Materials and Waste

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I really hate washing out containers for recycling ♻

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Mayonnaise jars, peanut butter jars, pasta jars.

They all come in plastic these days. Increasingly thin plastic too as material science evolves. When they get used up, what is left is just a sticky residue that is difficult to remove before tossing in the recycling bin, requiring and wasting a lot of soap and water. They are just so much easier to chuck in a hot fire, let them turn into carbon dioxide that will become plant food. Especially when you know so much of urban recycling is a feel good scam. I can’t wait to own my own land out in the country.

NY 8 and the true cost of litter 🚮

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I was walking a remote section of NY 8 the other day, noticing the various pieces of litter along the road side. Some of it is intentional garbage dumping – the worn out television and recliner, the lamp shade – but a lot of it is packing from go food – plastic water bottles, beer cans, burrito and burger wrappers, french fries holders like you get from many a fast food chain.

Probably very few people litter but many pass by this road, and the occasional burger wrapper and beer can out the window adds up. Probably far more toss the wrapper in their car’s backseat and then put it into a designated garbage can, emptied and hauled to the outskirts of the city to be added to the ever growing mountains of garbage.

Go food might make people happy but it’s a temporary high one quickly consumed and discarded. Often the prices at gas stations and grease pits are far marked up from a sandwich made at home or reusable water or juice container. Money wasted that could be invested towards improving your life and future. Money spent on fatty foods and intoxicating beverages and more generally garbage now littering our roadsides.

Litter

Replacing plastic for glass and metal is a bad idea

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There are some who want to replace single use plastics with single use aluminum or glass containers, noting the greater recycablity of both materials. But I think it’s a bad idea:

  • Glass and metal, once produced last forever in the environment.
  • A glass or metal object doesn’t just rot, it also doesn’t doesn’t burn. A discarded plastic bottle may be incinerated, burned in a burn barrel or campfire or be destroyed by a wildfire
  • Plastics, especially outside of a landfill have a much shorter life than metals or glass thanks to the combustible nature of hydrocarbons
  • Metals and glass discarded can lead to cuts in children and adults when they step on the glass, are working in the woods or swimming in the creek
  • Metals and glass discarded can puncture car tires both on and off the road
  • Metals and glass discarded can get into pasture and cause painful death from hardware disease in cows and other livestock
  • Traditional deposit for recycling programs do increase recycling rates but still don’t eliminate litter or even ensure most of the material is recycled
  • Recycling is great but even with glass and metal which is said to be 100% recyclable, material is lost when the metals and glass are melted down for reprocessing
  • Glass and metal makes a lot more sense with true rewash and reuse programs – like milk delivered by a milk man
  • Milk in glass is colder and purer
  • As would be other beverages such as soda or beer produced and distributed in reused growlers

Old Unopened Beer Car