Recycling / Composting Discussion

[redpoint5]

I compost... at the dump. Sure, it might take 10x longer for stuff to decompose when buried along with everything else, but consider it a carbon sink. If it were to decompose immediately, then the carbon would be immediately released into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 and methane. Besides, the US is not running out of places to bury stuff.

That said, I do compost grass clippings by mulching, but that's out of sheer laziness to empty a bag. Other yard and tree debris goes to a burn pile. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I recycle too, but that's mostly to save space for more garbage (I have 2 roommates and a wife). Metal is worthwhile to recycle, but most everything else likely isn't. If recycling made sense from an energy use perspective (and environmental), then people would be paying me for my valuable recyclables. As it is, I'm compelled by law to pay extra for recycling service if I want curb-side garbage pickup.

As a tangent to the recycling thought, why should every individual have to sort garbage from recyclables? Pay an expert minimum wage to be a more efficient and effective sorter of "valuable" recyclable material. The job should pay for itself if the items are so valuable.

Why is "landfill" such a negative thought in progressive metropolitan areas considering that compostable material is better sequestered in the ground?

Is there any evidence that energy is saved by recycling, and if so, for which materials?

[Daox]

I compost in my yard for nice fertile soil. I do not put any real effort into it though. Stuff goes on a pile and that its. Half the time it probably gets eaten by animals. The rest of it decomposes. When I need to use some I grab the wheel barrow and shovel and grab some. I never turn the pile.

I agree with sorting recyclables, and thankfully I don't have to. I have one big bin and everything goes in there. Its as easy as garbage for me. I'm sure I pay more for it, but I'm happy to for the environmental reasons and convenience.

[Fat Charlie]

Your recyclables do get sold. The few plastic jugs and glass bottles you leave on the curb every week aren't worth anyone's time, though. What you're paying for is the curbside pickup- and if you can find someone willing to take your money to sort for you, do it.

Landfill is a dirty word because once you fill it, you need to find somewhere else to do it. "Put a soccer field there" only works so many times. My town has a "transfer station" because they did that already. We can either pay to have everything the town throws out hauled somewhere and buried, or we can reduce that cost and actually get paid something for the recyclables.

[jamesqf]

When you've got an acre or so of garden, as I do, composting becomes a necessity - unless of course you like spending a lot of money on commercial fertilizers, mulches, &c. Mine's about 40 ft long, give or take, and gets turned every few months. New stuff goes in one end, finished compost comes out the other. And since I have horses for neighbors (though my own lives at my friends' ranch, some distance away), that part is free.

What exactly is the big deal with sorting recycling? Just takes a trivial bit of mental effort to decide which bin to put a particular item in.

The people who do the trash pickup hereabouts seem to think recycling is profitable: Trash Saved by Waste Management Worth Up to $40 Billion - Bloomberg The pickup cost, including recycling, runs me about $12/month, less than a lot of people spend on cell phones or cable TV each week.

[redpoint5]

Take Portland, for instance. Some crazy law allows garbage to only be collected once every 2 weeks, and the bin size is tiny. They require people to separate their compostable materials into another festering container. Then you have a glass container, and finally a monster of a recycle container. Most of the residents don't have the land to make use of the compost, so it must go to some company who then makes a profit by selling the collected compost.

Because masses of people are bound to have some knuckleheads, all of it must be sorted anyhow. There will be compost in the recycle, garbage in the recycle, recycle in the compost... so you have millions of people doing a poor job of sorting because it isn't their job and often they don't care, and then you have a 2nd sort done at the facility. This represents millions of minutes of human life devoted to a menial task which is better done by a professional.

If the material has value, as the article linked by James suggests, then there is incentive for the business to sort everything regardless of how well suppliers (garbage customers) separate things.

Brooks is a city that has a garbage incinerator that converts waste into electricity. Seems to me that between the value in the recyclable material, and the fuel being provided to the electric generators, that should at least break even with the cost to collect it, especially if I'm also an unpaid employee that sorts everything for them.

Someone is making millions of dollars on us and tricking us into believing we're getting a good deal because it only costs $15/mo to take away our "trash". There has got to be some politicians with dirty hands involved in this scam as well.

[freebeard]

Chalk one up for the bureaucrats.

Back in the 70s when it still wasn't too late to save humanity, in the Eugene-Springfield area, the hippy rag-pickers wanted to rent a farm directly across from the entrance to the [then] Day Island Sanitary Land Fill. The city said "We don't want hippys near our trash" and they were relegated to a location just beyond the railroad overpass on Seavy Loop (literally the other side of the tracks).

Here we are years later, and the City has a Central Processing Facility in Glenwood (it's a conduit to to a mountain their building somewhere south of Cresswell). BRING (the hippys), Goodwill, Nextstep (electronics) Recycling and other commercial processors all coexist right there.

If I didn't haul my recyclables there, that would be one less reason to keep a car on the road and not get a bicycle trailer.

I believe source separation is a moral obligation. If the stuff is in my possession it's my responsibility. I admire people like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcAMXm9zITg

[redpoint5]

Cool video, thanks for sharing.

I'm all about efficiency, and this guy goes to the extreme. More extreme than I care to exercise, but I'm sure I have learned some things that I can implement in the future.

Still, I wonder if the environment is better off with paper recycling, or if using virgin material each time is overall more efficient? If recycling paper was more energy efficient than producing new product, then presumably recycled product would cost less than virgin material. Cost is usually directly related to consumption of resources; either human labor, or energy use. I'm wondering the same thing about glass recycling.

As I understand it, metal recycling is more efficient than creating virgin material. I assume that's why there are scrap yards that will pay you for scrap metals. In the same way, there should be glass, paper, and plastic yards that will pay something for those materials.

[Ryland]

Nearly all of your recyclables are sold in the same way scrap steel is sold, plastic is worth 3 times what steel is, but it's light, so many recycling organizations break even if they are lucky as buyers require everything to be bailed up in several ton bails... try that at home.
No sort recycling us difficult, it still gets sorted first by hand to keep automated equipment from being damaged, then by machine then by hand again to pull stuff the machine screwed up, it still is only 90% effective.
Paper and plastic bags screw up single stream more then anything, so if you do have "no sort" or single bin, keep plastic bags and paper out!

As for "composting"everything in the landfill, landfills cost roughly $0.03 per pound to throw things "away", so if you can recycle or compost something for less, you are ahead.

[freebeard]

No sort recycling us difficult, it still gets sorted first by hand to keep automated equipment from being damaged, then by machine then by hand...

No-sort is difficult, possibly? When the Glenwood Central Processing Facility was built, they had a shiny new sorting tower from Allis-Chalmers IIRC. It wasn't long until it blew up and they removed it. I doubt it was paper and plastic bags. More likely a not-quite-empty Propane bottle/tank.

Reduce and Reuse come before Recycle for a reason.

[Xist]

Composting is a scam! It is a conspiracy! It is... https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...article/319723

I can fill the bed of a truck with good compost for $24?!

I always mention my mom's raised gardens. Dirt in Arizona is garbage. Hardly anything desirable grows easily, even at 6,000 feet, where Mom lives. I think she bought dozens of bags of potting soil for one raised garden, but it still spread thin. I would happily spend twenty-four dollars to get a nice load of compost!

Now that I vacuumed up the leaves next to our very long sidewalk, some of the guys are trying to get me to plant stuff. I am thinking of filling the area with catnip and seeing if they complain if cats visit us!

There are places around here with cheap manure and compost. I just might go for it!

The recycling in the metropolitan Phoenix area has been no-sort for something like fifteen years, just one big blue bin. The problem is that people throw garbage in there, which people need to sort out, and people do not clean their recyclables, which would only be more difficult to clean later. In order to recycle from garbage, you would need to wash the recyclables that much more, which would be great for paper.