Read that as recycled glass mullet celts. Totally a band name.
strange you should ask, i saw a thing on cspan this weekend on this.
http://earth2tech.com/2008/08/18/bill-clinton-10-things-the-us-government-should-do-for-clean-power/
mr clinton’s idea for landfills is number 8.
he is oddly gung ho on the idea of going through landfills recycling what can be recycled and composting what can’t. oddly gung ho. he was really intense when speaking about landfills and garbage dumps in the u.s. and around the world.
I have always believed recycling to be a scam. I can remember people in the '80s having to put up with stinky bins around (or worse, in the house to wait for the one day a week (usually a Saturday) that the county allowed people to drive to the dump (and load up the nasty bins in their own cars) to drop off recycleables. (Obviously, this was before curbside pickup.)
We have a trash room on each floor of my building. In each room, there are three blue bins - one each for glass, paper, and ‘other’ materials. Some folks I know in the building go through great effort to sort them all out properly. Management has even put up signs providing instructions on what goes where and what cannot be recycled (and should go down the trash chute).
On several occasions when leaving for work late I have observed the maintenance staff bringing up one large bin to each floor to gather the recycleable materials. I had originally thought that they would bring one bin to each floor and gather all the glass, then make another trip for the paper, etc. Never gave it much thought other than that this was a big waste of time. I justified it that maintenance didn’t want to monopolize all the elevators just for recycling runs that early in the morning when everybody would need to get out of the building and start their day. Somewhen during the time I have lived here I have noticed that every day, there are several (like 20 or so) recycle bins outside of the service area that have all the stuff separated out.
The other morning, as I was taking the trash to the trash room (all neatly bagged up and sealed, but not sorted at all), I met up with Mike (not his name) who works for the maintenance staff. We chatted about whether or not I had anything that needed to be recycled and I said that I don’t recycle. Mike says, “well, you know, it’s county law” and goes about his business of collecting all the bins and dumping all three bins into his one container. Sorting be damned. (I guess after they dump it all into one bin, they take great effort to re-sort it all out and have different stuff in different bins. I might be unemployed, but I don’t want that job.
This afternoon, I was rudely awakened at the crack of 2 PM. My bedroom window is directly above the service area (okay, 13 floors above, but still) and the county truck is having trouble getting into the driveway, causing it to back up go forward back up repeatedly…triggering that annoying siren that they all have nowadays to prevent from running over the dumb kids. (That’s a whole 'nother rant, but I digress.) Once finally in position, one of the county lackeys jumps off the truck and starts loading the bins onto the forks of the truck so it can haul it up and dump it into the master bin. As I watch for about five minutes, trying to soak up the sun and get my wits going, I notice that all 20 or so bins are dumped into the one truck bin. First a load of bottles, then a load of paper goods, then the others. And repeat until all are done. No degree of separation at all. Just all goes into the dumper. Then they move the truck again to empty the main trash bins, where all the stuff that we throw down the trash chute (arguably non-recycleable stuff) into the same bin. And I notice that not all of it is neatly bagged and sealed. There’s lots of loose food stuff and other junk in there. It all just goes on top of the previously neatly sorted recycleables.
Pish-posh. ME? Recycle? Sorry, I have more important things to do. That television isn’t going to watch itself, you know?
I can only imagine that at the county dump, they have a full staff of lackeys who are paid (hopefully) handsomely to sort out all of the stuff all over again.
That being said, why should I recycle? The county who is responsible for collecting this stuff (and passed the law that says we have to do so) is just going to mix it all back up again and pay somebody else to re-do what I already did.
Yeah, I’m a REAL stickler for following the laws. Especially the dumb ones.
I am all for plastics recycling. The dirty little secret of the outdoor recreation industry is that a goodly portion of our products are petroleum-based. Think non-renewable resource. Think drilling in ANWR (outdoorsy types abhor the thought). Think very slow degradation in landfills leeching all sorts of dyes and chemical fillers into the ground.
We’re seeing quite a few new products that make use of those plastics that would otherwise sit for years in landfills. You can wear fleece of Ecospun fiber created out of PET (soda) bottles or out of recycled polyester clothing. Post consumer recycled products are a reality now because we have already started recycling. Why wait until we’ve run out of non-renewable resources and/or landfill space? As we’ve seen, the recycling “attitude” doesn’t just sprout overnight. It takes time to develop technologies, uses, and processes as well as build participation.
Just because your county handles recycling in an extremely inefficient manner does not make recycling a bad thing in general.
Maybe you should take this up with your elected officials.