What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Recycling is broken (1 Viewer)

Nobody knows the answers, but there are very very smart people working on the issue. People who are passionate about a clean planet, and are constantly looking for ever improving technology to help. 
Top men?

So we have two trash dumpsters. One for stuff, one for recycling. Worked ok for about a year but then China bailed so we had some new rules, no more glass, something else. That went for about a month then we got another notice, effective immediately no more recycling because YOU PEOPLE!!! refuse to put trash in the trash dumpster and recycling in the recycling dumpster. So simple, there is a list of 10 things you can throw in recycling, that's it. We can't pull that off. That's your problem, the masses don't give a ####. Hell we have a city of 96,000 people that can't drink the water provided by the municipality and we don't seem to give a #### about that. You think people are going to be troubled to throw plastic bags in one dumpster instead of another?

You want it fixed you have to remove it before it gets to the point of relying on the consumer to handle it because we never will until it's way past the time that it matters.

 
Michigan has had deposits on all beverage glass, cans, and some plastic beverage bottles but not water.  
To what extent does it work (in DK I believe they claim 98% of the stuff with a deposit is returned). The deposit varies with the size of the container, between approx 15c and 50c

 
To what extent does it work (in DK I believe they claim 98% of the stuff with a deposit is returned). The deposit varies with the size of the container, between approx 15c and 50c
When I worked in MI we always made a point to recycle the bottles. Easy way to buy a 1/2 pack of smokes every morning :thumbup:

 
We broke recycling when we thought making it easy would replace making it worth something. 

You used to be able to get enough money for another twelve pack by taking in a bag of crushed cans.  Boy Scouts used to pick up everyone’s newspapers because they could sell a pickup truck full.

Now you’re expected to sort out your trash for free just because we gave you an extra container for it. 

 
Just want to say thanks to @zftcg for this topic. I did a lot of reading because of this thread and my family has changed quite a few habits. I do curse your name though every time I have to fish a bottlecap out of the recycle bin. My bottle opener is mounted to the wall right by the trash and recycle bin. For 15 years I have popped the top and thrown it in the open recycle bin. Now I pop the top and throw it in the recycle bin, but immediately remember I am not supposed to do that and of course have to dig for it. I actually probably only do this about 20% of the time now, but it is ridiculous how hard it has been to break that habit.  

 
Just want to say thanks to @zftcg for this topic. I did a lot of reading because of this thread and my family has changed quite a few habits. I do curse your name though every time I have to fish a bottlecap out of the recycle bin. My bottle opener is mounted to the wall right by the trash and recycle bin. For 15 years I have popped the top and thrown it in the open recycle bin. Now I pop the top and throw it in the recycle bin, but immediately remember I am not supposed to do that and of course have to dig for it. I actually probably only do this about 20% of the time now, but it is ridiculous how hard it has been to break that habit.  
Considering that people have cursed my name for far worse things, I'll take it!  :hifive:

I can't remember if I made this change because of something I read in this thread or elsewhere, but one adjustment I've recently had to make was not crumpling up cans or plastic bottles before putting them in recycling. I used to think I was being helpful by reducing total volume, but apparently that actually makes it harder because the machines are programmed to recognize the shape of an aluminum can, and the crumpled ones get thrown out.

 
only things i can think of now that i purchase in a glass container are liquor and spaghetti sauce.
You eat canned salsa?
I buy way more glass containered stuff than plastic.

Salsas, liquor, beer, wine, olive oil, pasta sauce, ginger beer, salad dressings, hot sauces, mustards, soy sauce, etc. Always try and get glass version opposed to plastic version if available

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Good topic...

We even get a poster of what can and can't go in recycling yet that is still confusing.   The box can go but the paper can't.  No more shredded paper etc etc....

 
Okay.   I like salsa and the choices in cans are rather limited, if at all.   
Last two times i made salsa I bought a can of diced tomatoes with jalapenos. I then chopped up a little bit of a fresh red pepper just to give it some crunch and added some salt. Was easy and i liked it. 

Tasted better the next day out of the fridge. 

 
Our county does a recycling program with separate trucks, where it goes to a landfill and is sorted there. I feel it could be more effective taking it to separate one's, but then there's the issue of stuff getting mixed up in the bins.

 
In other countries they jack the deposits on bottles.  ~20-30 cents per bottle on plastic, ~10 cents on glass.  A lot of places have automated redemption machines as well.

 
In other countries they jack the deposits on bottles.  ~20-30 cents per bottle on plastic, ~10 cents on glass.  A lot of places have automated redemption machines as well.
When vacationing in mazatlan (Sinaloa, Mexico) you occasionally see the trash picku. The truck pulls up, and a guy goes through the refuse, sorting what can be recycled. It sits there about 30 minutes every night, guy sorts it on site, and off he goes. 

 
Last two times i made salsa I bought a can of diced tomatoes with jalapenos. I then chopped up a little bit of a fresh red pepper just to give it some crunch and added some salt. Was easy and i liked it. 

Tasted better the next day out of the fridge. 
I didn’t know you were from New York City.

 
Was going to start a new thread but decided to use the search function first and found this one.

This article from the NY Times was ostensibly helpful in terms of knowing what can and can't be recycled, but IMO the most important part of the article was this:

To cope with the mounting trash, cities and counties set up curbside recycling programs. The burden of collecting and recycling the plastic bottles came to rest with taxpayers.

It was around this time that industry-funded television ads, like the famous 1970s one in which a Native American character sheds a tear amid a littered landscape, helped drive the message home: Individuals bore responsibility for keeping America trash-free and beautiful. In the 1980s, the plastics industry adopted the “chasing arrows” to promote recycling.

[...]

If recycling alone can’t fix things, what can be done? Many solutions are being tested.

One idea that has been gaining ground in the United States is a type of law known as “extended producer responsibility.”

These laws would mean that, rather than taxpayers footing the recycling bill, producers would be charged a fee, which would pay for recycling programs. Fees would be based on things like the weight of the packaging, the ease of recycling or whether it contains toxic substances like PFAS.

Regulations like these might also give companies an incentive to redesign their products to be more recyclable. Last year, Maine and Oregon passed producer responsibility laws, two of nearly a dozen states that introduced bills.

These laws are important because “there’s only so much that you can do, as an individual, in an American grocery store” to make choices that would reduce plastic waste, since many products aren’t recyclable, said Judith Enck, a former E.P.A. regional administrator and founder of Beyond Plastics, which advocates for better plastic policies.
The whole notion of recycling is a scam, a way for manufacturers to externalize the cost of dumping all that plastic into the world by placing an impossible burden on individuals. 

A few years ago, I was reading an article about identity theft. It compared it to fraudulent credit-card charges. When someone steals your card and runs up thousands of dollars in charges, you're fully protected, and it's the credit-card maker that's responsible for chasing down the perpetrators, getting the money back, and punishing retailers that allow too many fraudulent transactions. With identity theft, they don't have any responsibility, so if someone steals your identity and then signs up for 15 credit cards in your name, the credit-card companies won't do jack, and you'll spend the next decade of your life trying to clean up the mess that the thief left.

Recycling -- and waste disposal in general -- needs to become more like fraudulent charges and less like identity theft. We need to change the incentives so that the Cokes and McDonalds and Walmarts of the world are looking for ways to minimize the amount of waste they produce, whether it's through easier and more efficient recycling, more biodegradable products or fewer single-use plastics. I don't really care what they end up doing; just change their payment structures and let them figure it out. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Was going to start a new thread but decided to use the search function first and found this one.

This article from the NY Times was ostensibly helpful in terms of knowing what can and can't be recycled, but IMO the most important part of the article was this:

The whole notion of recycling is a scam, a way for manufacturers to externalize the cost of dumping all that plastic into the world by placing an impossible burden on individuals. 

A few years ago, I was reading an article about identity theft. It compared it to fraudulent credit-card charges. When someone steals your card and runs up thousands of dollars in charges, you're fully protected, and it's the credit-card maker that's responsible for chasing down the perpetrators, getting the money back, and punishing retailers that allow too many fraudulent transactions. With identity theft, they don't have any responsibility, so if someone steals your identity and then signs up for 15 credit cards in your name, the credit-card companies won't do jack, and you'll spend the next decade of your life trying to clean up the mess that the thief left.

Recycling -- and waste disposal in general -- needs to become more like fraudulent charges and less like identity theft. We need to change the incentives so that the Cokes and McDonalds and Walmarts of the world are looking for ways to minimize the amount of waste they produce, whether it's through easier and more efficient recycling, more biodegradable products or fewer single-use plastics. I don't really care what they end up doing; just change their payment structures and let them figure it out. 


I'm on board with this.  I've always thought to myself why we as taxpayers are responsible for paying for all of this.  I do think we should pay for some of it as consumers, but I submit that producers not only pay for MOST of this, they should be forced to create a R&D department on how best to recycle their own waste other than just dumping it in landfills.  Re-use it for other products and start their own recycling programs to reclaim any of their old waste that comes from their manufacturing facilities.

Seems like there is a huge market out there to recycle garbage/waste into other useful items.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm on board with this.  I've always thought to myself why we as taxpayers are responsible for paying for all of this.  I do think we should pay for some of it as consumers, but I submit that producers not only pay for MOST of this, they should be forced to create a R&D department on how best to recycle their own waste other than just dumping it in landfills.  Re-use it for other products and start their own recycling programs to reclaim any of their old waste that comes from their manufacturing facilities.

Seems like there is a huge market out there to recycle garbage/waste into other useful items.


We took the laziest way forward and typical of our solutions burdened the tax payer.  People have known this for 30 years but it's really coming under scrutiny lately.  Europe does a lot of good things in this regard as do other countries.  

 
We took the laziest way forward and typical of our solutions burdened the tax payer.  People have known this for 30 years but it's really coming under scrutiny lately.  Europe does a lot of good things in this regard as do other countries.  
Like a lot of other areas, we also have representatives that tend not to understand the actual problems and let lobbyists write the legislation.  That's how we end up with policies like 5 cent deposit for cans/bottles, paid by the consumer at point of sale, but no real requirements for stores/towns to create easy to use deposit returns.  I can buy craft beer at the liquor store or the grocery store, and I have to pay the deposit, but neither location is required to take those same cans/bottles back.  My options for what to do with those cans/bottles are: 1) stick them in the general recycling bucket, 2) throw them away, or 3) drive an hour or more to a state-operated deposit center that takes all cans/bottles.  In both the first scenarios, I'm paying the deposit and someone (state?  store?) is keeping the money.

 
compared it to fraudulent credit-card charges. When someone steals your card and runs up thousands of dollars in charges, you're fully protected, and it's the credit-card maker that's responsible for chasing down the perpetrators, getting the money back, and punishing retailers that allow too many fraudulent transactions. With identity theft, they don't have any responsibility, so if someone steals your identity and then signs up for 15 credit cards in your name, the credit-card companies won't do jack, and you'll spend the next decade of your life trying to clean up the mess that the thief left.
I dont think this is true. If somebody steals your identity and opens up a bunch of accounts and spends a bunch of money, you arent liable for the purchases. 

 
parasaurolophus said:
I dont think this is true. If somebody steals your identity and opens up a bunch of accounts and spends a bunch of money, you arent liable for the purchases. 
Fortunately I don't have any first-hand experience with this, but my understanding is that it's not the charges that are the issue. It's that the identity thief can thoroughly destroy your credit rating, so that for years afterward, every time you apply for a new card or a mortgage or whatever, you have to go through the exercise of clearing up all the issues. 

I found this account of an identity-theft victim (it's from 2014, so maybe the laws have changed since then, although I don't think they have). I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. It sounds like in some cases she was sent to collections and harassed by the agencies, so maybe you are responsible for some charges. But specifics aside, the way she describes feeling like she was fighting this battle alone is what I was getting at in my post above. There's no incentive for the CC issuers, the credit-reporting agencies, or anyone else to help her clean this up (and more importantly, to ensure it never happens in the first place). That's kind of where we are with plastic manufacturers right now.

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top