Matthew Mariola
“Why aren’t pizza boxes recyclable?” “Plastic bags have the recycling symbol on them … why can’t I put them in the recycling bin?” “Why don’t they take glass anymore?” I hear questions like these all the time across campus. Recycling seems like it should be simple, but the truth is more complicated.
Before anything else, you need to understand that recycling is a business. Recycling handlers are not taking your tin cans and cardboard out of the goodness of their hearts. They have to clean and sort our waste prod- ucts and then turn around and sell them as raw materials, or their business model fails.
What is and isn’t recyclable is not just a technological question, it’s a logistical and economic one, too. For example, the technology definitely exists to turn a plastic fork, or a plastic bag, or a yogurt container, or the cap from your water bottle back into plastic pellets, and reform it into a new piece of plastic. But is it logistically feasible? Will their giant sorting machines catch these tiny items?Go to YouTube and search for “single-stream recycling facility” and you will see what I mean: they are huge facilities with whirring belts and cogs and giant magnets, processing massive mounds of materials every day. A plastic fork is going to literally fall through the cracks and end up as waste. Plastic bags can bind up the machines and cause a shutdown.
And does it make sense economically? For example, even if we could get perfectly clean glass bottles to the recycling facility, the price currently being paid for crushed recycled glass is very low. When you combine that with the difficulty of dealing with broken glass, it just doesn’t make sense for our handler to take glass anymore.
The idea behind single-stream collection (which we use across campus) was to remove the inconvenience of sorting and allow us to throw any recyclable object into a recycling bin. But that has made us lazy, complacent or perhaps oblivious. We throw all kinds of things into the recycling bin that are not recyclable. The thin plastic wrapping around your package of crackers is not recyclable. Plastic bags are not recyclable via single-stream. Pieces of pound cake and banana peels are not recyclable! Yet all of these items regularly get deposited into recycling bins around campus (I know this because my students do annual audits). They contaminate the entire load of recyclables, which causes it to be diverted to the landfill — all that work for nothing! — and causes our handler to hit the College with a hefty fine.
So what can I do?
Be aware of what is truly recyclable, or, what Waste Management accepts in its single stream bins. This means, at present: No glass, no food waste (clean those containers out), no plastic bags (yes, this includes garbage bags!) and no plastic wrappers (candy bars, crackers, shrink wrap).
What you SHOULD recycle is:
Aluminum cans, paper and clean cardboard (no pizza boxes), and clean, empty plastic bottles (labels can stay on; lids should come off).
We have to move away from what the industry calls “wishcycling” – just tossing in anything and assuming it’ll magically get sorted out. Instead, if you’re holding that bit of waste and wondering if it goes in the blue bin, remember the new slogan:
If in doubt, keep it out!
Contamination is the problem. The solution is literally in our hands.