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 ...
Nothing new. Over fifty years ago when recycling first became popular a truck load of separated plastic, colored glass from clear glass, tin from aluminum, slick paper from pulp paper was followed after it had been picked up. It went to the local landfill where it was dumped together and quickly buried.
If it weren’t for recycling mandates, these programs would probably fade away as another scam, to collect dust alongside all those Nigerian emails promising money.
I knew it. I’ve seen the trash man dump the contents from my Liberal neighbor’s blue “recycling” into his truck along with regular trash.
I had heard many times that it was usually cheaper to start out with new materials (but not in all cases) than to use recycled material. Recycling might help the situation with piled up trash, but how many manufacturers are concerned with that more than making a buck?
Indeed.
I agree.
Since day one, I just assumed, without any proof, that the trash was taken by people contracted to recycle it, put on barges, pushed out into the ocean, where it was all dumped.
I am no surprised or shocked by this.
So glad someone else caught that. The few tracker videos I’ve seen online have all used much more sophisticated trackers. While I’m sure the story is mostly correct, the tracking part of it seems totally made up.
Our plastic goes to a trash to energy facility. Burned.
Smart move
There is a large waste incinerator plant next door to the Spokane, WA airport.
Waste-to-energy makes a lot of sense. That is particularly true for keeping plastic out of dumps where it degrades and becomes microplastics which can find their way into the water cycle and onto crops we eat.
plastic + oxygen-containing air = not only CO2, but also deadly fumes:
Toxic Pollutants from Plastic Waste- A Review (click here)
The opening lines of this article are as follows:
"Incineration of plastic waste in an open field is a major source of air pollution. Most of the times, the Municipal Solid Waste containing about 12% of plastics is burnt, releasing toxic gases like Dioxins, Furans, Mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls into the atmosphere. Further, burning of Poly Vinyl Chloride liberates hazardous halogens and pollutes air, the impact of which is climate change. The toxic substances thus released are posing a threat to vegetation, human and animal health and environment as a whole. Polystyrene is harmful to Central Nervous System."Back in the '60s when I was a volunteer fireman, we were warned to make sure we had to use self-contained air breathing devices when dealing with (the many) home dryer fires, which may likely be caused by the foam-based falsie bras dried at high heat and decomposing to exude deadly fumes that ignite to burn them and the other contents.
The modern way is to heat and gasify, scrub the gas and use the gas as synthesis gas or fuel.
We studied it some in packaging but chemical engineers could tell you much more than I know.
I’ve never studied chem e.
I remember hearing years ago that all/most of the recycling drives during WWII were a scam, just to make people feel that they were helping the War Effort.
This article shows otherwise.
The only use for recycling is to create laws to penalize those who don’t separate the “recycling” from the regular trash. A cash cow.
I taught my kids from a young age the stupidity of such programs. We recycle nothing. The city provided recycling bin holds lots of leaves in the fall. That’s the only time it’s used.
Yea, but it’s good to have proof.
No, but it’s ideal.
If I had enough brains to be a chem e I could tell you more.
We had a chem e intern who worked for me. After university he got a job scrubbing natural gas in Midland, TX.
He wanted to then go to med school but decided he would never make as much money as a doctor than as a chem e. Now he’s settled in Midland for good.
It’s beyond my mathematical ability, I was just saying what can be done.
“The LORD gave us perfect natural receptacles to dispose of trash, all over the world.
They are called VOLCANOES.”
True, but, transport to and deposit into is a real Killary/Kamalaho.
Back in the 70s I was head of the high school environmental club. The city agreed let a recycler place a 20-foot container for old newspapers recycling by the train tracks. Then we got articles in the local papers, and organized the members to distribute fliers door-to-door. We only had to make sure the area around the container was clean and the newspapers were stacked properly in the back. At $20 a ton we received around $200 a month and became the richest high school club. Quite a cash cow.
Our garbage bills went up because of it. We all should be pissed.
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