Your Questions About Recycling
by
Filed under Recycling Q & A
Robert asks…
How to recycle plastic bottles?
I’m one of those people that throw away plastic water bottles, soda cans, and etc into my garage bag. But now I started to feel like crap when I do that. So now I want to start recycling water bottles and other plastic items. But I don’t know how to recycle them.
1. Do I take the cap off from the water bottle before I put it in my recycle box?
2. Am I suppose to crush my soda can before putting it into my bin?
3. What about milk cartons, milk gallons, fruit plastic containers and etc?
4. How many bins should I buy so I can separate the items?
5. Do I get pay for recycling if so how?
The Expert answers:
In Australia, recycling is standard. The council provides a large rubbish bin for recycling & a smaller one (to encourage recycling) for other rubbish. We also have a green bin for garden waste. Usually, you only put plastic in that has a recycling triangle mark on it. There are many types of plastic & not all are recyclable. Our supermarkets usually collect the plastic shopping bags as they have a place they can be recycled. I don’t put full containers in the bin I tip out the contents & rinse them. I also rinse really dirty jars etc. You would take the caps off because they’re a different plastic to the bottle. Same goes for jars. Metal on glass. I’m careful with paper & cardboard too. They can’t recycle mixed types of products. They don’t have time to separate them. If paper has a metallic cover then its two products in one. If a box has a plastic window, I either rip it off or put it in the rubbish. Waxed cardboard like milk cartons & drink cups are recyclable here too. Crushing is optional the truck will crush them anyway but if you fill your bin up easily, it will give you more space. We don’t get paid to recycle & we don’t have to go out & buy the bins although there is a charge for the green bin in our council rates even though we didn’t ask for it. One big one for recycling & one for rubbish should be enough. One for green waste if you need it. Over hear, if we save aluminium & aluminium cans, we can take it to a scrap metal place or Comalco & get money for them. Recycling factories have people standing next to a conveyor belt pulling the recycling off & putting them in the appropriate bins, so you can see that it would be dangerous & unpleasant for them to have to deal with needles, dirty nappies & the like because people are too lazy to put it in the right bin. Best rule is, if in doubt, put it in the general rubbish. If you’re really conscientious & want to put small pieces of recycling material in, don’t bother. The people on the conveyor line aren’t going to pick up every little bit.
William asks…
Where can I recycle hard plastics?
Plastics found in: Pens, highlighters, eyeglasses, soda bottle lids, microwaveable meals, etc.
???
The Expert answers:
You can recycle almost everything. Like bottles, plastic, boxes paper, tires, light bulbs and much more.
Enter your Zip code and find out where and what the recycling plant accepts
http://search.earth911.com/
Tire recycling
http://www.rubberecycle.com/
Bottle recycling, plastic etc. At http://search.earth911.com/
Light bulbs http://earth911.com/recycling/household/…
Mary asks…
Recycling plastic bags?
Does anyone have any good essays or articles I could read about recycling plastic bags? I need to give a presentation and it would really help!!!
thanks <3
The Expert answers:
Hello…
Plastic Bags: Sword Towards Ourselves
Five hundred billion used globally and one hundred billion of them end up in U.S. Landfills, taking about one thousand years to decompose, but only 5.2 percent were recycled (Borrud, 2007, p.75).-These are the figures plastic bags have produced every year. Human beings invented plastic bags for the convenience of carriers and packers. However, just as other great inventions, say, nuclear energy and biotechnology, plastic bags are causing serious issues like global warming, environment pollution and energy consumption. They are gradually becoming sword towards ourselves. In responding to this problem, the city of San Francisco has become the trail blazer to prohibit non-biodegradable plastic bags in its large supermarkets and pharmacies. Actually, petroleum-based plastic bags should be banned because they consume colossal amount of natural resources and energy, cause inefficient in economics and can badly pollute the environment…
You can get more info here:
Daniel asks…
do plastic bags get recycled?
okaii so im doing a science project and i found out thath you donate plastic bags to supermarkets but what do they do with the plastic bags do they reuse them and give them to other customers or do they make new bags out of them
The Expert answers:
Q: Can I recycle plastic bags?
A: Yes, plastic grocery or merchandise bags, dry cleaning bags, and bubble wrap can now be recycled. To be sure this is a successful program, please place only the types of bags requested and remove all receipts, other packaging material, and any food residue. It does not matter if the recycling symbol is not on the bag or if a certain number is inside the chasing arrows on the bag. They can all be placed in the plastic bag bin.
Plastic bags cannot be recycled with rigid containers because they have a different melting point. The plastic bags melt very quickly compared to rigid containers and therefore cannot be used in the same process.
The plastic bags will be mixed with urban wood waste then melted into a new siding product in residential and commercial construction that is resistant to rot. Plastic bags can also be used to make plastic lumber for decking, outdoor furniture, and lawn edging.
It takes a lot of plastic bags to make a bale, so please bring us your plastic bags and bubble wrap! Plastic bags can be reused and most grocery stores have recycling bins near the front door for plastic bags as well. Instead of using a plastic bag, try using durable canvas bags on your next shopping trip!
Laura asks…
recycling plastics materials?
The Expert answers:
Yes, you can recycle plastic. I don’t really understand how much you need to know from your question, but there is a code on the bottom of all plastic bottles which relates to recycling level. Most any plastics can be combined together to be dropped off at a recycling facility. Contact your garbage service collector, and see if they offer a weekly or monthly pick-up. If everyone did there part, the world would be a cleaner place!
Thomas asks…
How to recycle plastic bags?
I know that plastic bags had been destroying the environment, and I feel extremely terrible that every plastic I have used is still on earth today. Is there a way to recycle plastic? like have it gone? Can you burn it? So that the plastic will melt (would burning it affect the environment?
Is there a way that I can recycle plastic and not cause a negative impact on the environment?
Pliastic stuff:
plastic bags,
plastic food trays
plastic items
Is there a center where I can bring these plastics to in New Westminster?
I feel so angry that people always say that the environment has nothing to do with them, “blah, blah, blah.” But if there are too much plastics and garbage in the ocean, it will kill the plankton = death of fishes = death of whales, marine animals = death of birds/animals that eat marine animals = death of earth = death of HUMANS. When it has everything to do with them.
I can’t put in the blue bin for it will jam the machine that packs the garbage. So that is why those company don’t really want the plastic to be in the bins.
The Expert answers:
The plastic bags can’t be recycled with the recyclables because the bags would wrap around the rollers and the whole line would need to be shut down to pull them out. However, there is a market for them to produce insulation for jackets, pillows and quilts hence there are collection bins at the grocery stores specifically for plastic bags. Some recyclers that use hand sorting will let you bag all your plastic bags in one bag which they would then pluck out for sale.
The other low grade plastics that the recycling company does not want simply don’t have a market. What we see today as recycling isn’t recycling, it’s a business.
Joseph asks…
recycling questions… plastic etc.?
I know this is a very stupid sounding question, but i grew living in the country and we burned our garbage because we didn’t have any pick up… now that i live in the city our apartment building has a recycling program. we recently went out and bought a blue bin. my biggest question is what can’t be recycled i have heard from several sources that bottle lids (from pop and water bottles) can’t, and i have heard just as many saying you can. and also what are the rules about mail, enevelopes and the little plastic things in them? also what are some things that not many people know you can recycle.
The Expert answers:
If you recycle water bottles, milk jugs, etc. You have to make sure the top is off, but you can still recycle the top. You can recycle the envelopes with the plasic thingys on them. Somethings that a lot of people don’t know can be recycled are paper towels, toilet paper rolls, and plastic grocery bags. Hope that helps.
James asks…
Why can’t I recycle plastic bags and saran wrap?
If we can recycle bottles, styrofoam and most plastic containers (in some communities), why can’t we recycle plastic bags and wrap, broken toys and other forms of random plastic?
The Expert answers:
Plastic Bags can be recycled but what it comes down to with those is that the cost of collection and sorting is very steep and many companies don’t want to deal with it. Broken toys can be as well however the problem with them is that many don’t just contain plastic and once again the sorting issue becomes costly. Any contaminate can make the batch usless and in the case of metal being introduced dangerous as well. Now saran or cling wrap is a different story… The resin that cling wrap is made of cannot be reextracted from the product without mass amounts of energy (more than it takes to make it from scratch) therefor it is a throwaway product… Also food contamination makes extracting the resin next to impossible because the slightest molecule of food can destroy any usefulness of the resin.
Mark asks…
How would recycling plastic help the environment?
The Expert answers:
Recycling a plastic bag have contribute the re-use of the product and it indeed helps save the wildlife and the environment. Carbon Oxide (CO2) is a very serious matter to the environment, which we cannot breathe if we don’t recycle plastics.
Recycling is a main contribution to saving the environment and it does benefits the re-use of a product. For example, if I were recycling a plastic bag, it could save about 1 cubic pound of CO2. If I were recycling 500 plastic bags per second, I would have saved 500 cubic pound of CO2 per half a second.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers