recycling myths

There is no such thing as recycling.    The pop media and consumers are slowly (very! slowly) waking up to this reality.  I first posted that statement in 2005 after my internship with Dr. Michael Braungart at his EPEA office in Hamburg.  Only steel and nylon66 can be truly 'recycled', everything else is down-cycled. 

That milk container, water bottle, plastic straw, etc. that you throw in the recyle bin ends up (if you're lucky) being turned into repurposed products such as plastic wood, plastic whatever - but at a HUGE expense.  It's cheaper to make a new plastic bottle than to make one out of recycled bottles. Hence, you'll continue to see a six pack of plastic water bottles selling for $1.  yikes!  

And now comes an undercover report of Asian plastic recycling operations that show the reality of this 'recycling' process.  



Marketplace journalists go undercover overseas and pose as recycling brokers to expose the lucrative plastic recycling business. We reveal that Malaysian companies are willing to break the law to buy Canadian plastic and show how some of it is dumped and burned in illegal landfills, where the toxic fumes and run-off appear to be making people sick. Back in Canada, we buy nine tonnes of plastic and secretly track where big companies are taking it. Will it actually get recycled?
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The best thing you can do is to not buy plastics - use bulk, provide your own containers and avoid buying anything in plastic clamshells, plastic containers etc. Trader Joes (and Aldi's) are probably the leaders in consumer retail stores where you can find a lot of stuff in GLASS rather than plastic containers.

I once lived in Munich for a few months and decided to walk 3 km to an Aldi store with the intention of
buying all plastic containers so that I wouldn't break any glass jars on the long walk back. Guess what!! there were NO (absolutely not one!) plastic jars in the supermarket. I had no problem carrying the glass containers back.

On the way I noticed all the large dumpsters overflowing with glass containers and i had a BIG smile: talk about a circular economy: i was carrying food in glass bottles and after i consumed the food the empty glass jar would end up in these dumpsters where the city/contractor would pick up the empty glass jars, clean & crush them and process them back into new glass jars to be filled with food which can be bought - with minimal waste, some energy & transport efforts.

Germany has a recylcing rate of almost 75%! wow, i think the USA is around 20%, and California 40% And these rates are going way down, now that China is no longer accepting our garbage.


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