Why aren’t we recycling more?

There are valid reasons to not recycle glass -> no local places to recycle. Perhaps, I'm just ignorant of where to do this in north Alabama.
 
There are valid reasons to not recycle glass -> no local places to recycle. Perhaps, I'm just ignorant of where to do this in north Alabama.
Goes back to lazy politicians. Just means some pressure needs to be put on your local reps. Increasing glass recycling will support the local job market and tax base as well. The circular economy pays benefits for a long, long time.

There’s Arkansas Glass, Arglass & Anchor Glass in GA & FL respectively that would likely love additional cullet streams. Strategic Materials is one of the largest recyclers in the country and has locations in a multitude of places. 👍🏻
 
No money in it.

My parents friends used to have a recycling and trash business until they sold out to a larger company. They used to sort and bale everything. Glass was put into a dumpster by color. It was hard finding people too as one can imagine. That operation stopped and then everything was sold just to incinerate for energy. Not sure where this was done at.

Our county does not have a recycling program for us uneducated rural people. I’m not even sure where to take recyclables. It certainly isn’t convenient.
 
Before many of you go off on the lack of high-percentage recycling, maybe you should look at how much MORE trash is produced by those under 50 today. You know, that age group that is mostly running around screaming about Soc___ Issues and how I should be doing more.

I pay attention to the two hipster BILs that come to my house at times during the holidays. Both are from the Northeast.

I see my garbage can in the kitchen overflowing within 1 day. I see my huge Rubbermaid garbage can in the garage full and overflowing in less than 2 days. I see my 35 gallon garbage can, labeled for recycling, overflowing in 2-3 days. All full of aluminum (craft) beer cans, bottles, styrofoam/paper food to-go containers, etc. Hardly any stuff that my wife and I normally produce.

Everything they drink comes out of a disposable 12, 16 or 20 oz container. Everything. or a paper Coffee cup that is thrown away. They have to eat special, organic, high-quality food that comes in very small packages, so it's basically one serving for each package. So there's all this plastic wrap/paper/etc.

Nearly 100% of what my wife and I drink comes out of a pitcher, either tea we make at home or water filtered from the faucet. We cook nearly 100% of our meals from fresh food and there's generally leftovers that we store in glass or re-used plastic containers. Our produce is put back in the bags it came in or we use Ziplocks that keep it fresh for days. We use real plates, bowls, silverware that is washed and re-used. Our cookware is all high-quality, buy once, cry once, multi-generational cookware.

We generally plan our grocery trips and take more than enough re-usable grocery bags. These younger people seem to have to go out for coffee every morning, grab breakfast and then either have to go to the grocery store or somewhere to get something to go every meal.

There's not a recycling problem. There's a problem with the generation of waste.
 
Most recycling plans in this country are a scam. Fortunately after it became more difficult to ship these "recyclables' overseas most of these programs disappeared.
 
That’s a non-industry person telling you that. In addition to there being 100% fully automated solutions that can sort flint from colors, remove stones and organics, it is also possible for even flint glass to be mixed with roughly 3% colored cullet with no detriment
In all honesty the reason why glass isn’t 100% recycled is that people (especially local politicians that control recycling policies) are LAZY.
I repeat, there is never a valid excuse to send a glass container into a landfill.

Our area landfills recyclables collected and separated constantly including glass, stating there is no market.

There are valid reasons to not recycle glass -> no local places to recycle. Perhaps, I'm just ignorant of where to do this in north Alabama.


Our area makes you separate glass but the recycler usually just throws it out.

Too bad glass containers aren’t required to be standardized and returnable like they used to be

Most papers can only be recycled once or twice before the fibers become so destroyed that they cannot meet strength requirements.

If you ever got a real deal Chinese cardboard box you would find paper products did get recycled more than twice.

What’s more unfortunate is that we used to make paper and diaper pellets for corn burning furnaces and even to sub into coal fired equipment, made for a very hot clean burning fuel and contamination didn’t matter, sadly that supply died in the 90’s
 
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We live outside the city limits so a private company handles our trash and recycling.

Couple things that happened since we moved to this area.

Private company says we are no longer accepting glass as recycling, throw it out.

Private company says one year later, we are only accepting recycling every other week.

I guess there i no money in glass, and my single stream recycling can is full after one week, so guess what happens on the second week?

All the items get dumped in the trash on week two.
 
I remember reading an article about the " scrap drives " during WWII . Patriotic citizens donated pots and pans and all manner of metals to the war effort thinking that it would be used to build tanks and planes to defeat the Axis powers . In reality most of it was not suitable for these things , but it did help free up the quality resources .
 
Re-using glass is probably the best option, environmentally for most places. IMO there should be a pretty significant deposit ($0.25)on all sizes of plastic water/drink bottles, just eliminate the case of 24 water bottles for $3 waste generating stuff. I know its handy but so is filling a 2 gallon jug of water and taking it to the construction site and guys can fill their own reusable container....
Lots of people don't care or don't think about waste, so being wasteful is cheap and convenient, so maybe just taking the cheap out the equation would help a lot of people be less wasteful.
 
I've been told by numerous people in the know that glass isn't easy to recycle. I forget all the reasons, but many collection agencies won't take it anymore. I know hardly any collector takes it the GA area. If people are having it collected in the major metro Atlanta area, I'm pretty sure it is for theater and the glass is being thrown into the landfill. It's just the honest truth.



Here's another FACT that many of you need to know-

In the PNW, there is a deposit on plastic water bottles.

Here's what the leeches on the taxpayers do- When their EBT/etc cards are refilled every 1st of the month, they go and buy cases and cases of water with it. They then proceed to pour all that clean, ready-to-drink water out, in the parking lot of the store where they bought it. Then they take all the empty bottles back in for a refund on the deposit. So they turn their government benefit into cash.....
 
Our household stuff goes into a rollaway recycling bin - mixed glass, metal, paper cardboard, foil. plastics. That bin gets picked up curbside every other week.

Where it goes after that I don't know. I suppose I could research this. or Call WASTE MANAGEMENT our trash company.

This reminds me, I have a couple old gas grills under the porch that have to go to the recycling yard. Cast Aluminum tubs with steel frames. I don't have a truck, I have to enlist my friend.

My used oil goes in to a couple 5 gal jerry jugs, then I take that waste to the Town Garage where they use it for a waste oil heater.
 
I remember reading an article about the " scrap drives " during WWII . Patriotic citizens donated pots and pans and all manner of metals to the war effort thinking that it would be used to build tanks and planes to defeat the Axis powers . In reality most of it was not suitable for these things , but it did help free up the quality resources .
It was to make people feel that they were doing something and have a skin in the game. It's known as a "feel-good measure" to generate buy-in and move the masses in a needed direction.
 
It was to make people feel that they were doing something and have a skin in the game. It's known as a "feel-good measure" to generate buy-in and move the masses in a needed direction.
Most of the recycling is the same, it went to China only to be buried or burned, but it sure made people feel good about saving the planet. It made certain people lots of money as well.

Now that China doesn’t want most of that waste, so we have a problem.
 
Yep, see my reply right above 👍🏻

Separating glass by color at the curbside is just another excuse to give consumers another excuse to not recycle something that’s infinitely recyclable with no degradation in quality, unlike every other packaging.

Most plastics can’t be recycled into the same packaging, they end up as park benches or other things.

Most papers can only be recycled once or twice before the fibers become so destroyed that they cannot meet strength requirements.

Every aluminum can you buy actually has a plastic “sleeve” inside of it to keep the product from touching the aluminum.
I am curios why the recycle center here would say NO Window panes or drinking glasses. It would seem they would be just as recyclable as clear glass or colored glass bottles.
 
Goes back to lazy politicians. Just means some pressure needs to be put on your local reps. Increasing glass recycling will support the local job market and tax base as well. The circular economy pays benefits for a long, long time.

There’s Arkansas Glass, Arglass & Anchor Glass in GA & FL respectively that would likely love additional cullet streams. Strategic Materials is one of the largest recyclers in the country and has locations in a multitude of places. 👍🏻
So walk me through the math just so I know. Is it profitable to recycle glass. I guess you need to do something with it - but don't most places have the opportunity to recycle if they want to? If its profitable why doesn't someone to offer glass pickup for free - say at a central collection site. Why does the government (which is us BTW) need to fund recycling?

Our county does it - but they simply have a different dumpster at the county site where you dump everything else. I think most cities have no such place - everyone gets trash pickup. If is cost positive why don't the trash companies collect it?
 
I am curios why the recycle center here would say NO Window panes or drinking glasses. It would seem they would be just as recyclable as clear glass or colored glass bottles.
Different glass chemistries and coatings/laminations. Same thing with pharmaceutical glass, which is borosilicate glass. “Regular” glass- beer bottles, jars, spirits… are made out of soda-lime glass.
 
So walk me through the math just so I know. Is it profitable to recycle glass. I guess you need to do something with it - but don't most places have the opportunity to recycle if they want to? If its profitable why doesn't someone to offer glass pickup for free - say at a central collection site. Why does the government (which is us BTW) need to fund recycling?

Our county does it - but they simply have a different dumpster at the county site where you dump everything else. I think most cities have no such place - everyone gets trash pickup. If is cost positive why don't the trash companies collect it?
We generally pay around $100-120/ton for cullet at most of our facilities. If you do the math you’ll quickly see why bottle bill states enjoy much higher recycling rates; it eliminates the tedious part of getting the glass back from the customer.

For 12oz beer bottles, a ton is nearly 6,000 containers; for some spirits like handled 1.75s, it may be as few as 800 containers per ton. As far as further motives of why places don’t recycle, I don’t really know. Considering it’s literally the “greenest” packaging material, you’d expect a solid glass recycling program just about everywhere.
 
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