Hello friends! I'm back to ramble about my efforts to minimize the waste I produce. 馃榿
A while back I talked about my plan to shrink the size of my trash can, and I finally did it! To summarize, I was buying the smallest size trash bag (about the size of a grocery store plastic bag), and it was still too big for my needs. So I realized I could use doggie poop pickup bags, and that would be the right size for me.
I ended up picking up some called Earth Rated brand, that are made with 65% post consumer recycled plastic. We want there to be a market for recycled plastic, which encourages companies to do it more, so I went with that. There's another brand I mentioned last time, Hippo Sak, that uses 100% recovered ocean plastic, that I will probably try another time but they are only sold on Amazon (sigh), and I try to minimize shopping there when possible.
So the big can with a cloth bag on the left is recycling, and the small can (that is an old whey protein jar) with a green bag is trash. Compost is on the balcony.
We all know the vast majority of plastic is not recycled, but it's hard to avoid for some things. So, you want to give what plastic you do have the best chance at being recycled (if you're not reusing it; reduce first, reuse second, recycle third!). Number 1 and number 2 are the most likely to actually get recycled.
When you have a plastic jar with a plastic label, did you know you are supposed to cut the label off? Most people don't, I don't think. The label is a different type of plastic and will contaminate the load if recycled, so they would probably toss the entire thing at the sorting station because they don't have time to be cutting labels off.
So cut the label off, and toss it (it might go in one of those plastic bag collections in stores? But those generally didn't get recycled either and are greenwashing). Next, check under the cap to see if there is a piece of cardboard (there often is for food packaging or vitamins). Pry that out with a kitchen knife. Cardboard cannot go in with plastic recycling!
Rinse it out, and put the cap back on the bottle (lose caps often won't get recycled but they might if still attached to their #1 or #2 bottles). Then put it in your recycling! Now it might (maybe) actually have a chance at getting recycled. We can hope.
I get a little obsessive with figuring out how to minimize waste and what the rules for recycling are (which can vary from location to location, of course), because it's important to me to minimize harm as much as I can. The Powers That Be want to make things seem easier and more convenient than they actually are so people will shop, shop, shop without guilt, and that's why plastic recycling is mostly a scam. It takes some effort to seek out alternatives and learn all the sneaky greenwashing ways, so hopefully by sharing what I've learned, it can help people who don't have the time to dig into figuring out all out, make some adjustments too. :)
Have a great day and thank you for reading! 馃槂
