Materials and Waste

Glass Recycling is Still a Scam ♻ 🍸

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Glass Recycling is Still a Scam ♻ 🍸

I was seeing one of those posts on Facebook that suggested that disposable glass containers are indefinitely recyclable. Sounds great, if it was true.

Disposable glass bottles are technically recyclable into new glass bottles and indefinite amount of times. Indeed, probably most glass that is miscast or broken as glass bottle factories is recyclable. But the issue is that few disposable glass bottles tossed in the recycling bin are actually recycled into glass bottles. Many if they do get recycled, only get used for aggregate, such as building landfill roads. It’s too contaminated to be turned back into new bottles.

Glass in theory is fully recyclable forever. If you melt a clear glass bottle down, you can make a new clear glass bottle. The problem is that glass often is mixed, crushed and mixed with other materials, especially with single-stream recycling. And that assumes it ever gets tossed into the recycling bin. Glass takes up a lot more room in the garbage, and can not be burned or incinerated like plastic can.

You read about all the upsides of glass, but none of the downsides. The fact that glass is heavy, it’s prone to breakage. It takes more energy to make, it takes more energy to haul to the store, takes more room up in the garbage or recycling bin. Glass doesn’t just disappear. Plastic burns, glass does not. Your much more likely to find broken glass in farm dumps or in the woods, glass cuts both humans, wildlife and livestock alike.

If you want to save the earth, then stop buying disposable glass, even if you recycle. It’s not really helping anything. Buy less, and assume even if you put things into the recycling bin, it’s going to the landfill or incinerator. Minimize what you put both in your garbage and recycle bin, stop thinking as one as morally virtuous or better then the other.

Glass Block Park Entrance

NPR

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Greenpeace report finds most plastic goes to landfills as production ramps up : NPR

The vast majority of plastic that people put into recycling bins is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.

The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.

Greenpeace found that no plastic — not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins — meets the threshold to be called "recyclable" according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate.

"More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of it is being recycled," says Lisa Ramsden, senior plastic campaigner for Greenpeace USA. "The crisis just gets worse and worse, and without drastic change will continue to worsen as the industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050." Sponsor Message

Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together. Plastic also degrades after one or two uses. Greenpeace found the more plastic is reused the more toxic it becomes.

New plastic, on the other hand, is cheap and easy to produce. The result is that plastic trash has few markets — a reality the public has not wanted to hear.

Municipal Trash Incinerators in Upstate NY (Google Maps)

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These incinerators are sorted by their size, with the largest ones up top, and smallest ones below. These numbers are converted from the yearly numbers of the DEC, to average tons per day, as calculated in standard format for landfills (21-day months).

Incinerators normally are rated by 31-day months, as they typically burn trash year round, unlike landfills which are closed on Sundays and all Major Holidays, and also work only half days on Saturdays. For the sake of comparison, 31-day incinerator tonnages where converted to 21-day landfill tonnages. Tonnages can vary per day, as incinerators are not rated on the tonnage of waste they may accept, but how many BTUs of energy are produced by burning the waste. Incinerators burning larger volumes highly combustable wastes, such as tires or roofing material, must reduce their tonnage to comply with air quality permits.

Incinerated waste produces bottom (unburnable stuff) and fly ash (toxic by-products of combustion captured in various smoke stack filters), which must be disposed at a landfill, so for example, the 1,266 tons per day incinerator in Ondononga County still produces an average of 316 tons per day of ash that is currently sent to the Seneca Falls Landfill off of NY 414.

Also, it should be noted the minimal electricity protection of these facilities. The largest incinerator in Upstate NY, produces only 67 MW of electricity, compared to even modest new power plants such as the new 635 MW Besicorp Natural Gas Plant in Rennselear or the 750 MW Bethlehem Steam Station Natural Gas Plant in Glenmont. All of the incinerators in Upstate NY, produce far less electricity (124 MW) then this one power plant.

Niagara Falls.


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MSW Processed: 3,869 tpd – Ash Generated: 906 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 24% – Average Electricity Sold: 24 MW/hr + steam

Westchester County.


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MSW Processed: 2,778 tpd – Ash Generated: 665 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 24% – Average Electricity Sold: 67 MW/hr

Onondaga County.


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MSW Processed: 1,266 tpd – Ash Generated: 316 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 25% – Average Electricity Sold: 23 MW/hr

Hudson Falls.


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MSW Processed: 688 tpd – Ash Generated: 215 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 31% – Average Electricity Sold: 10 MW/hr

Dutchess County.


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MSW Processed: 599 tpd – Ash Generated: 177 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 30% – Average Electricity Sold: 5 MW/hr

Oswego County.


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MSW Processed: 290 tpd – Ash Generated: 87 tpd – Reduction in Tonnage: 36% – Average Electricity Sold: 0.6 MW/hr + stream

Cheap And Easy Storage (Using Glass Jars)

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As much as I despise things packaged in glass, the containers are quite reusable for storing small nuts and washers in your shop, and indeed my dad does this. Great way to reuse those jars.