- Jan 2, 2006
- 10,455
- 35
- 91
I try to recycle as much as I can, and I think that from now on I'm going to be buying things specifically with an eye for how recyclable it will be in the future. I've found that there are just so many issues right now with recycling:
1. People don't recycle. I have lots of friends with housemates and they tell stories of how their roommates just don't recycle. My friends do the recycling, buy the bins, and place the bins right next to the normal trash can. Roommates will still throw paper into the trash even though the paper recycling bin is literally sitting flush with the waste basket. The people that I see throwing stuff off at the recycling center are always older or middle ages folks.
2. We create products that aren't recyclable. ex. Only a small portion of products are made from recyclable plastic. Today I had to throw out a lot of plastic clothes hangers, a plastic harness for my car's CD player, lots of plastic tupperware, lots of plastic pens and pencils, and lots of miscellaneous plastic mix products like a broken keyboard because my recycling center only takes 1 and 2 plastic types, which apparently is all my entire STATE (OH) does. I mean, would it be that disastrous to make something like coat hangers from 1 or 2 plastic?
3. We don't have the recycling infrastructure. The recycling company just isn't capable of recycling a lot of things, including many different types of plastic, wax-lined juice cartons, any kind of glass that isn't a bottle, and packing material like styrofoam or peanuts. There also aren't any services that break down hybrid products into pure recyclable form. Like the broken keyboard that I mentioned, which is a mix of a whole bunch of different stuff. Now it looks like it's just going to sit in a landfill forever.
1. People don't recycle. I have lots of friends with housemates and they tell stories of how their roommates just don't recycle. My friends do the recycling, buy the bins, and place the bins right next to the normal trash can. Roommates will still throw paper into the trash even though the paper recycling bin is literally sitting flush with the waste basket. The people that I see throwing stuff off at the recycling center are always older or middle ages folks.
2. We create products that aren't recyclable. ex. Only a small portion of products are made from recyclable plastic. Today I had to throw out a lot of plastic clothes hangers, a plastic harness for my car's CD player, lots of plastic tupperware, lots of plastic pens and pencils, and lots of miscellaneous plastic mix products like a broken keyboard because my recycling center only takes 1 and 2 plastic types, which apparently is all my entire STATE (OH) does. I mean, would it be that disastrous to make something like coat hangers from 1 or 2 plastic?
3. We don't have the recycling infrastructure. The recycling company just isn't capable of recycling a lot of things, including many different types of plastic, wax-lined juice cartons, any kind of glass that isn't a bottle, and packing material like styrofoam or peanuts. There also aren't any services that break down hybrid products into pure recyclable form. Like the broken keyboard that I mentioned, which is a mix of a whole bunch of different stuff. Now it looks like it's just going to sit in a landfill forever.
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