Recycling

[Edi]

All the global warming threads always seem to bring up the question of resources and who consumes how much and produces how much waste and all the arguments that come attached to that.

However, something that is rarely discussed and I'm interested in is how waste recycling is handled where you live.

Where I live, recycling of organic waste is mandatory for apartment houses, i.e. they must arrange for separate containers for bio-waste. Paper recycling in the same manner has been mandatory for years. Glass and milk/juice cartons also have recycling arranged, usually with one collection point in a neighborhood. Metal and cardboard recycling isn't arranged as effectively, the city only has a few places where you can take those and you usually need a car to go if you want to bother with it. I have the good fortune in this respect of living near one such site and within good public transport distance, because I don't have a car, and it'd be a pain in the ass oherwise.

I recycle nearly all of the organic waste (cat litter excepted, stinks too much so into the plastic bag and the normal garbage bin, and good riddance!), milk cartons, glass, and as much metallic waste as possible. Organic waste makes up something like half of the garbage, so it's no small deal, and all the organic waste gets collected and taken to a facility where they turn it into usable dirt in compostors. Glass and cartons are also easy, I live right next to a small shopping mall and it's all of fifty meters to the recycling containers. Metals I probably wouldn't bother with if we didn't have two cats, without the cat food tins there wouldn't be much metallic waste, but now it's usually once per month or something like that that I take all the metal tins to a collection point at a big shopping center nearby. A bit of extra effort, but I don't mind.

What irritates me is that plastic isn't recycled much at all, but it's not really practical, so too bad. Fortunately nearly all soft drinks come in reusable bottles you can take back to the store, and this is reinforced with a pawn system where you pay a separate, extra charge for the container and get refunded when you take it back. Ten cents for a 33 cl bottle, 20 for a half-liter and 40 for a 1.5 liter container, so there's incentive to do that, too. Results in something like 97% recycling rate for those, too.

So, how are things where you live? What is recycled, in what quantities, how easy is it, how is it arranged and do you recycle?

I'm asking out of curiosity, not because I want to moralize. I'm not some enviro-nazi tree-hugger and anybody who suggests that will be kicked in the nuts. I recycle stuff because I despise unnecessary waste and I'd rather that what I throw away be put to some good use instead of being carted off to a garbage dump. The fact that it has been made easy to do without any extra effort just makes it that much more attractive. Like I said, I'm not a die-hard environmentalist, but if I can easily do something that lessens the strain on the environment, I will. It doesn't cost me anything, and (whether warranted or not) gives me the feeling of having done something right.

Edi

[Boba Fett]

I agree with you Edi! It really makes me feel better.

On the other hand selective garbage collecting is not enough...

I usually try to minimize the size of the garbage also. I mean pressing out the air from the empty milkbox or put some other garbage into it.

A lot of people never do such things. But keep in mind the "size" of the garbage is another very important factor.

[Faram]

Same deal for me EDI.

Mandatory recycling.

Paper, Metall, Bio Stuff, Plastic (burnable and nonburnable), Glass

Not so big of a hassle really once you get used to it...

[Vympel]

At least in Sydney, we get three bins

The red is the smallest- it's for the 'classic' garbage

The green and yellow are much larger, the green is for (you guessed it) garden waste, and the yellow is for all manner of recylcables- plastic/glass bottles, paper etc.

It's good.

[Edi]

On the other hand selective garbage collecting is not enough...

I usually try to minimize the size of the garbage also. I mean pressing out the air from the empty milkbox or put some other garbage into it.

A lot of people never do such things. But keep in mind the "size" of the garbage is another very important factor.

I do that too. Empty milk cartons get compacted and packed into an uncompacted one until no more fit. Like I said, unnecessary waste irritates me, so I try to get as much capacity out of the garbage bags as I can, as well. Consequently I have the added irritation of having plastic bags up the wazoo at home. Have to start carrying a couple with me so I won't need to get new ones at stores. Learned the pack-rat mentality from my dad, the times after WW2 were pretty hard here, there was shortage of everything and he grew up in the middle of that period.

Anyway, the compactness of trash is an issue. I don't remember how many places in the world got footage of one Finnish town that got overrun by rats last year, but it was directly related to this. The trash dump was being compacted because of some issue or another, which forced the methane produced by decay out from under the trash and displaced oxygen at ground level, so all the rats fled for their lives and invaded the town. It was all over the news, even down in Australia, IIRC, and that's about as far away from us as you can get, distance-wise anyway.

Plastic (burnable and nonburnable)

We don't have that yet, unfortunately. There's some plastic recycling containers at the big sites, but products aren't marked as to what's burnable and what's not, so too much hassle with plastics.

Not so big of a hassle really once you get used to it...

No, and it actually makes it somewhat less of a hassle and reduces the stink problem of garbage in summer so long as most people take the effort to sort their trash. Fortunately they do, at least in the house I live in.

Edi

[TrailerParkJawa]

So, how are things where you live? What is recycled, in what quantities, how easy is it, how is it arranged and do you recycle?

There is no recycling in my condo complex, Im not sure why. However, at my dad's house where I used to live, we had bins. Bottles, cans, paper, etc. Recently, the city of San Jose went to a one bin policy. Meaning you dump all your non-organic stuff into one bin. It gets seperated at the recycling facility.
Once a week they will come by and pick up all your yard clippings from the curb.

What irritates me is that plastic isn't recycled much at all, but it's not really practical, so too bad.

Plastics take up a very small amount of landfill space compared to lawn clippings, paper, and other stuff. That is one reason why some places do not recycle them.

The trash dump was being compacted because of some issue or another, which forced the methane produced by decay out from under the trash and displaced oxygen at ground level,

I had the odd job of running a flaring stack for a closed landfill. You would be amazed at how much gas even a small landfill produces 10 years after it has been closed. You would also be amazed to know that if you did down to repair a well, you can find newspapers that are 15 years old that are still legible.

It is very important to keep O2 levels in a landfill extremely low. Underground fires can and do happen. Once they start they are hard to put out.

[Tsyroc]

There's no setup for recycling at my condo complex either. We just have one dumpster. I do try to minimize the size of my garbage by smashing things down but in general I've been too lazy to work out some other way to recycle stuff.

For the most part Tucson as a city is pretty good about recycling. They recently added a second bin to all the people who have their trash picked up by the city. Most of the private companies had been doing it for a while though.

I had heard that there are some problems with the cost of recycling in our area. Some of it has to do with a lack of market for recycled certain recycled goods and the rest is the cost of doing the recycling.

One thing I wish Arizona did to encourage recycling is to have deposits on cans and bottles. I grew up in a state where deposits on glass bottles had been around for a long time and then when I was in junior high the state switched to a 5¢ deposit on all bottles and cans. I think it really helped clean up the state. It is a pain in the ass as a retailer to have to accept can returns, it's nasty too, but living here where people think they can just toss stuff in the desert I really think the deposit is worth it.

[Slartibartfast]

We get to throw glass bottles at old ladies trying to cross the street.

[InnerBrat]

As a flat, out heart is in in, but we're all very lazy. Our huge (for a student/graduate flat) kitchen is bogged down iwth empty wine bottles.
There is no council-organised collection of anything, although my parents' CC collect paper, which I( would love to have collected, considering how much I get through!

[salm]

we HAVE to recycle about everything, and that´s good.

we´ve got paper and cardboard container, a bio container, glass and can containers and since the beginning of this year cans containing drinks have to be returnable. there´s a 25 cents on them.
then there´s the "gelbe sack" in which you put everything which has got the "gruene punkt" on it which is mainly plastic stuff such as the packing.

[InnerBrat]

They were at one point going to charge us for the rubbish we put out - for each bag over 1 per household. REGARDLESS of the size of the house or how many people live there.

But there's no door to door collection. Ever tried humping boxes and boxes of paper and glass through the city?