Recycling

So Many Milk Bottles in the Trash

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With all this talk of plastic in the news, the other day I was thinking what a large part of my trash is plastic milk bottles, as I drink around 2 gallons of milk a week, usually purchased at my local Stewart’s. They have not had a milk bottle program for a long time, instead switching to light-weight plastic milk bottles that you buy, take home, drink the milk in and throw away.

Now, I generally either recycle or burn them when camping in the woods, so none of them ever goes directly to the landfill. But I often think what a waste. Recycling is great, but usually plastic milk bottles and other HDPE products are shipped to China, and turned into some low value use like floor tiles or plastic lumber. I guess it’s better then using virgin materials for those needed purposes, but melting down all those discarded milk bottles for low value commercial products still seems a waste.

I guess I could get milk delivered in glass bottles. Meadow Brook Farms still does milk deliveries locally. That would be a more sustainable option, with less trash to dispose of. But milk in plastic from Stewart’s is more affordable, which is a big thing when you like drinking milk as much as I do. Plus, plastic milk bottles are convenient — you just throw them in the recycling trash can or I can burn them up at camp. You don’t need to return them.

But alas, I guess that is the dilemma known as modern disposable plastics. You like what comes in the package, then you throw it away. Although I do think I could put it to better use when I own my own land.

I can envision find more uses for all the milk bottles I’d otherwise be throwing away in the commercial recycling stream. HDPE is a really good plastic for molding, it can be carefully heated and remolded for various projects around the house. HDPE is a relatively non toxic plastic to burn, if the fire is hot, maybe I could use it heat water, although I wouldn’t want to do that inside where it could cause a chimney fire. Or storage of water or ice, although lately I’ve discovered plastic coffee cans are better for that purpose. Feed scoops and planters are other possible uses, although sometimes heavier plastic like what windshield washer fluid comes it would better.

I just hate seeing all those bottles in the trash and having to take them to the transfer station for recycling.

Loading Glass At The Recycle Plant

Today is National Recycling Day ♻ …

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Loading Glass At The Recycle Plant

Recycling is a bit of an national obsession and a joke these days. More people recycle in America then vote, it’s looked down upon people who don’t use the proper recycling bins. It’s even gotten to the point where people toss so much crap into recycling bins, that waste disposal and sorting costs at recycling plants has become a major drag on the facilities. People want to do the right thing and feel virtuous.

Now I certainly do recycle my cans and glass in part because I pay $2 a bag to dispose of unrecycled material at the transfer station, and it’s a trip down there that I try to avoid making. Plus I don’t like looking at landfills or thinking about all my crushed debris piled up there indefinably. But I generally don’t have a lot of waste, because I buy in bulk, avoid purchasing material things preferring savings over spending, and don’t eat out — a big source of garbage in a country where people spend more money eating out then eating at home. In the summer months, a lot of my burnable stuff, is used for starting campfires.

But having looked at the actual recycling numbers, very little day-to-day household waste actually gets recycled. Of waste commonly disposed in curbside or transfer station in garbage bags and dumpsters, only 2-3% of it actually is separated out into recyclable materials that have a chance of being sold as scrap and reprocessed into something new. Calling scrapping cars, old washing machines, refrigerators, or composting leaves and wood debris recycling distorts what people actually consider recycling — the stuff put in the blue box or recycling dumpster.

Much common waste, maybe not day to day trash is either landfilled, incinerated or burned, from old computers to mattresses to brick and concrete to broken appliances and headphones. Most of it is mixed in with the ordinary household trash, the banana peals and rotting chicken bones then buried or burned, leaching it’s toxic residue into the air and water. Look around your room — how much of the stuff that you had ten years ago is still around you, and how much of it is now landfill or smoke?

Recycling certainly saves materials and landfill space, although common curbside recycling is kind of a joke. It would do better to reduce material consumption and focus on important recyclables like metals, which have to be mined and can be reprocessed with a large part of the material recycled — although not all as some is always lost as a dross. But I think it’s emphasized too much, and focuses on the wrong kind of things — not the toxic wastes like electronics or the bulk wastes like old appliances and furniture.