Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Yes, it should be illegal in all 50 states. People still throw credit card applications etc. In the trash. This method is one of the biggest forms of identity theft. My advice, invest in a shredder.

The Expert answers:

Actually, in most states, once the trash or recycling is set to the street, it is considered abandoned…therefore you can help yourself.

I do not see the reasoning for making it illegal.

The Expert answers:

The system in the UK is similar to the US in that the plastic milk bottles are sorted according to their polymer type by Infra-Red Technology. Different polymers reflect light in different ways, but HDPE bottles always reflect light one way, whereas PET bottles always reflect light another. The only exception is black containers – but that’s because they absorb way too much light, so its too difficult to detect what is what.

Once the bottles are sorted they get washed, grinded and then flaked, before being extruded into rHDPE pellets.

There are a couple of problems yet to be sorted with rHDPE.
The first is that if you start adding more than say 30% of rHDPE you start to notice a green tinge to the bottle. That’s because rHDPE cleaned pellets are green (I have a small handfull on my desk and they remind me a bit like Kryptonite!). Obviously this doesn’t make the milk look too good either. (See pages 24-28 of the full report in the link below).

The other problem is that sometimes people use milk bottles to hold detergents or other strong scented products as a secondary use before putting into the recycling stream.

Despite going through super-clean processes and passing food-safety tests, the polymer can still have a faint odour smell. Organoleptic tests have been conducted on this and all have concluded that it didn’t affect the taste profile of milk, yet it remained. This is why batches of Post Consumer Waste milk bottles are checked religously to ensure this does not occur.

Http://www.wrap.org.uk/wrap_corporate/news/wrap_launches_27.html

If it goes to landfill, then it sits there for a long long long time.
Alternatively it can be burnt to produce energy, but this produces by-products which need to be dealt with. All in all, recycling is the way to go.

Hope this helps!

The Expert answers:

Look up the steady decline in ozone and increase in pollution, overflows in landfills and the affects of all three, such as increase in breathing problems due to pollution from overflowing and huge landfills, and heath problems due to those things as well, animals suffer more and more every year that we are dumping in their homes, would you like to live in a place full of garbage?? People need to start thinking as if they were in other people soes and animals places, but a lot of people are selfish and do not care about the futures of out children and animals…it is quite sad and pathetic how destructive and messy we are… 🙁 anyways i hope that this may help you in some way to inspire other people…

The Expert answers:

Studies show that 60% to 75% of garbage in landfills can be recycled. That means that if everybody recycled, we’d have 60% to 75% less garbage in our landfills. Recycling is important, so don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. It is important because many resources are running out, so recycling keeps them going so that we don’t run out.

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Vitality

The Expert answers:

We have recycling centers in Oklahoma and Texas so I am sure these aren’t the only two states. Pasadena, Texas also picks up the recyclables at the curb. Even though we do not have this service, we take our recycled items to a center.

The Expert answers:

No.
I never expect.

The Expert answers:

I wish you good luck with your come and try day for a disability arts group.

The Expert answers:

Yes it is possible and some garbage handling companies do just that and sort out all the materials that can be recycled or disposed of more properly and then dump all the bona fide refuse into a landfill or incinerator.