This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which means trash and recycling pickup. Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night.
If you have not done so already, don’t forget to sign up for your Recycling Perks.
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.
The good news is that, as this Connecticut newspaper article says, “Recycling ‘still working’ despite fiscal stress.”
Glass — largely lacking value because it’s often broken and dirtied by random goods in the “single stream” — travels by rail to a recycler in North Carolina. Trailers haul plastic to processors and recyclers in Pennsylvania or Canada, or to New York and New Jersey ports shipping material to South Korea. And paper makes its way to mills in West Virginia, Canada or 9,000 miles away in Malaysia.
Note there’s still so much room for improvement. The state of Virginia ranks 34 in the nation overall for recycling, according to a recent article in the West Potomac High School ‘The Wire’ newspaper. Also…
In Europe and Washington State, laws have been introduced banning the use of single-use plastics. Examples of single-use plastics include straws, plastic plates, and plastic cutlery. A study done by the United Nations (UN), shows that the world produces over 40 million tons of plastic per year. This ban is meant to cut down on the amount of plastic that is thrown away, as plastic does not decompose easily in nature. According to the New York Times Marine scientists in Ireland found plastic in 73% of 233 deep sea fish in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.
Another study done by the UN shows that North America uses 21% of all the single use plastics in the world. This number is only topped by the 26% used in Northeast Asia, in countries including China and Japan. The study also shows that of all the plastic waste generated in the world, 79% sits in landfills or is littered into the environment, while only 9% of plastic waste is properly recycled.
