There is no recycling center where I live. The closest is 1 1/2 hours away. A local place takes aluminium cans and other metal but no paper or plastic. I have room in the SUV for only one category, paper or plastic. Paper, specifically boxes, large cardboard boxes and small kitchen boxes, but not very much newspapers or office/typing papers. Or, it would be plastic, 2 liter bottles, 20 oz bottles and other odd plastics. I am doing this to help the environment, not to make money. I could burn the boxes in the back yard but it says online that is worse than putting them in the landfill.
More or less as already said: paper, as a general rule, is quite readily biodegradable. Most plastic is horrible stuff that lasts practically forever, and when loose in the environment can eventually shred into microplastics that inflitrate the ecosystem and get ingested by living creatures and hence get into the food chain. Or if buried in landfill, it sits there for ages.
I’m pretty careful about recycling plastics, metals (cans), and glass. Where I live that all goes into one bin, but paper has to be put into its own bin. If I don’t have a lot of paper, just something like an empty soda carton, I don’t feel too guilty about folding it flat and stashing it with the garbage instead of hauling out a whole separate bin. Composting would be even better. You might have to shred it first, though.
Why not just alternate? Recycle paper one week or month and plastics the next? And given that the paper products are, for the most part, flat (unlike the plastics), you could probably take the paper less frequently.
But it doesn’t make sense if you drive 1 1/2 hours just to bring a carload of plastics or paper to the recycling center.
What’s a soda carton? No pop here in Ontario is sold in cartons. Milk and some juices are, but it’s not paper; it’s plastic. Check your soda cartons. I bet they’re also plastic and go in the other recycle bin, like here.
ok, thanks, yeah shredding it up by hand will just be one more thing to add to my list of chores to do. Crushing the cans too. I’m unemployed so having ways to occupy my time is good.
There is a town (Albany GA) 1 hour away that has a population of 90,000 with surrounding county included. Columbus GA is 1 1/2 hours away, has a huge military base and the population for the whole entire area w/ county included is almost 200,000, it’s the second largest city in the state. So anything and everything is there. Comic books stores, a bowling supply store, a piano store, if you want it you can find it. So if I’m going to go to town that is where I will go. I think what I will do is whenever I go to the cinema to see a movie will be recycling day. If I need to do shopping also, Columbus, but for a movie only, Albany.
Sorry to give you all the boring personal details I’m kind of in a hyper organization mood at the moment.
I was thinking more like throwing a whole bunch of cardboard and paper into something like a wood chipper, along with some actual wood you might be chipping at the time. If you don’t have such an item then forget the chipping and throw the paper out! Was mostly just trying to make a helpful observation about plastic vs. paper.
Oh so you mean to compost it has to be chipped up that small. Oh, ok, I thought you meant like tearing a coral box 4 or 5 times, now I understand you mean tiny little pieces. Ok, I see exactly what you mean. Except, no way can I afford a wood chipper.
Small pieces will compost faster, but you don’t need to. Whole pieces will still compost in a season or two (faster if your compost pile has other things in it to give it the right moisture balance.)
Also, if you happen to have a small person living with you, tearing paper, even if it’s just into large chunks, is a fantastic early chore or way to make a couple of bucks. My daughter even learned how to run the paper shredder for my mother, and earned herself a whole dollar for each brown paper grocery bag full of paper. (Hey, that’s good funds when you’re 6!)
It’s actually something called “wet strength beverage board.” It’s basically paperboard infused with plastic resins to bind the fibers together. It is very similar to the boxes used for frozen foods, but doesn’t have the waxy coating.
It is used for several reasons: Beverage cans are very heavy. They want a thin packaging that can hold up to the weight. Beverage cans have condensation problems during shipping, so they want to make sure it doesn’t soak-through. And finally, beverage containers can leak or burst during handling. They don’t want a leaking can at the top of the bundle to ruin all the containers under it.
If you want to see the difference, go to the dollar store and buy a shirt-size “gift box” (in the greeting card section) and try to stack 12 cans of soda in it and lift it. And then try spilling one of the cans on the box. Compare that to a soda carrier.
The wet strength carriers cannot be recycled with ordinary cardboard. You need to have a recycling plant that is specially equipped for them. They technically cannot be “recycled” into new beverage carriers (the carriers require long virgin fibers) but must be “downcycled” into a different paper product.
Wet strength products are not suitable for composting.
