Updated Recycling Standards for Maplewood

Robert_Casotto said:
So plastic bottles ok but plastic bags not ok.  Institutional plasticism.

Plastic bottles are OK only if they are (a) number 1 or number 2 plastic and  (b) clean.  Unlabeled plastic bottles and plastic bottles numbered higher than # 2 are not recyclable any longer.  Neither are number 1 or number 2 plastic bottles that contain residue of any substance other than water that they may have previously contained.  Plastic bags were not OK in the past despite the fact that a fair number of them were ending up in recycling bins or were being used to hold recycling.  Only exception to this were the clear plastic bags used for shredded paper.  These bags are no longer allowed and shredded paper is no longer recyclable either.

Just a general FYI - I wasn't sure if the cardboard tubes inside rolls of paper towels and toilet paper were still acceptable (didn't see them on either list), so I called DPW and they said those items are still acceptable for recycling.

Robert_Casotto said:
So plastic bottles ok but plastic bags not ok.  Institutional plasticism.

 #1 and #2 plastic only.

LA Times: Environmentally minded Californians love to recycle — but it's no longer doing any good

Some highlights: 

• “People are engaged in wish recycling,” says Mark Oldfield, public affairs director at CalRecycle, which runs the state’s recycling program. “They think: ‘This should be recycled. I’m going to put it in the bin.’”
• Recyclers these days don’t want items with mixed material such as paper and plastic, or cardboard and tape. It doesn’t pay to tear the stuff apart. Off to the landfill.
• Eric Potashner, a government relations official for Recology, a curbside hauler that sorts San Francisco Bay Area trash for recycling, says, “There’s no market for a lot of stuff in the blue bin. What we can’t recycle we take to a landfill.”
• “A year ago,” Potashner says, “we were getting $100 a ton for newsprint. Now we’re getting an average $5…. Revenue has fallen off the cliff.”
• In January, China began barring “contaminated” material it once accepted. And under China’s new rules, if something is one-half of 1% contaminated, it’s too impure for recycling.
  “This policy change is already starting to have adverse impacts on California,” CalRecycle declared last month in a bulletin, “and is resulting in more material being stockpiled at solid waste facilities and recycling centers or disposed of in landfills.”

WRT my post just above, I've always wondered about how they don't tell you to remove tape from corrugated cardboard boxes. Clean corrugated is valuable and they want you to recycle it, but the tape must ruin the value. (Note Amazon uses paper tape that I assume is not a problem.)

All of this makes me wonder about the value of any recycling. Look at the stuff they actually want us to recycle. It's exactly the stuff that would be stable and harmless in a landfill. A huge amount of money would be saved if we just trashed it all. (Maybe except aluminum.)

I suspect the companies that accepted our recycling in China were using labor on their side to sort the recycling and they must have decided that it's no longer worth it. Without this, single stream recycling is probably pretty much dead. I suspect most municipalities will have to switch to something more complicated (or keep the same service at a whole different level of expense.)

what about all these stupid lawn signs.  recyclable?

nope lawn signs not recyclable

qrysdonnell said:
I suspect the companies that accepted our recycling in China were using labor on their side to sort the recycling and they must have decided that it's no longer worth it. Without this, single stream recycling is probably pretty much dead. I suspect most municipalities will have to switch to something more complicated (or keep the same service at a whole different level of expense.)

 nope, all sorting was done here....if china were to sort on their side they would be importing garbage as contamination levels were as high as 30%

Question:  A neighbor insists that gift wrapping paper can’t be recycled because of chemicals in it. 

Anybody know anything about this???

Rather than use wrapping paper, place gift in a reusable shopping bag.  Add tissue paper that can be reused as well.

joan_crystal said:

Robert_Casotto said:
So plastic bottles ok but plastic bags not ok.  Institutional plasticism.

Plastic bottles are OK only if they are (a) number 1 or number 2 plastic and  (b) clean.  Unlabeled plastic bottles and plastic bottles numbered higher than # 2 are not recyclable any longer.  Neither are number 1 or number 2 plastic bottles that contain residue of any substance other than water that they may have previously contained.  Plastic bags were not OK in the past despite the fact that a fair number of them were ending up in recycling bins or were being used to hold recycling.  Only exception to this were the clear plastic bags used for shredded paper.  These bags are no longer allowed and shredded paper is no longer recyclable either.

 Not true. There was a period of time that plastic bags were in fact ok. I know for a long time they weren't. I am quite friendly with the former DPW head. The reason they weren't is that as mentioned above they messed up the machinery. Then the rules changed and they were allowed until this latest change which now doesn't take them or any other plastic above #2.

For what it's worth, I put my plastic bags and #5 in a separate container and bring both to Whole Foods. I know other markets take the bags but only Whole Foods had the GimmeFive bin for the #5 plastics which are quite ubiquitous making us most of the other types of plastic containers like the yogurt containers and chinese food containers.

Can we recycle our stupid blue plastic recycling bins?   Pretty soon there will be no use for them.  

joan_crystal said:
Rather than use wrapping paper, place gift in a reusable shopping bag.  Add tissue paper that can be reused as well.

 Not necessary - I usually use the comics from the daily and Sunday Ledger and sometimes slick ads from the NYTimes. 

Not asking for myself...

Comics and ad  sheets from the Times are both recyclable.  Other wrapping materials will depend on what they are made of.

As I said, I was NOT asking for myself - I’m aware that newspapers are recyclable.  

So the takeaway is that commercial wrapping paper apparently isn’t...

That is not the takeaway.  Those replying to this thread probably don't know the answer.  Suggest speaking with DPW or better yet someone on the Green Team.

Scully said:

As I said, I was NOT asking for myself - I’m aware that newspapers are recyclable.  


So the takeaway is that commercial wrapping paper apparently isn’t...

 In my opinion the takeaway from the new rules is that the default position should be that regardless of the object in question just throw it in the trash.  Even if your wrapping paper is recyclable, the chances that it will be spoiled at some later point in the process are VERY high.  

It seems to me that recycling only happens now because someone can make money from the process.    Until that dynamic is changed all the effort put forth by conscientious people will be fruitless.  We will have to start paying for recycling one way or the other.  

Red_Barchetta said:

Even if your wrapping paper is recyclable, the chances that it will be spoiled at some later point in the process are VERY high.  

 This is what this thread has me thinking about. Even if I manage to get everything right in my own recycling (which is certainly not a given), what are the chances that every household on my collection route will get it all right? Not to mention all the households on all the other routes that will eventually get lumped together with mine?

I'm not at a point where I'm ready to give up on the program, but I am starting to feel like my efforts may be futile.

BrickPig said:

Red_Barchetta said:Even if your wrapping paper is recyclable, the chances that it will be spoiled at some later point in the process are VERY high.  

 This is what this thread has me thinking about. Even if I manage to get everything right in my own recycling (which is certainly not a given), what are the chances that every household on my collection route will get it all right? Not to mention all the households on all the other routes that will eventually get lumped together with mine?
I'm not at a point where I'm ready to give up on the program, but I am starting to feel like my efforts may be futile.

 +1

Well written comment, and I totally agree with what you said.

Recycling (in general) only works well if there is a market for the materials.  We continue to debate how recycling should be done when we really should be discussing how to reduce these use of these materials.

Agree that our emphasis should be on reducing what needs to be disposed of rather than debating what is or is not recyclable under the new standards.  Thus my comment on the advantage of gift bag and tissue paper (which can be reused many times) rather than gift wrap of any sort including comics and other newsprint.   If we reduce the amount of packaging we purchase rather than lamenting whether something comes in #1 or #5 plastic containers, we will be going further to push for a cleaner environment.

It needs to be the corporations that package and market these products that need to reduce the amount of products sold in disposable containers. As always, the burden is put on the individual and that is silly, inefficient and false.

EBennett said:
Once again the recycling truck has picked up my neighbors' recycling that was in plastic bags.  How do we let the town know that the recycling company is ignoring the new guidelines?

 does this also mean the blue recycling specific bags? I've said this before but the reality is that if it's not tied up, it will end up all over the streets. 

wendy said:
It needs to be the corporations that package and market these products that need to reduce the amount of products sold in disposable containers. As always, the burden is put on the individual and that is silly, inefficient and false.

 The corporations package it this way because they believe the customer prefers it.  It is a vicious cycle, like cheap clothing driving jobs offshore or cheap books make Jeff Bezos richer.  It needs to be addressed on three fronts.  We as consumers need to be willing to accept and demand packaging that is, at least in the short term, less convenient and more expensive.  Corporations have to be more responsible for the long-term effects of their packaging decisions.  Government has to incentivize more sustainable packaging through regulation, cost consequences (taxes or surcharges), and pull incentives like funding research into more sustainable materials.  A carbon tax, for example, could drive down use of plastics by making petrochemical inputs more costly and could fund research into alternatives. 

joan_crystal said:
Agree that our emphasis should be on reducing what needs to be disposed of rather than debating what is or is not recyclable under the new standards.  Thus my comment on the advantage of gift bag and tissue paper (which can be reused many times) rather than gift wrap of any sort including comics and other newsprint.   If we reduce the amount of packaging we purchase rather than lamenting whether something comes in #1 or #5 plastic containers, we will be going further to push for a cleaner environment.

I can’t agree that a gift bag would be preferable to wrapping with comics.  

You’re going to buy a paper daily anyway whereas the gift bag and tissue paper are additional unnecessary purchases and not always returned to you for reuse.

Using a newspaper  (which you were going to buy and read anyway) instead of additionaly buying bags and tissue paper reduces waste...

Purchasing a hard copy of the newspaper each day rather than reading the newspaper on line will result in more waste than one would produce by purchasing a gift bag and tissue paper.  A gift bag is far more likely to be reused by the recipient than comics used to wrap a gift would be.  

at the end of the day....everything goes to the landfill whether it is reused, recycled etc..... recycling is not the cure all answer everybody believes it is...

Relevant piece from CBS Sunday Morning.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/piling-up-drowning-in-a-sea-of-plastic/

joan_crystal said:
Purchasing a hard copy of the newspaper each day rather than reading the newspaper on line will result in more waste than one would produce by purchasing a gift bag and tissue paper.  A gift bag is far more likely to be reused by the recipient than comics used to wrap a gift would be.  

You do realize that I’m not buying a newspaper just to wrap presents, right?

Since I intend to continue reading the news (shared with 3 adults) anyway - buying additional gift bags would indeed be, in my case, waste...