"By keeping non-biodegradable substances such as plastic out of landfills, most recyclers believe they are doing the environment a favor. Why just dump it when it can be reused? Trouble is, much of it isn’t reused. It is dumped in landfills. That is why so many recycling programs lose money and have to be subsidized by customers or taxpayers."
"As of Jan. 1, China banned imports of plastic waste. About 45 percent of that material from throughout the world has gone to China for the past quarter-century. Chinese recyclers have used some of the plastics. The rest goes to landfills, and the Chinese are tired of being the world’s dump."
"A few months ago, my partner and I went snorkelling off the coast of Indonesia. We dove off tiny deserted islands and swam in the deep with giant manta rays, but what I remember most vividly about that trip was not the stunning coral or dazzling array of colourful, curious fish; it was the sheer amount of garbage in the water."
"Shopping bags, plastic cups, toothpaste tubes, orange peel, all manner of human debris followed the currents; waves and waves of junk pooling in the shallow waters. In these parts of the reef, the water was cloudy and full of so much microscopic debris that it stung the skin. I remember watching a majestic giant turtle swim through the gloom as my head bumped against an old Coke bottle bobbing on the surface of the water."
All the experts said single-stream recycling was bound to fail.
The politicians didn't pay attention to the experts.
Do you think the politicians now will realize they made a mistake and go back to dual-stream recycling?
Single-stream recycling -- It’s “sweeping the country,” but does it lead to more recycled material and less trash in the landfill?
I live in Durham, North Carolina, but spend some time in New York City. In my NYC digs I recycle the old-fashioned way — separating plastics, paper and glass, and throwing them into separate bins.
But in Durham I just toss everything into a single cart and put the cart by the sidewalk every other week. From there, a truck picks it up and hauls it away, the plastic, paper and glass all jumbled together. And jumbled together they stay until arriving at a materials recovery facility (or MRF, pronounced MURF) where everything is separated out into its various recyclable and unrecyclable components.
"Recycling alone will never stem the flow of plastics into our ocean. We must address the problem at the source"
"State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos is quoted in "Dump catches state's eye" (March 25) that he became concerned about the giant landfill in Rensselaer, which he can see from his office window, after he saw a cloud of dust over the dump a few months ago. Seggos apparently never noticed the many thousands of trucks that drive through downtown Rensselaer each year to and from the dump. DEC has been ignoring evidence right under its nose for decades. Not until two years ago did DEC pretend to notice that the air in Albany's South End is dangerously polluted, particularly in the Ezra Prentice Homes neighborhood through which many hundreds of trucks pass daily. DEC pretends the Colonie landfill is not an environmental or health hazard despite immense evidence to the contrary including that it sits atop an unlined hazardous waste dump on the edge of the Mohawk River. Why is DEC ignoring requests made 18 months ago by the towns of Waterford and Halfmoon and others to conduct a formal adjudicatory hearing on the landfill expansion application? As the TU reported March 22, DEC is assisting Colonie with its application. DEC commissioners sometimes remind me of the Sgt. Schultz character on the 1960s television sitcom "Hogan's Heroes," who, when he saw the prisoners plotting their schemes, responded with "I see nothing" or "I know nothing.
"Rensselaer The local arm of a national environmental group is teaming up with Rensselaer residents opposed to the state's largest construction and demolition debris dump. The Hudson Mohawk chapter of the Sierra Club is looking into how the state Department of Environmental Conservation issued a 2012..."