Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducay
I would wager 40% of what people put into the blue bin doesn't get recycled.
Sure 99%+ of those items are "recyclable", but what the city is actually able to process is such a tiny fraction of recyclable items, its a bit of a joke.
Hell, even valuable scrap metal in the blue bins gets sent to the landfill because their current processes aren't setup for it. So if you think your Yop lip or Old Dutch bag (that has recyclable symbol on it) is getting recycled - you're loco. The city's recycling plant is new and advanced but so much still ends up in the dump.
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I went on my son's field trip to the recycling/compost plant last year and it was quite the eye-opener. They were explaining to the kids (and me) that if you were to rank Reduce, Reuse and Recycle out of 10 on their environmental friendliness scale the three would be 9, 5 and 2.
Recycling just makes people feel good and gives next to nothing back to the environment. The amount of energy/material used to produce the item, ship it to you, ship the packaging away from you, separate it, move the materials to another facility and then make something else (a lot more steps are missing in this) means your recycling efforts isn't doing much.
The answer is to buy less stuff and/or buy things in better packaging (because I'm not a commie). It can just be little things that add up to a lot less waste. If you buy soda, buy them in 2L bottles instead of a bunch of cans. Get your beer in refillable growlers instead of individual bottles/cans. By cereal in bulk and fill a container at home. Don't use coffee/soda pods at all. Buy your fruits and veggies from the bulk section instead of from clam shells.