our recycling and just land fill it. Only problem is that it is mandated by the city and county.

[old2soon]

            cookiedough-are the dems in charge there? RIDE SAFE.

[Willow]

Where we live Walmart has recycle boxes in their parking lots.

Our city also picks up recycling at curbside.

[F6Dave]

'Recycling is Garbage' was an article in the NYT several years ago.  Penn and Teller also made a video with a similar theme.

Recycling sounds good in theory but doesn't work well in practice.  You can make a case for recycling many metals, but paper, plastic, and glass are another story.  I've read that here in the Rockies glass bottles are often trucked hundreds of miles to a facility that processes them.  What a waste of time and fuel to haul and recycle a heavy product when the raw materials are abundant anywhere on the planet.

Paper and plastic make even less sense.  As was mentioned, China used to take boatloads of American garbage to hand sort and recycle the stuff.  With their improved standard of living they lost interest in that menial task, so the market for those recyclables has disappeared.  Today more than half of that stuff ends up in landfills regardless of what it says on the truck picking it up.

Recycling mandates are becoming kind of a green ritual, enriching an industry while allowing people to feel good about doing something to help the environment.  It's no sin to use a landfill.  Paper is biodegradable and renewable.  Young forests are healthier and more resistant to wildfires than old ones.  California had fewer massive fires before they forced their timber industry out.  And plastics are a hydrocarbon; it might be easier to figure out how to harvest energy from the stuff.

In the not too distant future we might face some real recycling challenges.  While it's easy to recycle lead acid batteries, lithium batteries are more problematic and yield little usable material.  But in a few years there will be a lot of electric and hybrid vehicles with worn out battery packs.  With the battery replacement cost often exceeding the value of the vehicle, this will be a real recycling challenge.

And what about all those solar panels on rooftops (now mandated in California) and in solar farms, not to mention all those wind turbines?  Both the panels and the turbines have a useful lifespan in the neighborhood of 20 or 30 years.  Getting rid of millions of worn out panels won't be easy.  And in windy Wyoming they're already getting a preview of what's to come:  some landfills are already rejecting worn out turbine blades.

[old2soon]

       60  62 year ago or so Dad in his spare time was what was called then a junkman. I had people on my paper route that would hold their papers for us and pick them up once a month. What we called junking then we call recycling now with a rather large difference. We received money for our junk. If Dad could Not turn a profit we did Not haul it.
       First Wife bout come unwrapped when I put our Brand Spanking New 70 Dodge 3/4 ton pickup to work being a junkman. I had the haul concession for half a dozen area body shops. Broke about even on the sheet metal but after the sheet metal I got the aluminum and the batteries. The aluminum and the batteries was where the Real money was at that time.
        And fer some unexplained reason on clean up week here bouts I go around in the cage and have a look see at the piles!  I no Longer pick stuff up but I do on the other hand Look!  RIDE SAFE.

[The emperor has no clothes]

It's all about the almighty dollar. Back many moons ago when I started out cleaning up a meat dept, all the scraps, fat, bad product would just go out back in the dumpster. Then later we would give it all to a rendering company, which saved us money on garbage fees. Then later these rendering companies would even pay us for it. Then later it wasn't profitable enough for them, and we were back to giving it to them. We still saved money on garbage fees, so it was feasible. In the last decade these rendering companies have charged us to take the stuff. Finally, we have come full circle and just dump it with garbage.
 It's kind of sad, but it's just not profitable to do the right thing. I imagine it's much the same with residential recycling.

[sheets]

Been hauling a 30 gallon can size bag of recyclable containers, and cardboard, to the transfer station 50 miles away for fifteen years - on a weekly basis. Is no-cost disposal if you segregate all the assorted numbered items into appropriate bins.  Lately I've opted to pay 2 bucks to dump the mixed-bag of recyclables into a container for someone else to sort and separate. Plastic bags are trash. The traffic in downtown is getting so bad I've decided to just scrap the whole game plan, skip the recycle joint and subscribe to curbside trash pick-up - lump sum, lock stock and barrel. Been hauling my own on a monthly basis for 40 years. Been thinking green for many years, but I'm in the minority. Don't think my contribution made any difference in the big scheme of things.   

[RP#62]

I recycle brass.  Then I get it dirty again.

-RP

[Pluggy]

Our town, and the much larger Greensboro, NC had to discontinue recycling as there was too much common garbage getting mixed in.  The idea flopped as the recycling companies would not pay for the material as it was contaminated.

In the Machine Shop world, recycling pays for itself and is necessary.  With a fleet of Integrex machining centers, you can get overrun by chips in a hurry.  Our waste is somebody else's resource and you gotta get it out the door.

[G-Man]

'Recycling is Garbage' was an article in the NYT several years ago.  Penn and Teller also made a video with a similar theme.

I saw that Penn and Teller episode on recycling.  The take away was that it costs more, and uses more resources, to recycle everything except certain metals.

Someone above eluded to the fact that recycling programs are really just a redistribution of tax money.  It created a few jobs and silly people feel good about themselves.

I do agree that we can't polute to earth with our waste like they do in some parts of the world, but with proper disposal techniques we could stop the silliness and save an awful lot of money.

[msb]

It's pretty easy to recycle here...we've always done it and our daughters grew up with it as a normal, daily thing to do. Since its been just the Mrs and I for the past 12 years or so, we usually wind up with 1 medium-sized bag of garbage per week or less, which I take to the local transfer station for 2 bucks.
I have my recycle bins organized to meet the local depot set up (6 bins) in our little town 15 minutes away, so it's all sorted when we bring it there....just dump 'em and we're done. There's a refundable bottle depot there as well and I just donate what we have collected to the workers there. In the town of Agassiz, it's also mandatory for all service stations (there's only 2 )to take all used oils and other auto fluids you drop off at no charge, which they add to their bulk recyclables.
I don't consider myself especially "Green", or "silly"....recycling is just something the Mrs and I started doing when the depots first started popping up in our town many years ago. It's just become a normal thing to do like mowing the lawn and makes sense to us. We're also lucky to live in a farming community valley, where many grocery items we  use such as eggs,  dairy, vegetables & fruit, meat, and salmon can be purchased fresh from the grower/harvester with minimal  packaging. Again, not a primary concern about being "Green", it's just a healthier and more pleasant way to shop with the side benefit of there being a whole lot less packaging.

[MAD6Gun]

 It is included with our local trash company for $10 extra every three months. We have two containers. One for trash the other for recycling. They pick up the trash every week recycling every two weeks. Our recycling container is always full when picked up. The trash barely has one bag in it every week. I try to do my part...

[Pluggy]

Guys, recycling could have worked in our little town.  The recycling plant is actually closer than the landfill.  I believe that plant also handles the recycling for Ft. Bragg.  The town's lowest cost was weekly home trash pickup + one recycling rollback container.  The recycling container, size large, was close to our grocery store, where most people go once a week.

The town container had too much midnight dumping of non-recyclable items.  The waste contractor could not handle it, so now we pay more, in our town tax.  

Our county has a program, and it requires an employee at the location 7am to 7pm.   It is well-used.

[F6Dave]

When I was growing up we reused things a lot more than we do today.  Milk bottles, beer bottles, and soda bottles were all returned, rewashed, and refilled.  I worked at the Safeway when I was in high school.  One job was to take empty soda bottles to a massive room in the back of the store and sort them by brand, so they could be picked up by the drivers.

Back then many medical items, including syringes and hypodermic needles, were sterilized and reused.  Yikes!  Can you imagine undergoing a medical procedure today without disposable plastics or stainless steel?

We didn't throw away car parts, either.  To tune up an engine you often removed the ignition contact points, filed them down, and replaced them.  Spark plugs were cleaned with a wire brush, re-gapped, and reinstalled.  Even brake shoes were sent out to be relined.

Back then we didn't do these things to BE 'green'.  We did them to SAVE 'green'!  Things were expensive and labor was cheap.

Should we return to those good old days?  I doubt most people would want to.  They value their time too much.  If they realized that so much of the stuff they think they're recycling actually ends up in landfills, they probably wouldn't want to go through all these 'green rituals' either.

[0leman]

Our Trash folks have a option of recycling.   We have the two containers, one for trash and for recycle stuff.   It takes normally three weeks for us, DW and me, to get enough stuff for me to pull the recycle container to the curb.   So far they are taking all plastics, paper material, metal cans, etc.   

We have a plant here in town that goes thru the recycle stuff and separates it.  The plant mostly hires those who are menially challenged. 

The extra container, recycle bin, doesn't cost us extra.   Its all one bill base on the size of one's trash bin. 

Though the recycle doesn't take glass containers.  I do take them to the land fill where there are glass and cardboard containers. 

[Pluggy]

Dave, I had my bald car tires recapped into snow tires.  Around 1975.  

Anyway, around here we have well water that is safe, but not particularly tasty.  The filtered water dispensing machine gets you five gallons for $1.  I have a jug cooler and it is in the garage, where I spend a lot of time.  I could buy cases of plastic bottles.  Refilling the big jug every few weeks works for me.

[F6Dave]

Dave, I had my bald car tires recapped into snow tires.  Around 1975.  

Anyway, around here we have well water that is safe, but not particularly tasty.  The filtered water dispensing machine gets you five gallons for $1.  I have a jug cooler and it is in the garage, where I spend a lot of time.  I could buy cases of plastic bottles.  Refilling the big jug every few weeks works for me.

Right, I forgot about recapped tires!  I bought a few sets myself.  I was lucky to get 15,000 miles from them, so I don't know if I saved any money.  Tires today are so much better.

I have a well like that.  I discovered something interesting about bottled water.  If I buy the case of 16 oz. bottles, it costs me considerably less per ounce than if I buy it in gallon jugs.  Bigger isn't always better.

[mbramley]

 unfortunately up here we have the same problem many have described. people to dang lazy and put trash in the recycling. My county closed their site as have many others around N.E. Ohio because of it. Cleveland has been on the news lately because they are sending most of the recycling there to the dump for the same reason, to contaminated. It's all relative when you talk cost. We already have islands of plastic and garbage in our oceans and some of the fish are getting close to in-consumable because they are eating to much trash.

[hubcapsc]

We already have islands of plastic and garbage in our oceans and some of the fish are getting close to in-consumable because they are eating to much trash.


I think that's the stuff people don't even bother to throw away at all, they just toss it out the
window or dump it in the ditch... fish and turtles are pretty safe from plastic beer rings at the
bottom of the landfill.

  Throwin' out the teevee
  toss it to the road side
  Throwin' out the old couch
  toss it in the ditch
 Throwin' out the teevee
  toss it to the road side
  I ain't got the sense to take it to the dump

  My yard is full of trash too
  I leave it to the road crew
  to clean it all up when the storm blows through
  I never rake my leaves up
  I leave them there to cover up
  the trash that's in the yard until the storm blows through

-Mike

[sheets]

39 years with the road crew. . . picking up here there and everywhere.
Picking up for two miles in my neighborhood for 31 years total.
Picked up under formal adoption for seventeen years.
Still picking up after canceling adoption for past three years - to present.



I assumed that folks observing my frequency of picking litter - 15 to 18 times per year - that they would exercise an ounce of compassion and hold on to their fast-food and alcohol containers till they got home. Wrong. Much of the fast food wrappers and containers came from establishments 50 miles away! Too many rednecks and hooligans around this neck of the woods. All these years . . . no change. Irritates the sh!t out of me. I guess I'm cut from a different cloth.

[Jess from VA]

Thanks for the hard work Sheets, for common sense and nature.   

I have never been able to understand throwing trash out the car window (pure unadulterated scum).  They do it on my corner all the time.  It must be in the middle of the night; I can never catch them at it.  I've tried.  Thinking of a deer cam.

[F6Dave]

The ' Islands of Garbage' claim has been grossly exaggerated.  I can't believe so many people blindly believe it.  Yes, there is plastic in the oceans.  Much of it is marine debris, like discarded fishing nets.  Around 85% is 'mismanaged' waste from developing nations in Asia, with another 7-8% from Africa.  The combined contribution from ALL of North America and Europe is less than 2%!  So the drinking straw in your Coke isn't really a factor.

Ocean currents tend to collect the plastic in five 'gyres' around the planet, with two in the Pacific, two in the Atlantic, and one in the Indian Ocean.  But the concentrations aren't nearly the catastrophe environmental zealots would have you believe.  A professor from the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University puts the issue into perspective in this interview:

“The use of the phrase ‘garbage patch’ is misleading. I’d go as far as to say that it is a myth and a misconception. [...] It is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic floating in our oceans. [...] Yes, there is plastic in the ocean. Peer-reviewed papers suggest that the highest concentration of microplastic is around three pieces of plastic the size of a pencil eraser in a cubic meter. [...] The continued use of verbiage such as ‘plastic islands’, ’twice the size of Texas’, is pure hyperbole that I personally believe undermines the credibility of those that should be focused on helping reduce the source stream of marine debris to our oceans.” – Prof. Angelicque (“Angel”) White, interviewed by The Telegraph, October 5, 2016

Her last sentence identifies the REAL solution.  Nearly all of this junk comes from developing nations in Asia and to a lesser extent Africa.  Unless they can start managing their waste more responsibly, the problem will remain.  Banning plastic straws and bags in the USA is a meaningless 'feel good' gesture.  It's just another green ritual, a sacrifice to 'mother earth' to cleanse us of our guilt.

[J.Mencalice]

39 years with the road crew. . . picking up here there and everywhere.
Picking up for two miles in my neighborhood for 31 years total.
Picked up under formal adoption for seventeen years.
Still picking up after canceling adoption for past three years - to present.



I assumed that folks observing my frequency of picking litter - 15 to 18 times per year - that they would exercise an ounce of compassion and hold on to their fast-food and alcohol containers till they got home. Wrong. Much of the fast food wrappers and containers came from establishments 50 miles away! Too many rednecks and hooligans around this neck of the woods. All these years . . . no change. Irritates the sh!t out of me. I guess I'm cut from a different cloth.

A tip of the cap to you sir for your public service in your community and making the scenery nicer to view.  

We have a scumbag somewhere down our road who consistently throws Svedka vodka nip bottles out as he/she is driving home.  We pick them up and have saved them now for the past nine months.  When we have a bag full of them, I'm gonna boogie on down to the local CSP office and tell them that asking a few questions and simple detective work with the few local package stores, they just might catch a drinking and driving douche some evening.

I despise litterers in our country setting; it detracts from the beauty that motorcycle touring brings no matter where I see those flying bags from Walmart, Safeway, City Market,  McDonald's,  Burger King, Wendy's, etc., etc.