I used to think plastic recycling was the answer, but a tour of our local facility changed my mind

For years I sorted every container and felt good about it, but when I visited the county recycling center in Portland last month, the manager told me only 9% of what comes in actually gets recycled. The rest goes to the landfill or gets incinerated because it's contaminated or not profitable to process. Has anyone else seen their local facility and ended up changing their whole approach to waste?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan_wright3410d ago

My buddy took his kids on a field trip to their local recycling plant and came back saying it basically just made them depressed about all the stuff going straight to the dump. He switched to just reducing what they buy instead of worrying about the bin after that.

grantw3210d ago

Started buying less stuff and it worked way better than stressing over the wrong bin.

patricialee10d ago

I live in a tiny apartment in Chicago and my recycling bin is basically a shrine to my guilt, but after reading @susan_wright34's story about that field trip, I feel a little better about just throwing stuff in the trash sometimes. I actually went to the city's waste drop-off last summer and the guy told me they sort by hand and it's mostly just people tossing pizza boxes with cheese still stuck to them. My own pizza box confession? I once put a whole frozen pizza box in the bin thinking I was saving the planet, and now I'm pretty sure I just made some worker's day worse. So now I'm just trying to buy less crap and not beat myself up when I can't avoid the trash can.

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