Encouragement Without Education Backfires On Recycling Efforts (gizmodo.com) 220
Longtime Slashdot reader Alok writes: High contamination in recycled garbage, such as plastic bags mixed in with the recyclable plastic waste, are causing major problems for sustainability efforts in U.S. This has been exposed as a big problem recently, due to recent stricter China import rules on importing waste materials that led to changes in the sourcing pipelines. Cities such as Philadelphia have ended up processing nearly half of the recycling garbage using waste-to-energy incinerators instead, where they're being burned alongside garbage. "Today, the average U.S. recyclable load is about 25 percent contaminated," reports Gizmodo. "To make their commodities saleable, material recovery facilities started hiring more 'pickers' and buying more equipment to remove items that shouldn't be in the recycling, in addition to slowing down their processing lines." [C]ommunities like Philadelphia are going have to generate cleaner material that is more marketable," Scott McGrath, Environmental Planning Director at the City of Philadelphia Streets Department, said, adding that the city will be focusing more of its efforts on educating residents about what can and cannot be recycled. McGrath said if Philly can convince residents to stop tossing plastic bags in the recycling bin, that alone would be a big deal.
Anne Germain, Vice President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association, an industry trade group, said public education was something the recycling industry as a whole had let slide over the years. "We were more about encouraging recycling than saying stop doing this or that," she said. This, combined with the widespread adoption of single stream, has made the public increasingly enthusiastic about throwing everything in their blue bins, resulting in a lot of what Center for American Progress representative Kristina Costa calls "aspirational recycling," or attempting to recycle garbage. "Once you start saying more and more materials are acceptable, it seems that a lot of people start to think everything is acceptable," Germain said, adding that the increased complexity of packaging today compared with a few decades ago has only added to the confusion.
Anne Germain, Vice President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association, an industry trade group, said public education was something the recycling industry as a whole had let slide over the years. "We were more about encouraging recycling than saying stop doing this or that," she said. This, combined with the widespread adoption of single stream, has made the public increasingly enthusiastic about throwing everything in their blue bins, resulting in a lot of what Center for American Progress representative Kristina Costa calls "aspirational recycling," or attempting to recycle garbage. "Once you start saying more and more materials are acceptable, it seems that a lot of people start to think everything is acceptable," Germain said, adding that the increased complexity of packaging today compared with a few decades ago has only added to the confusion.
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
You want me to use clean water...which is scarce enough that it has its own problems...to wash my garbage so someone can make money off of it by selling it to China? If you want to sell my garbage, you find a way to clean it yourself.
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Well, don't move to Washington. They'll fine you for that.
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Most trash bin "recycled" stuff isn't actually worth recycling, so a lot just ends up in the regular trash anyway. As not worth actually recycling, they instead burn it or bury it, just like the rest of the trash. It's a "feel good" program so that some people can pretend their doing something positive, while wasting everyone's time, money and scare resources in the process.
About the only thing most households deal with worth recycling which they may not actually naturally recycle are things made of metal.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
The price reflects the total resources something is worth to someone else
The price does not reflect externalised costs.
Where recycling and reusing actually makes economic sense, no one has to create a government program for it, nor fine people for not doing it.
It made good economic sense to polllute rivers to the point where they could catch fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Government programs and fines were necessary to stop people doing something which to them made "good economoc sense".
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I'm happy other people want to do it and participate, but I don't like the idea of being FORCED to do it.
Get over yourself. No one's forcing me to do recycling, they just make it the easy choice. Read the actual context and dial back your freedums outrage.
I'm happy other people want to do it and participate, but I don't like the idea of being FORCED to do it.
Good job we have single stream recycling. I have two bins, one for recycling and one for rubbish. I also have a small countertop container for vegeta
Re: So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you are saying is that the initial purchase price should have a "disposal" tax that covers its disposal/recycling.
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I hope you meant bury your trash. Burning it (putting all that carbon back in to the air) is the worst thing you can do.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems nobody wants plastic bags. My curbside recycling won't take it. When I took a collection of plastic bags to a recycling center I was told to throw them in the trash, so that's what I do now.
I recycle other plastics, paper, metal, and glass with regularity. The thin plastic bags just end up in the landfill. I think they should be burned but to make that worthwhile would require enough volume of plastic and paper. Recycling plastics is stupid, my chemistry professor in college convinced me of th
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It seems nobody wants plastic bags.
Exactly. China used to take them, but last year they suddenly stopped. The world now has basically no facilities for recycling soft plastics, as all the facilities we used to have for recycling them moved up the value chain when China started accepting soft plastic shipments, and it just isn't economical to move back to recycling them locally. Initially Malaysian facilities had taken up the European shipments that China rejected, but they ended up with way more than they could handle and started illegally
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I live outside of Philadelphia. Our recycling bins have pictures of what is valid with one prominent picture saying no bags. Yet my neighbor continues to place all recycling in shopping bags. Many guests we've had over think any plastic goes in the recycling bin. Takeout food container, sure! Used cup, sure! Straws, sure! Used paper towels, too, since they are paper.
Seems pretty hopeless unless the trash people just stop picking up contaminated recycling bins.There'd be a huge outcry and likely violence if
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We used to have paper bags that were made from trees grown for the purpose but that upset some people.
So you had a whole bunch of people that felt really good about getting them banned.
Can't speak for the rest of the country (world?) but here in South Florida, certain municipalities - like Coral Gables - now require restaurants to use paper bags only for takeout / delivery.
My local groceries also have paper available on request, always have. But they rather you pay $ and get their reusable sacks.
WHat is old is new again. The only thing those flimsy plastic grocery bags have over paper is you can hook the plastic on your arms, can't do that with paper. That's it. Can't think of any othe
Re:Blame Enviro Whackos for that (Score:5, Insightful)
Plastic bags, for the same volume, also are lighter and less bulky. This makes them cheaper to transport and require less place for storage and less frequent restocking at the check stands.
Plastic bags also don't weaken when they get moist either from being set on a wet surface or because something inside leaks or condenses due to high humidity.
Not to say these makes them worthwhile, but those are advantages.
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Since they introduced a mandatory 5p charge for plastic bags in the UK many people started to just bring their own re-usable ones. They cost about 10x as much but many places will replace them for free when they break, which they rarely do.
Most are made of plastic, although you can get woven ones. I got some kind of hemp one once, but my cat just sort of assumed it was the latest tribute and turned it into a bed.
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You wont be calling them advantages when your tuna and salmon tastes like plastic.
He was speaking relatively from the packaging user's point of view, of course what are advantages to the packaging user and consumer also makes plastic bags a disaster from an environmental point of view. If you want to make a dent in this problem getting angry won't help. You have to be willing to understand why people use plastics and come up with a material that does the same job at the same cost but that can be more easily recycled or down-cycled, ideally by composting the material. Renewable energy did
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When the environmental cost of plastic bags is not added into their price, is it reasonable to expect alternatives which are more easily composted or recycled, such as waxed paper or foil, to cost the same?
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Our local grocery store will do paper, but they their paper bags are so thin that they then proceed to put a plastic bag around the paper one. No exaggeration. I didn't even know how to respond when they did that.
Even Amazon has starting using non-recyclable plastic mailers instead of boxes for most stuff I get these days. Less labor, and they take up less space on their trucks.
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FTFA It's not about washing your recyclables, it's about putting things in your blue bin that aren't actually recyclable. That messes up the overall process.
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The things they mention, like plastic shopping bags, ARE recyclable. Their particular process just doesn't like them.
If recycling is ever going to be really viable, processes need to be improved to deal with "contamination."
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Indeed, my local company will take HDPE wide-mouth jugs, but absolutely nothing else made of HDPE. I'm sure there is a reason for it, but the result is that it makes the entire process seem overly complicated and arbitrary.
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the silly way, the smart way, create a consortium of the right industries to work on ways to make recycling far more industrial in approach. The most appropriate companies, mining and refining companies. How to effectively mine and refine the resources out of garbage. The series of processing steps, to make processing it workable and it what order to extract resources and how to do so. Mining and refining are skilled in this and need to put their heads together to how to most effectively process the mountain of garbage to product stock piles of immediately usable resources. Using renewable energy to renew resources to make the usable again.
Everything in that garbage pile started out as a high priced resource and getting those resources out of that garbage pile and making them usable again is what it is all about.
Needs some real sit down and thinking and planning and research, core stuff, so ZERO WASTE cities can become a thing and mining/refining companies can bid for a cities waste resources.
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Legend has it, that approach has been tried already, and the subsequently produced raw materials stank up factories and nobody wanted the stuff around.. You could say the process wasn't perfect. Refining the process further would surely require more energy and water, increasing the investment required for the speculative adventure. Your idea, while technically feasible, is not economically feasible. It sounds like a fun experiment for a university to run at the cost of several million dollars, but the econo
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:4, Interesting)
The big problem that needs to be solved is sorting. Sorting rubbish into different types for different recycling processes.
There is just no easy, efficient way to do it. You have to come up with a system that works for all kinds of materials and objects, that can handle contamination and things like other materials inside bottles or bags. It has to be cleaner and greener than making new stuff, and it has to be cost effective.
Arbitrary inputs, and many different sorting and separating processes required. The only good news is that it doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
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You want me to use clean water...which is scarce enough that it has its own problems...to wash my garbage so someone can make money off of it by selling it to China? If you want to sell my garbage, you find a way to clean it yourself.
... or replace the plastic material with biodegradable or more easily recyclable alternatives? Just a thought.
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What we need are big vats of plastic eating microbes that we can process waste through. They would have to work fast and produce something we could deal with, ideally something we could use for fuel or manufacturing.
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Yes, please get this straight because right now you're completely bent out of shape over something completely wrong.
Try RTFA.
Single Stream is at fault (Score:5, Insightful)
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What did they expect?
To feel good about themselves on a budget. It succeeds perfectly.
Re:Single Stream is at fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Wider adoption, poorer quality. Hard to know where the trade off ends. At 75% recovery for 3x participation, it might not be a bad deal.
What gets me is the variability by region. One place wants anything they can’t burn to be considered hazardous waste, another is obsessed over bottle caps compared to the town next door; it simply isn’t a logical process.
Hopefully education can help address indifference by many people.
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Well, it works over here in Europe. Wonder why.
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We used to carefully sort and fill multiple recycling containers with paper, glass, metal, etc. But then they wanted to have only one pickup container, and call it single-stream. So now we're supposed to throw everything in there together. What did they expect?
People were never good enough at sorting recycling anyway, so it had to be re-sorted on collection anyway. If you have to do that you may as well bundle everything in together, it's easier to get people to participate (especially if you reduce non-rec
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People were never good enough at sorting recycling anyway, so it had to be re-sorted on collection anyway.
They seem to manage it in Japan, even when they're required to separate it into many categories. Greatest nation, my foot
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Easy, recycling rates went up. Because people weren't getting confused where something went.
Our office recently prepared for a waste audit, so they put up new signs by the recycler. There are so many categories I get completely confused. For paper, it
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We used to carefully sort and fill multiple recycling containers with paper, glass, metal, etc. But then they wanted to have only one pickup container, and call it single-stream. So now we're supposed to throw everything in there together. What did they expect?
Single stream recycling isn't the problem. It's contamination in whatever recycling stream you have that is the problem. e.g. Cardboard goes in the recycling bin. That half eaten pizza inside that cardboard does not.
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My community is worse than that. They gave us one 64 gallon refuse container and one 96 gallon recycling container. Then, they tell us that they won't dump the refuse container if it's overfilled and won't take any more than fits in it. Meanwhile, they'll take a casual look in the recycling container and take it unless it's an egregious offense, and also take any extra recyclable material next to the container.
So, houses that produce a lot of garbage simply put everything that's even remotely close to recyc
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I feel this is an opportunity for technology. Years ago I watched a show about a car crushing center (junk yard) that had developed an automated dis-assembly line. They had lots of "secret" (patent pending) technology that they had engineered. It was really cool.
First the car was shredded in a coarse fashion. Then the parts were shot through the air. Foam and plastic fell to the ground and the heavier metal parts landed in a shoot. This sorted several things. Then the metal was ground up even mor
No problem (Score:4, Funny)
The ravine at the end of the road takes everything without complaints.
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Whatever happened to the twenty-seven 8 x 10 colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explainin' what each one was...?
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The Group W bench should be in with comments shortly.
Do kids still get the word in school? (Score:4, Informative)
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"#1 and #2 plastics, metals are recyclable"
Plastic bags are #1 plastics. The problem is they use more energy and cost more to recycle then to make new ones. These days #2,3,4,5,6 plastics are considered recyclable, #1 only if they are the more dense form found in plastic soft drink bottles.
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So plastic #1 is only good for dog #2?
Re: Do kids still get the word in school? (Score:2)
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Yes, twenty years ago, you were taught to "reduce, reuse, and recycle", and then taught to be an evangelist for the least effective of the three. Water from the tap, run through a filter, and consumed in glasses that last a lifetime is better for the environment than recycling your plastic water bottles.
The most green person in your neighborhood is probably an old lady that recycles almost nothing and only has a half-filled bag of trash every week. Contrast this with the busy-body soccer mom that is always
If they're just burning it (Score:2)
What's the problem? You're simply burning the plastics anyway. Find better things to do with it, make pellets out the stuff and melt it back together in useful forms. Pack it up and sell it, better yet, give it away as a cheap form of insulation.
It's what China does anyway, they pack up our garbage and sells it back to us as "green recycled" furniture. If you have purchased cellulose insulation you'll find plenty of plastic worked into it.
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What's the problem? You're simply burning the plastics anyway. Find better things to do with it, make pellets out the stuff and melt it back together in useful forms. Pack it up and sell it, better yet, give it away as a cheap form of insulation.
It's what China does anyway, they pack up our garbage and sells it back to us as "green recycled" furniture. If you have purchased cellulose insulation you'll find plenty of plastic worked into it.
The problem is that before you can down-cycle much of this kind of plastic you have to clean it first. That means using large quantities of water and other resources which are getting scarce in many parts of the world such as the western USA because of irresponsible resource use. Once you do clean the plastic garbage up you still get the problem of massive micro an nano plastic particle contamination. Burning the stuff is easier but causes a massive CO2 emissions problem. The glaringly obvious solution is t
Progressively worse rules; change packaging (Score:5, Interesting)
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I agree about changing the packaging paradigms. Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ? Time to end superfluous plastic and yes, it's not world changing, but that includes straws, plastic wrapped single utensils at Trader Joe's, basically all the crap. Banning plastic grocery bags is a good first step, but we should move to the compostable plastic bags, the kind that compost in industrial
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Old man yells at cloud.
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Yes, and that needs to stay the way it is for purposes of public safety. Do you really think for one minute that if they didn't put seals on things some sick fuck out there wouldn't start poisoning things?
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Why does every bottle of of everything (salad dressing, ketchup, pickles, etc) have a plastic safety seal around it? Because of the Tylenol thing in 1982 ? Yes, and that needs to stay the way it is for purposes of public safety. Do you really think for one minute that if they didn't put seals on things some sick fuck out there wouldn't start poisoning things?
Ironically, some "sick fuck" did start poisoning things.
We call them "ingredients" now.
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Man, I'm glad I've never lived where you have to do that bullshit.
Where i live...recycling is when you put anything out with the garbage, say like old CRT monitors, etc....someone will come by and grab them WAY before the garbage men do.
Stuff
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Adapting mechanical washing processes to new yet standardized varieties of low-value packaging ? Sounds like a romantic evening for a robot.
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Recycling is Too Complicated. (Score:3)
I don't know how the rest of the world works, but recycling makes no sense here in Canada.
We get 2 recycling bins. "Paper" and "Containers".
Where you do put cardboard boxes? Is cardboard paper? Not sure, but I guess a box is a container. But what about paper containers?
Are cloths just containers that contain people? Wood definitely is not paper, but you think you could recyclable it without first building it into some form of container.
You would think that you would separate recyclables by material type not use. Why would a glass vase be recyclable but a glass coaster not be?
TL;DR: Either give up or just shove everything in the "Container" bin because pretty much everything is a container.
Re:Recycling is Too Complicated. (Score:4, Funny)
I sort bodies into the recycling bin because they're containers for souls.
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Why would a glass vase be recyclable but a glass coaster not be?
Coaster could be made from borosilicate glass, and they don't want that to end up mixed with regular glass.
My city didn't "encourage" me (Score:2)
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Eventually folks got tired of it and used the recycling bin as trash pickup.
If you do that round here, the dustmen will not collect your bin and will put a tag-of-shame on it, the tag being a little info leaflet telling you which things can go in the recycling, which can go in the composting bin and which can go in regular trash.
You can request larger bins if you like, but the non recycleable non compostable rubbish is still only going to get collected once per fortnight.
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Wow, where do you live where they force you to do that??
Around here, they pick up trash twice a week. I'm su
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Wow, where do you live where they force you to do that??
Dial back your outrage, bruv. People not relentlessly cleaning your shit up after you is not the same as forcing you to do anything. It's no wonder freedom is genuinely under attack when it's loudest supporters have such a perverted meaning of it.
I live in one of the south London boroughs.
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That is I think about the most entitled thing I've heard all day.
Education, indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Encouragement Without Education Backfires On Recycling Efforts"
Our local recycling program education was "dumbed down" so much it is laughable. They accept #1 and #2 plastics ONLY. This is not uncommon. But because "the populous" was too "stupid" to understand that, they completely removed that information and replaced it with this: "jars, jugs, and plastic bottles with caps". O M G. So that means a TON of plastics that ARE recyclable don't meet that stupid description, and a TON of plastics that DO meet the description are not. Biggest #2 plastic thing I have? Washing machine liquid bottle. Is that a jug? Is that a plastic bottle with cap? What a waste. Same thing with my large #2 liquid soap bottles and #2 plastic liquid deodorant bottles. The list goes on and on. All are recyclable... but not according to their horrible description.
I even Emailed them to complain, and they simply couldn't understand why I would be confused. Instead they quoted "when in doubt, throw it out" (AKA- no not even try to recycle half or more of your eligible recyclables).
Same thing on the "paper" side. Instead of describing the exact attributes of what they want, they changed it to: "cardboard, paper, food boxes, food & beverage cartons". What is a magazine? What is a windowed envelope? Many food "boxes" are heavily waxed, contain metal, or contain plastic... do those count? My protein drink "carton" is waxed paper but has a PLASTIC spout and cap on it. Is that acceptable?
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My motto is: when in doubt, throw it in. The men that come pick up the bags of plastic recycling aren't going to do a chemical analysis.
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Honestly that's what I do. I follow a very simple two-step flow chart:
1) If you touch it tomorrow, will you not care or will you find it gross? If gross, put it in the main trash. If you won't care, see 2).
2) If you light it on fire, what will happen? If it burns, put it in paper. If it melts, put it in plastic.
Done. The rest is up to the guys handling it later.
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This last Christmas we were suddenly told to NOT put the paper that had been wrapped around all the presents in the PAPER recycling bin because it contains plastic.
How do they expect people to keep up with these kinds of lists?
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>"reduce is really what's necessary but not appealing."
I agree, but it isn't just not appealing, it is often not possible. I, like many consumers, want to reduce trash. But we have little choice on how things are packaged. Things like bringing your own bags is not only very inconvenient (and I reuse those plastic bags), it really makes little or no difference (just like this non-sense with plastic straws). It is just self-serving, feel-good, virtue-signaling.
Recycling is something we CAN do and it CA
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Same in my area. One of the rules is that they don't take thermoformed containers. Those containers are labeled as #1, and show the recycling symbol. I'm sure there is some good engineering reason that thermoformed #1 is harder to recycle than other kinds of #1, but after reading the descriptions I'm not even sure how to tell thermoformed containers from... well... whatever the other kind is. If they need to be treated differently, then stop labeling them the same way! Make them #1T or something!
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I have been consistently angered by the way recycling symbols on products are presented:
1) Not present at all sometimes, on things clearly single-material
2) No contrast so they are hard to locate or see
3) So small as to be unreadable as to what number they are
4) So poorly formed, the number could be a 2 or a 7 or whatnot.
Around here recycling is a second truck run. (Score:3, Insightful)
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And is it less than half full both trips? Or do you prefer to put two trucks out at the same time because {insert arbitrary silly reason here}
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They have 3 different runs round these parts, but compensate by having fewer of them.
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Save the environment by running twice as many fuel burning trucks to pick it up... Every bill increase is blamed on 'increased recycling costs'... The whole thing is a mess and a boondoggle.
Implying that your first truck is less than half full when it gets back to the depot? Please apply some thought into your post.
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Here there's a pickup once a week, but it's normal trash every other week and paper or plastic on the weeks between that, resulting in a month's wait for each of them.
So eg.,
Monday 1st: Trash
Monday 8th: Paper
Monday 15th: Trash
Monday 22nd: Plastic
Monday 29th: Trash and so on.
Isn't it better this way? (Score:2)
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Actually we started selling it to China because they wanted to buy it. See with the trade deficit being what it was/is China was sending cargo ships packed with containers full of goods to the USA, and other parts of the world. Those ships and containers needed to go back to China for the next round anyways and sending them back empty was actually a waste. So China started buying up recyclables literally by the cargo ship full. By recycling those materials they more than offset the cost of the extra fuel to
What do I get out of it? (Score:2)
Don't change the people, change the bags (Score:2)
Or enforce recyclable plastic bags? (Score:2)
The City of Phoenix does it right (Score:3)
All recyclables there go into one blue bin, with the material types separated ta a central facility. The sorting process still requires some human assistance, but at a steadily diminishing rate with time as automation improves.
Fix it in one place, not millions of places (Score:2)
Good education needed (Score:2)
We're harangued about how we are dumping plastic in the ocean, how we need to ban plastic straws and other terrible plastic products, because America is destroying the oceans.
Well, I have two main thoughts on that. One is that 'Murrica could be taken out of existence tomorrow, and it wouldn't put a dent in the plastic problem, with the possible exception of microsphere
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Controversy and disappointment for another ritual of the green religion today. It's almost like these schemes designed by people with a deep emotional need to feel good about themselves are all completely pointless.
You just described every religion, ever.
Oh, there's another effect of this type of thinking: Liberate your wallet from all that pesky, naughty paper (yes, I know it's actually cotton in the USA)
Long Live Crane Paper Co!
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It's 75% cotton, 25% flax in the USA. It's _very_ good quality paper, that is one factor that makes it difficult to forge. US paper has a very distinctive "feel", which people handling money often notice before they notice the print on forged money.
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It's _very_ good quality paper, that is one factor that makes it difficult to forge. US paper has a very distinctive "feel", which people handling money often notice before they notice the print on forged money.
Boss of mine almost 20 years ago gave me a $10 at a restaurant to pay his part of the bill. The instant my fingers touched it I knew it was bogus. I called him on it. He took it back and gave a real one.
Our currency paper is made by Crane. They recently split off the consumer stationery. I have a couple of different thank-you cards from them, and half-letter sheets. Even their consumer cotton rag paper is amazing. I only use this stuff for my closest friends and for select, worthy business. Everybody
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Our money-paper maker already makes plastic (and finished bills, even) for other countries.
As for giving up *our* paper, I'm for not changing the paper. Feels nice. Way nice. And I think part of that traditionalism as something that differentiates us from countries that are all too willing to throw away the past in favor of some buzzword-worthy "future"
Money should be paper.
Cars should have stick shift as an option.
Meat should come from cow, not labs.
Guns should be steel and wood, not plastic.
And so on.
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In my condo complex, people honestly don't understand that some bins are for recycling and some are for trash. Signs are up in multiple languages and yet you'll see a christmas tree or old sofa tossed into the recycling.
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people honestly don't understand that some bins are for recycling and some are for trash.
The problem is apathy, not ignorance. Some people do care, but enough people don't, that they screw it up for all of us.
Recycling is not going to work if it relies on mass altruism. We need to either make it profitable (as it is for aluminum) or we need robots to sort the trash.
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Start with some sever fines or jail time for people who intentionally sabotage recycling and you won't see christmas trees and sofas in the recycling anymore.
That requires catching them first.
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The problem isn't that they don't understand, the problem is that they don't give a shit.
Start handing out fines and you will see improvement. Some people don't function properly without being beaten when malfunctioning.
Burn it (Score:2)
With fire.
I think only metal, paper, and glass is worthwhile to recycle anyway.
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I think
Can I have a second opinion on that?
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For me the problem is much more:
- I work full-time.
- I pay full taxes.
- One of the things my taxes cover is waste collection and recycling (there's a specific line on a specific tax).
However, for some reason, *I* then have to clean (hot water, scrubbing, soap) and sort (time, effort) my rubbish. I'm all for "community spirit" but I'm also for "I'm *paying* you to do that... either make me do it, or make me pay you to do it, not both".
Then some company gets paid to run ANOTHER set of truck full of rubbish a