Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Recycling should be mandatory…and in many places it is. Main reasons that recycling should be mandatory:

1-Reduces energy needed to manufacture items (if made with recycled content).
2-Saves landfill space.
3-Provides high quality raw materials inexpensively and from local sources.

Reasons not to recycle (NOTE: I don’t agree with these):
1-Certain items (plastics, organics, fibers) have high BTU values and can provide good energy for Waste-To-Energy facilities.
2-High infrastructure cost to implement and service.

The reality is that recycling does save energy, it does provide good, high quality sources of raw materials for manufacturing and saves landfill space. One of the major ways to encourage recycling is through a “bottle bill” or deposit where you pay a small charge everytime you purchase a bottle. It is then refunded when you deposit the containers for recycling. This is the most expensive way to implement a recycling program.

Curbside recycling is a more efficient option, but again, has a high cost associated with it. Providing containers and the associated pickup service can run in very high dollar ranges if the municipality is large. However, from the commodity collection stainpoint it provides the highest amount of consistent material.

The thired option for recycling is to provide containers that residents utilize by dropping their materials off. These usually don’t provide any deposit refund, as there is no deposit paid on them in the first place. This is the “cheapest” solution but usually has the lowest participation because people need to do it themselves.

One way to encourage this is to have a local ordinance mandate in place to require that certain materials can’t be placed in the trash. There is an enforcement issue with this…but you can get participation either through fines…or that peoples trash doesn’t get picked up if there is “mandated” materials in the container that shouldn’t be there.

I hope this helps!

The Expert answers:

I don’t think so. The oils in foods contaminate the wood pulp and prevents the fibers from sticking together leaving holes in the recycled paper. This is often not detected till the finished product is inspected and found to have holes thereby scrapping the entire production run. Recycling food containers and pizza boxes is a sure way to negate any environmental and economic benefits of recycling.

The Expert answers:

Since they are probably “medical” plastic, they can probably be baked at the low temperatures required for curing polymer clay, but you’d have to check. I’m pretty sure that any part which was covered with clay would survive just fine.
(Or you could use air-dry clays or other materials.)

You might get lots of ideas for covering or decorating them from looking at similar containers which we use for embellishing with polymer clay on these pages at my site:
http://glassattic.com/polymer/covering.htm
(… Under “Plastics,” click on the subcategory
PRESCRIPTION BOTTLES, FILM CANISTERS, PVC PIPE
… Also click on MISC. PLASTIC ITEMS for a using similar things like plastic M&M tubes and dental floss containers)
….more ways to use them might also be in the ALTIOIDS category on that page)

This page has loads of inspiration for decorating small containers too… “BOH” are actually either small plastic or glass containers which have been decorated in order to give to cancer patients (they began with the plastic heparin bottles used to push the chemo drugs, as a way to turn the process into something good and so the patients could feel more in control):
http://glassattic.com/polymer/BOH.htm

HTH,

Diane B.

The Expert answers:

Tape a note to the side or bottom of the bin (so it will be seen when empty) politely asking “please place bin back next to fence” or something like that. The garbage/ recycling people normally leave my bins in the middle of my driveway so I have to get out of my car and move them before parking, I guess they are just in a hurry because there is a TON of houses to stop at.

The Expert answers:

Although I don’t think there is one that does monthly pick-up (except maybe whichever waste management company you use to pick up your trash), try this link and, hopefully, there is a free, battery recycling center near you, too: http://www.ehso.com/ehso2.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rbrc.org/call2recycle/dropoff/index.php , or maybe this one: http://earth911.com/recycling/hazardous/single-use-batteries/

Best of wishes

The Expert answers:

Well in theory a lot of people think that the container won’t be recycled if the cap is one because of various weird reasons. The cap and the thing that keeps it from unscrewing are usually recyclable because usually they are made from number 2 plastic. You should separate them because a lot of recycling depots will indeed discard them from what I’ve heard, so just take off the cap and put the container in the recycling. As for the cap, they usually have a recycling sign on the inside of the cap. If they don’t, chuck it in the garbage 🙂

The Expert answers:

Have you contacted your council waste disposal department ? Ours in Exeter supplys 2 different sizes of wheeled containers & 3 different sizes of lidded boxes for recycling purposes depending on how much you recycle.If we want more we just ask & they are delivered,no charges

The Expert answers:

It’s all about the energy used to make a can from scratch vs. One made from an existing can’s material.
From scratch means digging the ore, processing the ore, refining it further, sending it to those who make the aluminum into sheets, sending it to those who use the sheets to make the cans, and sending it to the co. That fills the cans and then to those that distribute the product.
Recycling an existing can uses so much less energy it is ridiculous. Melt down the old can, make into sheets, then into cans, fill ’em up and send them out. Cutting out the Digging, the Processing and the Refining means an energy savings of about 90%.

Kind of similar in regards to energy saving with plastics as well. We all use much more aluminum/tin/steel and plastics than can presently be reused/recycled into new cans and jugs given the level of technology we have now.
We also only use a small amount of recycled plastic content in our new containers. Cans can use almost 95% recyclable content.

The Expert answers:

Rinse out well and should be ok