Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

At my house we put our recycling on the kitchen counter (glass, plastic, aluminum, tin, etc.) to get rinsed out. It then goes immediately out to the recycling can in our back yard. The paper, cardboard, etc., goes next to the kitchen garbage can and gets put in the recycling can when the trash gets taken out. ALL of our recyclables go into the same can. If you need to separate them, put your recyclables into boxes (since they can be recycled as well) and your trash into a plastic bag (to reduce the smell).

The Expert answers:

The best incentive is fewer landfills and lower garbage rates.

I personally think the recycling angle has been over played. We were making progress with it since many communities have found a way to make money doing it. Now the rate for recyclable materials or salvage is so low it is loosing momentum.

You may also want to check out the website zerowaste.com

I much prefer to focus on the first and more important of the 3 R’s. Reduce. I have cut my household waste by about 75%. Most of my waste was food packaging. I have found many ways to reduce it, reusable grocery bags, bulk bins for a variety of items, less processed foods and avoiding excess packaging. Simple things like looking for the brand of whole grain bread that only uses 1 layer plastic or better yet, going to the bakery where it is wrapped in paper, most grocery bakery’s will slice it for you. I buy much of my meat from the butcher counter, I’m able to avoid the foam tray and get the exact number of portions I want. I plan a menu and shop with a list so I have less food waste.

The Expert answers:

This works for me: I got a standard kitchen trash can — 13 gallon size. I looked around and got a large rubber band that easily fits around the outer rim. This holds two trash bags in place. I put two trash bags inside, one on each side. For the paper side I fold the bag over to keep refuse out. When one is full its easy to remove and replace, and then just carry on!

The Expert answers:

It would take a major shift in the way people run their lives…learning how to reuse articles or shopping bags, using cloth diapers, etc..In our disposable, throwaway society, it’s probably not very realistic to expect much improvement in reducing the volume of garbage and waste products. But what we can do much better is to recycle and reuse the waste products that we generate much more efficiently.

The billions of tons of garbage and waste products we generate every year…and expected to double by 2030…can be recycled into oil or gas products using a variety of new methods.

The TDP process…Thermal Depolymerization….can convert most carbon-based waste products and garbage into oil using the same forces nature uses to produce oil…high temperatures and pressures…only much faster and at relatively comparable prices to oil obtained from the ground at around 60.00 per barrel. Instaed of burying garbage and waste products, we should be reusing them to produce energy.In many cases, It takes oil to produce certain products…we should simply keep recycling that original oil source although some will be lost in the process.

Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twQA4cUwYus

There is also a recently developed process called plasma gasification which can convert waste products…even some hazardous wastes including some nuclear wastes…inot a net energy gain with gas as a byproduct. It utilizes an arc furnace with high temperatures…hotter than the surface of the sun…to break down most waste products at the molecular level with only inert slag and gas as the result although there are some problems with the metallurgy involved.

“Plasma arc gasification is a waste treatment technology that uses electrical energy and the high temperatures created by an electrical arc gasifier. This arc breaks down waste primarily into elemental gas and solid waste (slag), in a device called a plasma converter. The process has been intended to be a net generator of electricity, depending upon the composition of input wastes, and to reduce the volumes of waste being sent to landfill sites.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_gasification

“Reuse, recycle … burn? – “Waste is a terrible thing to waste,” says Bruce Parker, president of the National Solid Waste Management Association. His trade group supports giving trash a second life—and landfills a break—by following Europe’s lead and investing in more waste-to-energy plants, which convert trash to fuel. As much as 55 percent of waste in countries like Denmark and Sweden heads to such plants, compared with only 8 percent in the United States. Resistance comes from environmental groups, like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, who say recycling is cheaper and cleaner. The waste-to-energy camp counters that it’s not necessarily an either-or: “Countries that have the most waste-to-energy also do the most recycling,” says Nickolas Themelis of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University.”

http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/quick-study-where-our-garbage-goes/article148805.html

The Expert answers:

Exactly. I use the grocery store plastic bags as kitchen garbage bags, and if they eliminate them, I suppose I’ll end up buying the bags. Heck, I’ll buy plastic sheeting and make my own bags Those store bags get at least one more use around here after they come home from the grocery store, as long as they don’t tear first. I’m old enough to remember what the kitchen garbage can smelled like when paper bags were all there were to use for the kitchen garbage, and how much fun it was trying to get a soggy paper bag of garbage as far as the outdoor garbage can without having the whole mess fall all over your shoes and the sidewalk, that’s assuming you got it out of the kitchen garbage can in the first place without having the bottom fall out of the bag so you had to pick it all up and put it in another bag. The outdoor garbage can was a delight, too, needed regular washing not to totally reek, as did the kitchen can. I used to recycle the plastic bags back to the grocery store when I got too many, but now I’m stockpiling them so I won’t have to buy them later. I’m also old enough to remember the early plastic grocery bags. They were strong enough to hold more than 2 quarts of milk without tearing. Then they made the bags thinner to save plastic, so you needed at least twice as many bags to take the groceries home in without having them spill all over the street. The old bags actually got used more because they lasted better.

The Expert answers:

There is a recycling in place but it doesnt work well here cause Singaporean are not green enough, esp the elderies since they are educated to be dirty, like they said dirty eat, dirty grow. And they are looking for convenience, due the fact that they are being deprive from it since young and is time to enjoy, why wait, do it now of mentality.

The Expert answers:

When your getting ready to take out the garbage, do yourself a favor and just don’t take out the kitchen garbage. Look around the house; washroom, and bedroom they have garage bins in there to. So do it all. Throw it all in a big black garbage bag, find our outdoor garbage bin and through it in.

When your garbage day comes, you’ll hopefully have everything all in you bin just waiting to be pulled to the side.

Oh and don’t forget your recycling. If you recycle you save lots of space in your garbage bin for your garbage. I live on a street where they only allow you put out 2bins of garbage every week. I’m 20 and have to do all that for 7 people in my house 😛

Anywhoo, sort your recycling make sure your putting the crap in the right bin everyday and then when your garbage day comes it will be really easy!

The Expert answers:

It depends on what is being recycled.

For some things it actually makes sense, since the recycled material follows a similar process as the raw materials anyway. Steel, for example, is easily recycled and the environmental cost to do so is limited to the transportation back to the plants (which is not much different than the transportation of raw ore to the plants).

Glass is also a good recyclable material. Yes, they have to wash it, but that water is recycled and cleaned just like they clean, filter and recycle sewage water. So it’s not like that dirty water is being dumped into the ocean.

For other materials it actually costs MORE to recycle the product than it does to make it from scratch. Many plastics, for example. But the reason it’s still worth recycling them is to reduce the overall load on landfills. We’re basically paying more to produce less bulk in the total garbage output.

There are a lot of things you can recycle on your own that is definitely beneficial. A simple thing you can do is save dirty dishwater (in an in-sink bucket) and use it to water plants. The detergent doesn’t bother them and the food bits actually serve as nutrients. And put leftover foods in a mulch pile. (Even in the city, there are always places you can bring such garbage for mulch purposes, if you only ask around.)

And if something’s not recyclable, figure out ways to MAKE it recyclable. I find ways to use a lot of old non-recyclable containers to store things. Sometimes it takes a little glue and creativity to come up with great new uses for what was otherwise junk.

We’ve cut our actual garbage output, for a household of 3 adults, down to one 20-gallon garbage bag per week. We bring it to a local recycling center and pay 25 cents to drop it off. So our garbage expense per month is one dollar, and our “garbage footprint” (which personally I think is a LOT more important than carbon footprints) is really very small.

The Expert answers:

I’m not sure of what you mean by topics, but I think you can’t go wrong with:
– Paper recycling
– Plastic Recycling
– Garbage Separation
– Reusable goods (such as market bags)

There’s a lot of info on the subject in the Internet, surf for a while and you’ll see what I mean