Burrito West Blog

Today at work I got to go tour a recycling sorting facility!  No, really, this is cool.

Since I've been doing stuff on waste diversion at work, I jumped at the chance to go on the tour and see how this stuff gets done in the real world. The guys in the Solid Waste department seemed somewhat surprised that I wanted to go, but it was neat, I'm glad I did. It's a new, state of the art automated sorting system. So all your recyclable containers that go in your blue bin go to a facility like this (or maybe one less fancy and less automated), and somehow the stuff all gets separated.  It's quite the operation. It involves magnets, air density separators, optical scanners, and a whole lot of conveyor belts.

And it forces me to tell you three things:

1. Do not. ever. put plastic bags in your recycling bin. ever.  I know it's convenient to put your containers in a bag and then toss them in the bin with the bag, but don't do it. really. seriously. They muck up ALL the machinery. There aren't words to convey what an immense headache they cause. There's no easy way to separate them out and they just get everywhere. Aside from actually gumming up the machinery, they contaminate the separated materials which makes it hard to market the recyclables. And if no one wants the recyclables, then it didn't do much good for you to recycle it, the city to pick it up, and the facility to try to separate it. All that effort wasted because of some stupid plastic bag. (you should be using reusable shopping bags anyhow, then you won't have this issue at all!)

So really, seriously: no plastic bags. Please.

2. Make a point of buying products with post-consumer recycled content. Please. It doesn't do a lot of good to recycle your used stuff if you don't help create a market for the material!  Do you buy paper towels with post-consumer recycled content? Did you know you can buy paper towels made of 100% post-consumer recycled content and it's just as good as stuff made from virgin forests that were cut down to make your disposable wipes?  Why do we allow forests to be cut down when we could be reusing our own materials?! This drives me bonkers. There shouldn't even be any paper towel on the shelf made from anything other than post-consumer materials.  Ditto for toilet paper and aluminum foil and many many other products.  Please take the time to seek out these products. I understand the markets for recyclable materials tanked a few years ago, meaning it's hard to find anyone who wants to buy the material (and the ones that do pay very little). Some (most?) of the materials get shipped overseas - which has a ridiculous carbon footprint and is silly because clearly we use enough material our own selves to eat up all the recyclables.

3. Please rinse out your containers. Have some pity on the facilities that store, sort, and process your materials.

Sorry for the PSA - but it's so easy for people to avoid thinking about this stuff, and it's rather important! In any case, yay for recycling! Let's do more and do better!