I think part of the problem here is that each town/city in the US uses a local vendor and vendors have different rules and standards for what they will or will not accept. It’s confusing for residents. They should make one standard nationally so that it’s the same everywhere. Keep one consistent set of rules, and put appropriate bins in place and I do think most people want to follow those rules, but we certainly don’t make it easy for people to. Single stream recycling was an attempt to do this, but I don’t get why the sorting that was supposed to happen wasn’t happening. This is just poor process and implementation.
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Well, this is where the culture wars and reality intervene.
Some view recycling in the same prism as abortion and gun rights, no matter whether
that’s actually a valid viewpoint.
Weird times we live in where the public good
is viewed with suspicion and distrust, and as one side’s bleeding heart cause.
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It’s unclear if all of those commenting here understand what single stream recycling is supposed to be, which is commingling of paper with clean plastic, metal and glass. If people were responsible enough to wash and rinse containers before recycling, and not to recycle stained paper/cardboard, there would be much smaller landfills.
We have Recology, same as at least Berkeley and maybe Emeryville and more East Bay cities.
We even get the recycling surcharge broken down. I’m happy, given what’s going on.
I keep weighing in because we’ve had a plastic bag ban for a few years now.
Honestly, no one thinks about it anymore, as a problem or otherwise.
Everyone is equipped with reusable bags.
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If it were clearer what paper is allowed (Can I recycle the box the frozen dinner came in? What about the tissue box with the plastic film insert to dispense the tissues?), and what plastic was okay, and whether metal jar lids are allowed, it would also help. As it is, I often have no idea.
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I don’t think the issue is that we are not equipped with reuseable bags. I have a few of my own. I think the issue is that the reuseable bags cost more environment impacts than the thin plastic bags. The environmental impact of one cotton tote bag is about 10,000 plastic bags. So, even if you use the cotton tote bag every single day, it will still take you 30 years to make it even – for most people, the cotton bag is not going to last 30 years.
It is not that we are against recycle. It is the fact that we are actually not recycling but claim that we are.
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The energy to produce and my town not being overrun with stuff that fills up our landfill are two different things.
And all politics really are local.
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One could think of testing the recycling-is-good claim as a simple math homework assignment: What is the most efficient way to deal with a resource after its original use.
For each problematic resource, calculate cost and benefit of:
-
Reusing until the benefit of reusing exceeds the cradle-to-grave cost of production. (Instructor’s note: t is likely an important quantity)
-
Sending into recycling stream to produce benefit exceeding cost of disposal, in other words, producing another product with value greater than cost of permanent disposal (buried trash).
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Disposing without any reusing or recycling when neither 1) nor 2) yields benefit exceeding cost of permanent disposal. [Reporter’s note: probably a defensible argument against retail plutonium sales or making breakfast toast?]
At minimum, the exercise depends on identifying all the constants and variables, assigning their values, and – now the tricky part – divining the relationship among the constants and variables before arriving at the equation that advises whether the game is worth the candle.
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Wicker baskets.
The answer you seek is “Wicker Baskets”.
Can you prove that for me?
Washing trash sounds like an awfully wasteful use of precious water.
When you use the Big “W” We, I assume you are also referring to East and South Asia; between them, they are by far the majority offenders of plastic and other pollutants into the oceans. Just getting the US on board isn’t going to do squat if you can’t get those regions to follow suit.
And they won’t.
And before you start typing, I’m NOT suggesting we do nothing, but I am insisting you not kid yourself.
Bankrupting the US and the West in the name of environmentalism won’t save the planet.
It will only bankrupt the US and the West. Without getting the worst polluters to stop, you will only create a situation where it will make economic sense for China to send their garbage to us. Think about how much crap they could throw down the Grand Canyon.
Have a nice day.
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I wonder how much of the plastic waste coming from China is actually American waste shipped over for recycling. Or waste from manufacturing all our plastic crap for us. It doesn’t make sense that their number is so much higher - sure they have the population but the hundreds of millions of people living in poverty aren’t consuming on that level. Also, how is India not on that list? Huge population, lots of coastline, is Bangladesh taking the fall? - 
Has easy recycling allowed us to ignore the concepts of reduce and re-use?
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60 Minutes recently aired a segment on what I like to call the “recycling myth”. It focused greatly on how we “use to” export the majority of our recycling to China and they gladly accepted it for many years. That recently stopped and now besides a few other smaller countries we are now stuck with our own recycling and we do NOT have the infrastructure to support it. (If I recall a large obstacle was the environmental impact of the recycling process - we hold ourselves to higher environmental standards than China and apparently recycling can be a rather dirty process)
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Semi-related to this post. I have found that TerraCycle sponsors a variety of recycling programs for special packages (free shipping). I was hunting for if the recycling pouches that my kid likes for applesauce could be recycled (they can). I then found other stuff that is accepted that I signed up for including Tom’s products and contact lens packaging.
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I’m assuming that impact is almost entirely manufacturing/discarding rather than the washing of them in a load of other laundry. If that is so, then if we already have the re-usable bags, we should continue to re-use them. (I too would like to see some documentation on 10,000 plastic bags to 1 cotton bag.)
My three cotton bags were made from scraps of material which would have been discarded anyway. And they have been in use for at least thirty years (though not daily). And clearly not using them at this point but switching to plastic would be foolish.
How many tote bags are sitting around in basements, or worse still, just thrown out, by people who then keep getting plastic bags at the grocery? I probably have at least a dozen bags(*) I’ve gotten at conferences, supermarket giveaways, etc., that I can use for groceries if these ever die. (I do use three polypropylene(?) bags as additional if I buy a lot, but there’s really good only for lighter stuff and not produce et al.)
(*) I have forty “tote bags” but some are more like briefcases, or or subdivided, or are flat rather than having a base, and so are not really shopping bags. I don’t think I actually bought any of them.
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Hardly. I wash dishes by hand (now, a dishwasher IS wasteful, both of water and power), the recyclables being the last containers going into both the soapy and rinse water basins. Any water used for rinsing directly from the tap probably doesn’t equal, in a whole week, a single flush of the toilet. When running the taps to get water hot or cold enough, I capture the water in a plastic container. This sits on the counter, for later use in other cleaning.
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Test after test after test has shown it to be just the opposite and a dishwasher can operate at a much higher temperature for a longer duration than human hands could ever stand so a dishwasher is much better at sanitizing. The average Energy Star rated dishwasher uses 4 gallons of water for 48 pieces of dishware. You would have to wash and rinse each piece in one cup of water total to compete.
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I use less than four gallons, and regard sterilizing my utensils and dishes as unnecessary, possibly even unwise. A few germs here and there maintain a healthy immune system. Most of the world doesn’t even have hot water for kitchen cleaning, and humankind got by without dishwashers till what, the 1950’s? I’m out.
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Yes, tests after tests show that automatic dishwasher is energy more efficient and use less water than most people. However, I am not most people. 
Honestly, though, it has been stated that if you are going to hand wash your dishes with cold water (like I do), then it is the energy more efficient way.
Oh gods, that’s terrible news. I wonder what the environmental impact would be making reusable woven plastic bags from disposable plastic bags.
I get it. My wife sometimes uses one that looks like an oversized accordion file. It stretches out to 3’ or so. She finds it useful at Costco, when they are out if boxes… but I’m usually the one that brings groceries into the house so loose items are not my favorite. 
SR 179 doesn’t come anywhere near Tucson, are you thinking of I-10 or route 77, which doesn’t go through Phoenix?
