My town’s “recycling” program is more like a “lets-just-pretend-we-recycle-and-throw-away-everything-that-isn’t-a-plastic-bottle” program.
No, I’m serious.
I put everything that has a recycling triangle on it in our recycling bin. Plastic bottles. Plastic containers. Plastic cups. Glass and aluminum and paper too….However, whenever the recycling pickup people come around, they always toss out the plastic containers. Even though they have the exact same triangle with a Type 1 or Type 2 plastic symbol, just like all the plastic bottles.
This has been going on for as long as I can remember, and it has always puzzled and angered me. So, I finally wrote to the head of our recycling program how I was displeased that perfectly recyclable plastic was rejected from being reused.
I got back a cold response:
“In the recycling calendar under the section “How to Prepare & Acceptable Items”, it is listed that we only accept #1 and #2 plastic bottles………………….and they are listed: Plastic water bottles, plastic soda bottles, plastic detergent bottles & plastic milk containers.
We do not have markets for any other plastics containers at this time. So any container that has a #1 or #2 on it is to be thrown in the trash.”
Ok, so I get that they’re selling plastic bottles to buyers that want to reuse the plastic. But what I don’t understand is why it matters what SHAPE the plastic is! It’s like saying, “Sorry, we can’t recycle shredded paper. We only take whole sheets.” Ridiculous.
1 Comment
July 2, 2008 at 3:58 pm
You would think that shape wouldn’t matter on something so important. Thanks for spreading the word.