Recycling – WildernessPunk

WildernessPunk: The Recycle Life Cycle

A few thoughts before I dive in. First, I know we all get hit over the head with the three Rs. The second is, since I’ve already covered Reduce and Reuse in the last few articles, we can fast forward to Recycle. Still bored… don’t worry I’m going to WildernessPunk this and get to the core of this issue. Recycle is the last of the our list of six ideas we can all accomplish to lower our Negative Environmental Impact (NEI)

Here’s a quick review of those six ideas

Minimizing Food Waste
Commuting by Bicycle, Walking, Buses
Use Energy Wisely such as high efficiency devices and keeping them unplugged
Consume less
Eating for a Climate Stable Planet
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse

Yep, yep Recycle. All of us do it, or at least I hope so. But are we recycling enough? More likely, we’re trying to recycle too much. Too much, one might think recycling is one area where more would always be better. We might like to think the Recycle fairies find some use for all the items we imagine we’re keeping out of the landfill.

But what happens to the items we put into our recycle bins which can’t be Recycled? Could we be creating more problems by trying to Recycle to much? What happens to things which can’t be Recycled when they arrive at the recycling department?

So are we doing more harm than good by Recycling more than we should? Chances are… yes. So let’s dig in and hash all this out so we can be good WildernessPunkers, shall we.

First off, what we can Recycle will of course vary from country to country, state to state, and town to town. So um, we’ll just focus on where I live. It might not be exact, but at least it will help educate us on a general system which should be close to accurate for most of us.

landfill_diversion_chart 11111

Like always, let’s strive to keep this simple and make a few lists. The first will be what we can recycle and the second will be things you might think are okay, but are not.

Commonly Recycled Goods

Cans, but make sure things like soup cans are clean
Plastic, water bottles, other drink bottles, clamshell fruit or take-out containers, rigid plastic like detergent bottles
Paper, junk mail (plastic windows on envelopes are fine), newspapers, office paper, shredded paper in clear plastic bags, and cardboard
Plastic bottle lids, but only if the bottle is dry and they are screwed back on
Plastic lunch containers, if they are clean
Cardboard cereal and pasta boxes
Aluminum foil, pie pans etc, but only if free of food
Milk containers, again as long as they are clean and dry
Shampoo bottles if clean and dry
Cardboard, but condense and remove tape
Glass jars, label can stay on but loose the lid

Items which cannot be Recycled

Plastic containers which have not been cleaned and dried
Styrofoam
Plastic straws
Juice bags
Plastic bags
Prescription bottles
Batteries
To go coffee and soda cups
Bubble Wrap
Pet food bags
Election Signs
Yard Waste
Hazardous waste, not in curbside, but some companies can help
Smaller items

Yes, I know some of this is a bit tedious, but if you really care about saving the Earth and stepping up to knock down your NEI, then this is good to know. Putting items into the recycle bin which can’t be recycled is much worse than tossing it into the landfill. It can break down the machines and cause whole truckloads to be contaminated and thrown into the landfill.

Also in case you were wondering…

“When done thoughtfully, recycling is cost-effective. Less energy is required to make products from recycled materials than to produce them from raw materials.” Benjie Sanders / Arizona Daily Star

And just for a fact teaser here are a few stats.

There’s a reason people say to recycle paper and save the trees. According to Waste Management, recycling 500 average phone books could save between 17 and 31 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 463 gallons of oil, 587 pounds of air pollution, 4,077 kilowatt hours of energy and landfill space. https://bit.ly/2JcL7JX

So I’m going to leave this here. Over the past few months, I’ve done what I’ve set out to do and covered, in a brutally realistic manner, what each household in the USA could, doesn’t, and should accomplish to lower our NEI as individuals and as a country. Of course more could be done and a greater insight gleaned with continued work, but more often than not, a simpler approach is more likely to succeed than an exhaustive data explosion.

recycle_chart1111

On a person note, I’m not sure about all of you, but I know I’ve learned a lot by collecting this information. We often suffer from accepted delusions and I hope I’ve helped pop a few erroneous thought bubbles.

I would also like to state, I’m pleased to have completed this process. Not only because of the positive benefits of sharing, but also because of some of the darker places my research brought me too. We have a long way to go, but as my uncle’s show used to say, “Knowledge is Power.”

And come on America, we got this. We’ve stepped up before and we can do it again, especially when this might be the most important thing our species has done in 10,000 years.

poker

You can check out some of my fiction here, where Detective Dak has to decide between is lover and his job, but will either choice be able to save them?

WildernessPunk 4/17/17

Oh gentle readers, I suppose I’ve been neglecting you, not that many will notice and less will care. Still, WildernessPunk, the idea one can survive without most of the mundane expectations of the day. It focuses on helping the environment by using less processes and items which destroys the land and instead living closer to it. Getting more involved with nature, while using less of what kills it. Can such a concept work? Like most things in life it is more a matter of greys as opposed to a pass/fail black/white idea.

Sand Face

This explains the Wilderness, but what about the punk? Originally, I was trying to live in the wilderness, while creating the funds for doing so with my writing and internet work. High tech creating the means for living low tech. To be honest, I think some of this has dropped off, although I have gone a whole year now without the dregs of an 8 2 5 job, so I’m living some sort of ideal, now if I can just figure out what the ideal is.

Trail

Maybe a few updates are in order for the eight of you who have followed WildernessPunk over the second half of 2016 and into 2017. Maybe just some bullet points would speed this up.

I’m seeing my kids.
For the first third of 2017, I got a job which ended up being ridiculously awesome. I only worked about one day a week at it, but made a few hundred dollars an hour while doing so. I got to travel around Arizona for free. Not great places unless you like places like Yuma and Phoenix, but what the hell.

Now however the steel teeth of reality’s beartrap is closing in on me. Boy, wouldn’t it be great to be a writer or a guy who could survive by working on the internet in the woods or at home? I’m clinging on with my toenails, but the grim figure of mundania lurks outside the door ready to kick it in.

Dusting

So what new concept are you going to discuss this time, Mr. Bone?

Environmentalists.

Unless you’re Donald Trump, or have a black heart full of hate, (wait, same thing) most people you ask, “Are you trying to help lessen your Negative Environmental Impact (NEI) on the environment?” will answer, yes. But what does it take to be really be helping or be an environmentalist? I hesitate to use the word environmentalist, because it has certain defined conditions. So just to insure we do not make any Trumpers nervous, in this one case, let’s just say Environmentalists are people trying to live in a way which creates less damage to our world.

Let’s look at a few categories. Those bullet points were fun before, let’s use them again.

End Game Recyclers: These are the folks who separate their trash, bring it to the curb, and then hop in their car to go buy a new set of lawn furniture.

Recycle

Privileged Purchasers: These people feel they are ahead of the pack because their new custom made home has an energy efficient dishwasher and since they have solar power, the average person could never hope to be as cool to the environment as they are.

Cherry Picker: These are the people that pick an item or two, usually something easier for them or what they want to do anyway, then elevate themselves above anyone who falls short in this category. Sure, every positive thing you do helps, but helping the environment does not stop because you bike commute or have become a vegetarian.

Power Shoppers: Folks who might do some of the above, but then consume and consume. They buy new things while the old items get tossed into the landfill. They recycle their plastic, but purchase so many groceries they produce five time more trash than they can recycle.

The list could go on, but I think you have the idea. Does an environmentalist complain their neighbor is not buying new yard furniture fast enough or maybe dumpster dived an old frame and uses it as a couch, for a few extra years before he burns it in his wood stove?

Quite often environmentalism isn’t pretty. A plastic covered garden instead of a water hogging green lawn, might be an eye sore to some, but we need to rethink what an Environmentalist really is. Is the inner-city professional who votes blue and has all their food transported hundreds of miles to them really better than the red voter who just hunted a deer and made himself a hundred meals without the use of chemicals or animal farms.

CB III

Driving and spewing poison in the air, so you can take your Sunday walk through the woods, seems like a contradiction. Yet, this is so much of what we see in this country.

What am I trying to say? I am saying we need to rethink what an Environmentalist is and what it takes to be one. Again, it is all a matter of greys, but if your only making it to the 5% mark, you need to reevaluate where you stand. We also need to rethink what we can do. Is having a pristine yard and worrying over what your neighbors think more important than global warming? Are we just going to pick a few things to make us feel better and then ignore the rest of our destructive behaviors?

Beer Sunglasses

No one can be perfect unless you head off into the woods and become a hunter/gatherer, but disregarding that, we need to look at our environmental impact holistically and also not judge others who live closer to the earth and have not bothered to lower the water table by keeping a perfect lawn in the middle of a drought, because, let’s face it folks, we are all in a drought.

Boneman