Recycling, a rant

[EngineerRetired]

Ok, I know my head works differently but did anyone else think the OP meant he had an old rant he was going to recycle, by his title???

[sailingharry]

Originally Posted by EngineerRetired

Ok, I know my head works differently but did anyone else think the OP meant he had an old rant he was going to recycle, by his title???

I'm OP. And incidentally, as of June I'm "Engineer, Retired" also. Mechanical. There is a comma after "recycling" which changes the intent of the words. Or was supposed to. But I'm an engineer, and English isn't my strong suit.... LOL

[penaltybox]

At our marina we had a large recycling container. Turns out we were being charged up to $600/month in fines because people were throwing all sorts of things in there. They stopped recycling for a while but now have smaller bins that will be sorted before they go in the large container.

[RickG]

We recycle glass in Grenada back to the bottlers. Deposits on a case of beer/soda is in the order of $10EC; you get a discount when you return the case. The cases are also plastic and durable. Aneheuser-Busch, Genesee, and others wer refilling bottles as recently as the 1980s. If you want to recycle anywhere else you need to take your separated recyclables to Port Louis Marina; they pay to send recycling out.

Cheers, RickG

[grube]

The Germans have been recycling everything for a long time. Started almost overnight in the 1980s. They have a black bin for trash and a green bin for all else. The recycling factory and or centres sort out which stream an item goes to. They took a nation-wide approach to this and it works. In North America it appears to be haphazard. Like many other things we do — and then wonder why it is a bit amateur.

[Carl-T705]

Why would anyone think a remote area would have a recycle center?? They are loss leaders for most communities. It's feel good pablum for people who think they are saving the environment. Saving the environment starts on the front end, not the back end. Stop buying water in cute little bottles,. Stop buying soft drinks from suppliers who don't ask for return containers . Stop buying items wrapped in plastics.Stop wanting throwaway diapers..... Now who is up for this kind of planet saving.... Hello .. anybody out there???? LOL ....

[Triumph]

I wrote an article for SAIL Magazine about recycling aboard. In doing the research, I found that in this country, we manufacture 80 million plastic drink bottles a day. Those include water, Gatorade, cokes, etc. I think the first step is to reduce the plastics that we use. Nip the problem at it's source.
We do not allow plastic throw away bottles on our boat. Our rule is that you must use a refillable that you bring from home. We use a Soda Stream to make cokes and tonic so we greatly reduce our waste. We crush our aluminum beer cans and keep them in our onboard recycling bag. Any mesh bag will work if you slightly modify it.

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by grube

The Germans have been recycling everything for a long time. Started almost overnight in the 1980s. They have a black bin for trash and a green bin for all else. The recycling factory and or centres sort out which stream an item goes to. They took a nation-wide approach to this and it works. In North America it appears to be haphazard. Like many other things we do — and then wonder why it is a bit amateur.

I don't know about Germany, but in the USA, stuff that gets put out for recycling isn't worth the cost of picking it up and sorting it. There is just no market for this stuff and it's cheaper to manufacture products from "virgin" materials.

Metals are a possible exception.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Carl-T705

[Recycling is] feel good pablum for people who think they are saving the environment. Saving the environment starts on the front end, not the back end. Stop buying water in cute little bottles,. Stop buying soft drinks from suppliers who don't ask for return containers . Stop buying items wrapped in plastics. Stop wanting throwaway diapers..... Now who is up for this kind of planet saving.... Hello .. anybody out there???? LOL ....

Mmmm, no. Recycling was SUPPOSED to be a viable strategy for ensuring that what packaging was used could be separated and directed into an efficient process for reuse, thereby keeping it out of landfill. We are finding out now that the promised recycling facilities never materialized, and the cheap dodge of shipping that stuff overseas to be "recycled" (wink-wink) stopped working when those countries finally said no.

In the west, today's consumers don't have the time or energy to single-handedly swim upstream against the tide of packaging and disposable excess. Many products simply aren't available without packaging. If we want people to stop using disposable diapers (meaning washable instead), then why are two salaries necessary to have a home and to raise kids?

We are trapped in a consumption spiral. The one offered solution, recycling (aka dumping the waste issue onto consumers), has turned out to be a cruel joke. Industry now sells and uses MORE plastics in packaging.

[Polski Gus]

According to the EPA only about 35 percent of the total amount of recyclables get recycled , and when you take into account that only 8 percent of discarded plastics were recycled that year it's pretty dismal - based upon their recent last study.

I imagine it is even less now since the Chinese stopped taking most of it.

As commendable as recycling is, not dumping and pick up trash when you see it (to the best of your ability) is just as commendable or better.

If we could just get the China / India and third world countries to stop ocean and river dumping a lot of pollution issues would be solved. People just need to stop being slobs.

[JBsurfin]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

This is perhaps the back end of the forum topic of "Provisioning: Food & Drink."

We are rabid recyclers. At home, we easily put out twice as much recycling as trash. On the boat, we religiously separate out our recycling. Again, easily twice as much recycling as trash.

We are 10 weeks in to a 4-month cruise from the Chesapeake to the Bay of Fundy and back. We have successfully disposed of our recycling once. Every other place we have been, recycling has been relegated to the dumpster. And then we start separating again....

Are we missing something? Are we the only people in the world who think recycling is good? Why can't we get rid of our cans, plastics, glass, and paper?


Grrrrr

On the bright side, the Canadians let us in! It's been a fun trip.

All of NJ is mandated recycling. My marina has 2 dumpsters, one for general garbage, the other for recyclables. Co-mingled is allowed.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by JBsurfin

All of NJ is mandated recycling. My marina has 2 dumpsters, one for general garbage, the other for recyclables. Co-mingled is allowed.

Ditto for my marina, two bins that is. People seem pretty good at segregating their trash & recyclables from what I've seen. Also two separate trucks that arrive on different days to pick up each separate bin. Until recently that is. Now it's only one (regular trash) garbage truck which empties both bins. Hmmm . . . .

So I recently chatted up the driver and he claimed it's all dumped in the same place regardless of whether one or two trucks picks it up, and segregated from there. Hmmm . . . . So I asked what the point of having two separate bins was if both were dumped into a single truck, and his response was that it still helped segregate everything since trash & recyclables wound up in separate piles. Seemed a little wonky to me, but he also pointed out that only using one truck saved the city fuel and money. So there you go.

What may determine different practices in different areas may come down to, among other things, the proximity and capacity of a recycling center. In other words, feasibility and cost.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Exile

Ditto for my marina, two bins that is. People seem pretty good at segregating their trash & recyclables from what I've seen. Also two separate trucks that arrive on different days to pick up each separate bin. Until recently that is. Now it's only one (regular trash) garbage truck which empties both bins. Hmmm . . . .

So I recently chatted up the driver and he claimed it's all dumped in the same place regardless of whether one or two trucks picks it up, and segregated from there. Hmmm . . . . So I asked what the point of having two separate bins was if both were dumped into a single truck, and his response was that it still helped segregate everything since trash & recyclables wound up in separate piles. Seemed a little wonky to me, but he also pointed out that only using one truck saved the city fuel and money.

I've seen refuse trucks that have two or more separate sections. Some have like 2 "mouths" at the back, or a separate curbtender lift at the side. Could it have been that kind of truck?

[Lightwave99]

Think of bigger things. You are out sailing. What an opportunity to think of the bigness of life; how water connects us all; what is our purpose in life? Consider how much mental energy is wasted worrying about recycling. I am not saying we should not do it, but we certainly should not get wound up in it and fret. If you cannot recycle at this moment in your life, let it go and enjoy the beauty of what you are doing!

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I've seen refuse trucks that have two or more separate sections. Some have like 2 "mouths" at the back, or a separate curbtender lift at the side. Could it have been that kind of truck?

Unfortunately no. I thought the same thing so asked. Fwiw, there's only one recycling bin that people put everything from cardboard to plastic to glass to paper in. So maybe the thinking is that since all that stuff has to be sorted anyway, why not also sort it along with the regular trash? No, doesn't make much sense to me either.

At home I was told by several sources, including a former city engineer, that all the recycling often just gets dumped into the landfill along with the regular trash. In that case, however, the recycling center is a long ways away and so maybe not economical or feasible to transport it. But that's a small city in a rural county. The irony is that individuals are not allowed to dump their trash unless they also have something recyclable to toss as well, and are exempted from any fees if they are only dumping recyclables with no trash. So recycling is certainly encouraged by the city & county, and people are definitely complying. Why there's apparently no follow through is sorta strange.

When it comes to plastics, the problem may be that it's just not easily recyclable, with only a limited number of facilities that can handle it. That's one reason why I was curious what the labels on various plastics actually mean.