Quote:
Originally Posted by vivaldirules
I have a question about recycling. Our curb-side recycling used to be limited to metal cans, #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) plastic, and clean, dry newspaper. Glass and the other plastics were too expensive to recycle. Last year, they changed and now they accept literally all kinds of plastic and all kinds of paper products (but still no glass). What has changed?
Related to this question is the fact that I heard recently that roughly half of all the shipping containers headed back to China from the U.S. are now filled with our trash that is headed for recycling. If this waste is really headed for recycling and they've just gotten better at it recently, then that's great. But I'd like to know that we're not just shipping our trash to other countries for incineration or landfilling abroad. That would be very bad and has been done before. Anyone have any information?
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National Geographic had a really good article about recycling and the way different countries purchased the different kinds of waste and treated it. interestingly enough, these numbers completely skew tracking which countries are the most efficient at recycling their own waste... the accquired waste is added into the totals.
as far as what is taken and what isn't, it all depends on the local contractor that takes the recycling. for years we could curbside some stuff, and then other things which seemed perfectly logical to recycle had to be taken elsewhere.