Two weeks ago, I was in Massachusetts to see my daughter and son-in-law, whom I didn't really need to see, and my delicious grandchildren, whom I very much needed to see. (My daughter set me up with a self-test/swab kit, I waited five days to test/swab myself, and two days later, I got the good news: negative. It was all very creepy, especially the jetBlue flight that was 85% capacity coming home, and the "Trump" red baseball cap-wearing guy in my row. Not only was he a Trump supporter, but he still is, and he wants everyone else to know about it? No faint and lingering sense of embarrassment, right?)
Anyway, I cheated a little. My daughter wanted me to accompany her to the phenomenon that some Massachusetts residents call the town "dump," so I left the house with her. The Commonwealth wanted me to quarantine for two weeks. If you don't know my daughter, then you don't know that the answer is always yes. Or at least OK.
It was some time after that that I backed myself into an unwelcome conversation about recycling. I simply asked my daughter -- it seemed like a simple and innocent question; you know, just an intellectual inquiry -- if she was aware of the claim that recycling doesn't really happen in this country, and that we're sort of collectively kidding ourselves by separating our refuse into "garbage," that will go into landfills, and "recycling," that will be processed, and made into something else. My daughter was very clear on this point: she doesn't want to know about it, and she'd rather keep having something like confidence in the broad American solid waste arrangement. Or seduction. Or scam. Or whatever it is.
But there really is such a claim, or rumor, and I decided to see if I could find out the, I don't know, truth(?) of the matter.
Since I was sort of perhaps selfishly most interested in us, for the moment, I reached out to WastePro. I told the receptionist what I wanted to know, and she immediately reassured me that what we designate for recycling is absolutely in fact recycled. Her proof of this was that WastePro takes our recyclables to a recycling receiving operation. I didn't bother to interrogate her further as to what this operation does with what's taken there, since she clearly wouldn't know, but I did ask for the phone number of this company. She didn't know. How about the name of it? She didn't know that, either. Dade or Broward? They have them in both counties. But she didn't know the name or the phone number, right? Right.
I looked up Waste Management, which is a massive solid waste handler in this country. It's based in Dallas. There's a phone number for them, but no one answers.
Wellesley, Massachusetts, has an extensive program, like Medfield, where my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren live, does. So I called Wellesley. I have to call back tomorrow, because the guy who might know isn't there today. I called Medfield, too, and I left a message with the town administrator. (I suspect that's the same position as what we call the manager.) I said what I wanted to know, and asked for a call back. I might get one, or I might not.
It occurred to me there is another way to try to figure this out. I "googled" "does solid waste get recycled in the US now?" The short answer is no. The longer explanation is here: https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/
So I will, in fact, call Wellesley back tomorrow. And I'll wait to see if I hear from Medfield today. They'll tell me whatever they want to tell me, or whatever they think I want to hear, sort of like the WastePro receptionist did.
But I really think the fact is that we have separate solid waste receptacles, and we divide our refuse into what we think is "garbage" and what we think will be recycled, but we're kidding ourselves. My daughter doesn't care if she's kidding herself. She just feels better to believe that stuff gets recycled, and that products that say they're made from recycled fibers and materials really are.
Maybe there's no great harm done. It's not that much work to segregate garbage into that that's aimed for a landfill, and that that's going to be processed, and come back as something else. Although one reason a lot of stuff isn't recycled is that it's contaminated, like by food residue. And it's a certain amount of work, and takes a certain amount of water, to remove that food residue. And that's for containers which would in theory be recycled anyway, which many wouldn't, even if they were clean. (Read the linked article.)
I remember when we started with WastePro, and they told us to clean what we wanted recycled, and don't include lids. Lids are small, and they clog the separation machinery. It seemed that simple. Did we dutifully clean various containers, and throw the lids in the landfill garbage? Maybe. Maybe not. But it now turns out it doesn't matter. It's all going to be dumped in landfills, or burned, anyway. Oh, well.
I understand how your daughter feels. I want to believe in lots of things that seem right, and I want to be a good citizen. However ..... That's where I get stuck as a taxpayer and commissioner. I'd like straight answers, too, including, "Are we required by law?"
ReplyDeleteI, too, have family in Boston and surrounding areas, including on Cape Cod. When I visit my sister, I like going to the dump. That also makes me feel like a good citizen, and they have an area where folks drop off their shit that I might think is fabulous! My sister has left and taken furniture and household stuff, as if it's a free resale shop. During a recent commission meeting on the matter of solid waste, I mentioned the option of having centralized recycling where residents would take that stuff and toss it in separate bins. Not trash or yard debris; just glass, cans, cardboard, etc. That might save us money, require one less truck on our streets, and move us one step closer to being good citizens. Lots of progressive places require their citizens to be "good." Interesting concept that our little Oasis in the Heart of Miami would be one such place in the mess of Miami.
That was part of my daughter's thinking: it seemed that taking stuff to the dump, and separating the "recycling," was the "good" thing to do. It was a reflection of being a "good citizen." But that all goes away if all that carefully separated stuff gets thrown together, and deposited in the same landfill. If I remember correctly, the last thing you said you wanted to believe in was Santa Claus. I get it. It's charming and cute. But as much as you value what's "right," you should also rely on what's true. (Please give me your parents' phone number. I want to talk to them. Either they break the news to you, or I do.)
DeleteIf you knew for a fact (assuming you don't now know it) that all your careful washing and separating, to create a bin of "recyclables," was for naught, because nothing gets recycled, would you still do it? Are you like my daughter, and you cling to the idea, even though there's no reality behind it?
If you read the linked article, you'll see that going far back, we shipped our recyclables to China, until they wouldn't take it any more. Then, we shipped it to other countries, until they wouldn't take it, either. Now, a lot of it gets shipped back here, so we can put it in landfills.
I'm completely with you, if not perhaps even ahead of you, in wanting BPers to be good citizens. Pretending that our refuse gets recycled is no longer an example of being a good citizen. If it ever turned out that some small fraction, like glass items, really do get recycled, then I would certainly agree that we should clean our used glass containers, and separate them for different treatment. But until then, I can't see why we bother with any of it any more.
Add to the mix, the legal requirements for the village. I don't know what they are, but I'm waiting to find out. We have a global responsibility, which may limited by our government. We also have fiscal responsibilities here locally. But, imagine (assuming recycling isn't a Russian hoax), what a cool, progressive community BP would be if residents sorted their own recyclables at a central location on their way out of the village or on a walk ... and if we saved money at the same time. Good stewards of the earth, fiscally responsible. Like the offspring of a socialist, lefty Democrat and a tightwad Republican! And, imagine the community-building when folks met at the village "dump." (In this case, "dump" would simply be bins.) A cheap libtard can dream!
ReplyDeleteFred,
ReplyDeleteI read the article you linked from the Columbia U Earth Institute. This jives with the info provided by Waste Pro at a Commission meeting approx. two years ago. Waste Pro related that, China had stopped importing/buying recycling materials from the USA and Waste Pro further explained that they now had no economical means to dispose of them. However, my recollection is, they continued on several occasions to tell us that they are recycling the materials.
The only conclusion to draw from this is that the all or most of the recycling materials are going to the landfill as you suspect and not recycled.
The article clearly explains that single stream recycling does not work, I never understood how it could, now we find out it doesn't.
So, it appears the system is a scam and the environment is screwed.
I don't expect you to get any calls back, if you do likely there will be no straight answers.
Chuck
Chuck,
DeleteI was a little unfair in my dismissal of American recycling. Here's one paragraph from the linked article: "Sixty-six percent of discarded paper and cardboard was recycled, 27 percent of glass, and 8 percent of plastics were recycled. Glass and metal can be recycled indefinitely; paper can be recycled five to seven times before it’s too degraded to be made into “new” paper; plastic can only be recycled once or twice—and usually not into a food container—since the polymers break down in the recycling process."
This was from 2017, and it asserts that three years ago, some materials (2/3 of it, if it was paper) did get recycled. The article didn't make clear if this was net, and was apart from the paper, metal, glass, and plastics that were not recyclable, because they were contaminated, or because they had undergone enough cycles that they couldn't be recycled any more, or if this was gross, and was the proportion of all materials set aside for recycling.
In any event, the article also talks about how at first, we sent everything to China, but later, the Chinese would no longer take it, and we found some other countries, but then, those countries wouldn't take it, either, and it just gets destroyed or buried. That does seem to be the prevailing disposition of it now.
I suppose the point I didn't get around to clarifying was that if stuff doesn't get recycled, I wish someone would just tell us that, so we could dump everything together, not waste time and water (I know, I said I wanted to use more water anyway. But I don't simply want to waste it.) cleaning it, and stop the group delusion. Even better, maybe we in this country, now that we might be on the verge of having a real government, could ramp up recycling. It's a good idea (which is why my daughter and Mac Kennedy and others insist upon continuing to believe in it, as Rafa, too, summarizes below), and it would likely "create jobs." There's nothing wrong with that. We would have less contamination of the atmosphere, less debris in the oceans, more work for more people to do, and maybe even a realization that we use too much packaging and create too much stuff that has to be discarded, even if it could and would be recycled.
And in the meantime, if people had good enough reason to believe in recycling -- including if we really did it, and if there wasn't this image of just dumping it on Asian people -- maybe people would be more careful how they handle what could be intended for recycling. Rafa discusses this problem, too.
Fred
We had a presentation at work from a recycling company (possibly WastePro) and they did a great job with a PowerPoint about what to do to be responsible in recycling.
ReplyDeleteThen they showed the actual things Miami-Dade residents toss into these bins including tires, car engines, paint cans, and all matter of contaminated food containers and jars. And that even in spite of their best efforts to sort, clean and ship materials to China and other countries, these buyers have determined our goods are unsuitable.
Yes. The resale market for recycled materials from the USA overseas has dried up.
The big lesson I took away from the presentation was once contaminated materials to get thrown into the truck the entire truck is considered contaminated. And in Miami Dade County we can’t count on people to follow all the guidelines. And there’s no longer a market for the stuff (clean or otherwise). We collectively suck at just following the basic rules.
So in conclusion, this appears to be only a feel-good fiction we participate in so we sleep better at night. And to make things worse, meticulous me is wasting clean water rinsing plastics that are heading to landfills.
Buzz kill I know. Crazy thing is... we’ll keep on acting as if we are doing something responsible because ... hope.
All I can say Rafa is, YUP, that about sums it up!
ReplyDeleteChuck, we’ll miss you and Roxanne when you head north. Thanks for your community service!
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteBeing a millennial I have recycled literally my entire life. I’m my house we don’t use plastic bags from Publix or anywhere else. No plastic water bottles, ziplock, or containers. We use glass containers, wax paper and little paper bags that act similar to ziplock. We do have a regimented recycle program here as well. Even through all that we do create a lot of trash. I would say our worst offense is getting take out. On a side note, when we lived in Dallas we did have a community recycle drop off that worked our well for us.
ReplyDelete