[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Have You Noticed That Seismic Activity Has Been Going Nuts All Over The Globe

The Vax was meant to CAUSE cancer.... listen to this - this clip from RFK Jr's site

CNN Immediately Cuts Off Panelist Who Tells the Truth About the LA Riots

Army Secretary declares war on the military industrial complex

Former Israeli PM Threatens U.S. Will Get 'A Re-Run Of 9-11' If It Doesn't Fight Israel's Wars

7 Examples Of The “Mostly Peaceful” Los Angeles Riots Becoming Even More “Peaceful”

Biden Admin and ActBlue Funded Group Behind Abolish ICE Protests in LA

Murderers, rapists, gang members: ICE busts 12 of LA's 'worst' illegal alien criminals amid riots

LA Mayor Karen Bass Threatens Feds: Withdraw From LA Or the Violence Will Escalate –

Woman points gun at police and finds out

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Ronny Jackson Accuses Biden Doctor Kevin O’Connor Of Sexual Misconduct

WHAT YOU’RE WITNESSING IN LOS ANGELES ISN’T JUST UNREST—IT’S MORAL COLLAPSE

Anna Paulina Luna Exposes the Guy Behind the Anti-ICE Riots

Mike Huckabee Working To Keep Netanyahu in Power

Israeli Military and Israeli-Backed Gang Shoot Aid Seekers in Gaza, Killing 14

Only 68 Building Permits Issued for Pacific Palisades After Wildfires Destroyed 6800 Structures

Violent Rioters Fire Off Exploding Projectiles at Police Horses Use Fireworks and Explosives to Attack Police

ICE Just Shattered Records With One Massive Operation That Has Democrats Fuming

Nolte: Insurrectionist Democrats Plan Another Summer of Blue City-Riots

Violent riots have now been reported in over 30 American cities. Heres a full list:

Mass shooter opened fire at graduation party was an migrant who was busted in LA ICE raids:

Cash Jordan: ICE Raids Home Depot... as California Collapses

Silver Is Finally Soaring: Here's Why

New 4um Interface Coming Soon

Attack of the Dead-2025.

Canada strips Jewish National Fund of charitable status

Minnesota State Rep. Vang just admitted that she is an ILLEGAL ALIEN.

1100% increase in neurological events since the roll-out of Covid mRNA

16 Things That Everyone Needs To Know About Violent Far-Left Revolution In Los Angeles

Undercover video in Arizona alleges ongoing consumer fraud by Fairlife


Miscellaneous
See other Miscellaneous Articles

Title: An expert reveals why you've been recycling wrong this whole time
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/an-expe ... ecycling-wrong-this-whole-time
Published: Jul 8, 2015
Author: FIONA MACDONALD
Post Date: 2015-07-08 06:29:35 by Tatarewicz
Keywords: None
Views: 231
Comments: 1

ScienceAlert...

Most of us go to great lengths to recycle our products, and feel pretty good when we dump our old envelopes and coffee cups into the designated paper bin instead of the regular trash. But now an expert in waste management has filled Vicky Gan from City Lab in on what actually ends up being recycled, and what holds up the process, and it turns out we've been doing it wrong all along.

To encourage people to recycle, most cities around the world give homes and workplaces bins broken down by plastic, paper or glass recycling bins. In some suburbs, these have been replaced by 'catch-all' recycling bins that take all these materials.

This has worked in one sense, because it gets people to recycle more and throw away less, but it's also led to much more contamination in the system. Because in reality, not all papers, plastic and glassware is made equal, and there's a lot more that dictates whether something is recyclable or not.

In fact, in Washington DC in the US, introducing larger residential recycling bins last year led to a 50 percent drop in the amount of profit that the city made from selling off its recyclables, according to a report by Aaron C. Davis over at The Washington Post. And they actually had to pay more to filter through the bins.

“By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins - while demanding almost no sorting by consumers - the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperilling the economics of the whole system,” Davis wrote.

So what are the contaminants that are so detrimental to the system? We've listed below the ones we've been most guilty of.

Paper, cardboard and polystyrene food containers

Any of these containers that have been contaminated with food are a big no-no for recycling. Which means no pizza boxes, even if you've gone to the effort of scraping off all the food scraps.

This all comes down to oil soaking into the paper fibres. "Since the paper is mixed with water in a large churner, the oil eventually separates from the paper fibres. The oil does not dissolve in the water, instead it mixes in with the paper. The eventually result is new paper will [have] oil splotches," writes Stanford University's Buildings & Grounds Maintenance team.

Plastic and glass containers, on the other hand, are usually good to go in the recycling bin if they've been rinsed.

Plastic bags

These are a pain because they tend to below off the conveyer belt during processing and clog up all the other machinery in a recycling facility.

"At the material recovery facility in San Francisco, they have to shut down all the machines every night for at least an hour to go in and manually pick out all the pieces of plastic bag that have gone in there and jammed up the various machines,” Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist at the Natural Resources Defence Council in the US, told Gan over at City Lab. Bottom line? Put them in the regular bin.

Paper cups

Turns out, these aren't actually paper. Most of the paper cups we buy our coffee in are actually coated with plastic, as Gan explains, which means they can't be processed properly with paper or plastic and can't be recycled. Same goes for Tyvek envelopes used for express post in the US.

Condiment packets

These are either made up of plastic or an aluminium-plastic blend. Either way, no one really wants them. “There’s nobody recycling those right now," Hoover told Gan.

Paper scraps

Sure, these are recyclable. But when they're put into catch-all recycling bins, they're pretty much impossible to sift out from all the other plastic and glass waste. This means that they - and everything around them - end up being thrown into the trash at the recycling plant anyway. A handy way to get them recycled is to staple them shut into a paper envelope marked 'shredded paper', says Hoover.

Find out more in Gan's report over at City Lab. And for an explanation of how recycling actually works, check out the episode of SciShow below:

Read these next:

Sydney installs machines that offer bus tickets in exchange for recycling 124-year-old patent reveals the proper way to use toilet paper Turns out we’ve been pooping all wrong, according to science

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)

So can any of this recycling work efficiently?

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2015-07-08   10:09:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest


[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]