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Woman Disgusted When She Uses Tracker to See Where Her Plastic Recycling Really Ends Up
Futurism via Yahoo ^ | August 30, 2024 | Noor Al-Sibai

Posted on 08/31/2024 12:53:20 PM PDT by grundle

An environmentalist put a GPS tracker in with her recycling to see where it ended up — and the results were not confidence-inspiring.

As Inside Climate News reports in an investigative collaboration with CBS, Houston activist and avid recycler Brandy Deason tossed an Apple Tag in with her bagged plastic waste to take to one of the city's new recycling drop-off sites to see what really happens to recyclables.

Deason dropped her secretly-tagged plastic bag off with the Houston Recycling Collaboration, a public-private partnership that launched with the help of Exxon nearly two years ago to address the city's low recycling rates. Though the program was partially billed as being capable of melting any plastic down for reuse chemically, ICN and CBS found with the help of Deason that no such process has occurred in the 20 months since the project first began.

In fact, the sorting plant that's supposed to enact the so-called "advanced recycling" process still hasn't opened — and won't do so until the middle of next year.

"We want to know what was happening with this stuff," Deason, a member of the Houston Air Alliance, told the website. "Is it really going to go to get recycled?" Plastic Scenery

As the activist, her organization, and the news outlets soon found, the tagged bags instead ended up at Wright Waste Management, a remote facility 20 miles outside of the city's downtown. Though its reporters were not allowed a look inside, drone footage from above the plant shows that it's home to a giant open-air pile of trash.

Despite not having opened the promised sorting facility, the Houston Recycling Collaboration also expanded its drop-off locations from one to eight, which seems per this new investigation to be steering exponentially more plastics to the glorified landfill

(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: plastic; recycling
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To: grundle

Yes, we’ve heard this story for 20, maybe 30 years. The stuff piles up into enormous mountains that have zero value.

That’s one of the reasons I’m so opposed to “green power.” People that push it are very short-sighted and don’t look down the road 20 or 30 years when we will have tens of millions of TONS of non-recyclable toxic waste. Millions of worn-out windmill blades made from fiberglass. Millions of worn-out solar cells made from zero-value glass and loaded with toxic elements.

If the economics of “green power” were honest, those down-stream costs would be included in today’s ROI and cost-of-electricity calculation. Those wind and solar technologies are going to be HUGE environmental disasters in the near future.

Conventional power plants are built mainly of steel. They can be torn down and recycled. A lot of the plants I started up in the 70s reached the end of their life, were torn down, recycled, and the land is once again a green field. That was economically practical because the plants had lots of high-value steel.


41 posted on 08/31/2024 2:13:26 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“When exposing a crime is treated like a crime, you are being ruled by criminals” – Edward Snowd)
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To: TexasGator

True dat!

But it was good enough to see where it went.

Must have been some cooperating iPhones nearby. ;)


42 posted on 08/31/2024 2:15:27 PM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: grundle

My little story about recycling...

I was having adult beverages in a resort in the Italian alps. There were six cans for everyone to sort their trash and all the obedient Europeans dutifully spent minutes placing the trash in the right bins. The trash trucks drive by and everything is driven to the landfill. I laughed and asked the waiter why they do that. It is because the Europeans are so brainwashed they can’t bare to not sort their trash and “recycle” that they will leave cans and bottles and plastic in bags thinking they are saving the planet even though it is all garbage. Headed to the landfill.


43 posted on 08/31/2024 2:28:06 PM PDT by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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Where I live, every house has a giant blue trash can. We’re supposed to put paper, cardboard, glass, milk cartons,aluminum foil, metal cans, etc. in it. I can’t believe they can efficiently sort that mess of stuff, so I suspect it ends up in the landfill. Containers going into the recycling bin are supposed to be cleaned, so people are probably using quite a bit of water to clean containers that end up in the landfill.


44 posted on 08/31/2024 2:40:10 PM PDT by Kipp
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To: Eccl 10:2

She’s proving the lie. We are all being sacked for this lie.


45 posted on 08/31/2024 2:40:20 PM PDT by Persevero (You cannot comply your way out of tyranny. )
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To: grundle

The thing with recycling is that it only works if someone wants/needs to buy the recycled material.

Otherwise it’s just waste.

You can get cash in your hand for lots of metals. Copper wire, used stainless kitchen sinks, even batteries. That’s why lots of people will gladly pick up your metal junk for free.

Way back in the day, cardboard was worth cash. ChiComs don’t need it anymore for boxes to send shiiite to America, so now it has near zero cash value.


46 posted on 08/31/2024 2:41:18 PM PDT by Macoozie (Roll MAGA, roll!)
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To: Eccl 10:2

LOL... These people are preoccupied with cow flop.


47 posted on 08/31/2024 2:44:12 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

There simply is no current method to recycle collected .a drain on the economy. Recycling plastics, which may if done well keep them out of waterways is a huge drain on the economy and a big expense for taxpayers. Plastics should be burned for electricity, some of the power used to trap the resulting pollutants such as dioxin. However irrational greens are opposed to burning anything. They will always choose a policy that punishes people and lowers the standard of living.


48 posted on 08/31/2024 2:50:50 PM PDT by allendale
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To: Fledermaus

Yep. It’s a jobs program for made up “jobs”.


49 posted on 08/31/2024 2:55:36 PM PDT by ConjunctionJunction (Vim vi repellere licet)
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To: Organic Panic

“obedient Europeans dutifully spent minutes placing the trash in the right bins.”

Sometimes it is just too much work to deprogram the brainwashed fools.


50 posted on 08/31/2024 2:55:49 PM PDT by cgbg ("Our democracy" = Their Kleptocracy)
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To: grundle
I've read a huge number of news stories exactly like this one. It's always interesting to see how shocked the person is, as if they had never seen any of those other news stories over the years.

That's because leftists live in a world of their own only watching CNN and not letting facts or reality intrude on their self-imposed fantasyland.

51 posted on 08/31/2024 2:59:09 PM PDT by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus”)
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To: grundle

I try to tell my goofy neighbor that that stuff she always throws in the recycle gets dumped with the other trash. She doesn’t want to believe it. LOL


52 posted on 08/31/2024 3:00:35 PM PDT by dforest
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To: grundle

My children and I did this in 1996. We followed the truck. It went straight to the landfill with the rest of the garbage. Today my oldest is an attorney that represents clients over land use matters and environmental issues all around the country. (26 states) If you have a public use dog park, chances are good she handled all the legal work for the park.


53 posted on 08/31/2024 3:02:45 PM PDT by blackdog ((Z28.310) Be careful what you say. Your refrigerator may be listening & reporting you.)
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To: CodeToad

I don’t think my local Pacific Steel operation would be paying 0.30/lb if they weren’t able to sell the cans going forward.

YMMV.


54 posted on 08/31/2024 3:03:23 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Paladin2

You might be surprised to know of taxpayer funded scams for all this “recycling”.


55 posted on 08/31/2024 3:07:55 PM PDT by CodeToad (Rule #1: The elites want you dead.)
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To: CodeToad

https://www.pacific-steel.com/about-us/

I doubt that these guys are subsidized by the deep flyover State or local County.

The Feds. Who knows?


56 posted on 08/31/2024 3:22:12 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: grundle

I work at a plant that makes polyethylene plastic film & bags. If you’ve ever had a deer processed and got back those 1 or 5 lb bags of ground deer, we probably made those bags.

We recycle any scrap produced in house into trash bags of varying color. Employees bring in their grocery bags that get recycled.

That’s barely worth the effort and it’s entirely in house. Having trucks drive around to collect the stuff, sort things and deliver it somewhere, not sustainable at all.

I don’t know what it takes to recycle polypropylene(bottles) compared to polyethylene(film/bags) but we have a huge machine to grind up the film, melt it down, and then mold it back into the half sphere pellets that the extruders accept to remelt into film/bags.

This place has less than 100 employees, 6 extruders, 2 printers and 8 machines that chop up bags from a roll film. Their electric bill is $50k per month.

Meanwhile, I remember going to the grocery store with my mom. The butcher would custom cut or grind whatever she wanted and would wrap it in brown paper for absorption and then white paper for presentation.

Plastic sucks


57 posted on 08/31/2024 3:25:32 PM PDT by Pollard (Will work for high tunnel money!)
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To: grundle

I don’t care where it goes. The county takes 2/3 of my trash for free.


58 posted on 08/31/2024 3:29:16 PM PDT by TigersEye (His son nicknamed him Pedo Pete. (mic drop))
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To: grundle

Recycling wastes more energy than making the good old way from fresh resources


59 posted on 08/31/2024 3:30:47 PM PDT by butlerweave
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To: Fledermaus
Recycling is a scam.

MOST recycling is a scam.

Our plastic waste in northern NH goes to a recycling plant in Groveton, NH owned by a fellow from Quebec.

It gets processed into diesel fuel and home heating oil.

10% of our home heating oil is this recycled plastic.

It burns really clean.

60 posted on 08/31/2024 3:31:58 PM PDT by Mogger (AreIn bookstores is a very expensive, beautifully bound in green leather Holy Koran. If one was goin)
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