Every day, Vermonters dutifully return glass bottles to redemption centers or put them into blue recycling bins with the idea they may be turned into brand new bottles.
But in reality, only a fraction of recycled bottles will have a second act, appearing on a store shelf containing beer or soda.
There is little market for the glass, experts say, and local solid waste districts are stuck with trying to get rid of a product that citizens are required to recycle so it’s not buried in a landfill.
Dry cleaners did not begin using perc until the early 1980s, when, in an ironic twist, they were forced to do so by the U.S. Office of Safety and Health Administration. Prior to that time, dry cleaners had used a hydrocarbon-based product called stoddard. Though stoddard is relatively benign environmentally, it is extremely volatile and has a very low flash point. Stoddard had, in fact, been the primary culprit in a number of serious fires. Chlorine-based perchloroethylene, by contrast, is not especially volatile.
What OSHA did not realize was that perc has the unique ability to penetrate concrete. Moreover, when freed it quickly seeks the lowest point in its environment. As a result, the chemical rapidly descends through concrete floors into the soil and eventually into the groundwater. Once there, it flows wherever the groundwater flows.
Perc was found to cause cancer not long after it was introduced to the dry cleaning industry.
ELEVATED LEVELS OF a PFAS compound were associated with more severe forms of Covid-19, according to a Danish study now undergoing peer review. The research, which involved 323 patients infected with the coronavirus, found that those who had elevated levels of a chemical called PFBA were more than twice as likely to have a severe form of the disease.
PFBA is one of a class of industrial compounds, often called “forever chemicals,” that has come to contaminate soil, water, and food around the world. It has been presented as relatively safe because it stays in human blood for much less time than some of the other compounds in the class and is a shorter molecule. Both traits are thought to be indications of its innocuousness. PFBA, which was created by 3M, is based on a four-carbon chain and is gone from human blood in a matter of days. It is still in use, while PFOA, which is based on eight carbons and stays in the human blood for years, has been phased out since 2015.
There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map.
Some of that plastic stuff really stinks when you burn it, don't ask me how I know. 🔥 ♻
Plastic waste gets a lot of attention when photos of dead whales with stomachs full of plastic bags hit the news. Pieces of plastic also litter cities, and tiny plastic particles are even floating in the air.
Largely overlooked is how making plastic in the first place affects the environment, especially global warming. Plastic actually has a big carbon footprint, but so do many of the alternatives to plastic. And that's what makes replacing plastic a problem without a clear solution.
Plastic is just a form of fossil fuel. Your plastic water bottle, your grocery bag, your foam tray full of cucumbers ... they're all made from oil or natural gas. It takes lots of energy to make that happen.
On one hand, it found that the aluminum can continues to out-perform other packaging types on virtually every measure. The average new can produced in the U.S. was made of 73 percent recycled material, compared to less than 6 percent for the average plastic bottle. Further, aluminum cans are still the most recycled beverage container, with nearly 5 million cans recycled every hour in the U.S.
Unfortunately, our report also found that the aluminum can recycling rate among consumers fell almost 4 points to 46.1 percent, bringing it below its 20-year average of around 50 percent. We must reverse this trend so we can capture the value of aluminum rather than sending it to the landfill.