Looking Deeper into Our recycling (and a poem)

 This is interesting to see where actual recycling is sent for final processing.

 Buncombe County NC let us know in an excellent article just what is recyclable and what isn't. It's hidden in there somewhere. With the poor service at picking up recyclables, most people have given up in exasperation at the situation. Here at least the people doing recycling identify what they can and can't do, and where they send what they can recycle.  LINK HERE FOR WHOLE ARTICLE.

Confusion abounds in Buncombe about what trash can be recycled. Here’s why.

Economics, technology drive what can actually be repurposed; residents, officials call for better messaging.

It really comes down to what the recycling entity in your locality accepts and has a market for. 

Here in Buncombe, when you send over those blue recycling bags — or other plastics such as microwaveable containers and clamshell packaging for takeout food — they end up in the landfill as garbage. That’s because Curbside Management, the main recycling facility in Buncombe and other western NC counties, cannot recycle them.

Curbside Management, commonly known as Curbie, accepts and recycles plenty of other items – plastic bottles, tubs, yogurt cups, milk jugs and more – because it has a market for the materials and it makes economic sense. But it lacks the equipment and a market for other, harder-to-recycle plastics such as clamshells or heat-resistant meal holders.

Curbie employs a “single stream” method of recycling. Localities encourage customers to put everything into the large rolling bins loosely, so everything comes into the plant mixed.  Machinery does most of the sorting, but humans have to remove offending items by hand while they whiz by on conveyor belts at dizzying speeds.

A mountain of material awaits the recycling process at Curbside Management, commonly known as Curbie.  Watchdog photo by Starr Sariego

Part of the problem, environmentalists say, is that the petroleum industry that creates all these plastic products has convinced Americans that the recycling triangle and number inside equate to recyclability. Really, that symbol just tells you what kind of plastic it is.

The Center for Climate Integrity, which seeks to make the petroleum industry pay for the effects of global warming, makes a blunt case that the industry misled consumers for decades about the recyclability of plastics.

There are “thousands of different types of plastic, each with its own chemical composition and characteristics,” states a February 2024 report from the left-of-center group titled “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis.”

Curbie has a good market for bottles and jugs.

“We’ve got three or four different vendors that we ship to, and those three or four vendors are either turning that PET into carpet, or some of them are grinding it up and washing it and turning it into a flake or pellet, that can be really turned back into anything,” Lawson said. “But carpet is probably the largest consumer of that plastic in this region.”

The county tells customers to keep it simple and remember Buncombe recycling isn’t done by number but by shape — plastic bottles, jars, tubs, and jugs are all recyclable.

“If it’s not one of those shapes, it’s most likely not recyclable,” Govus said.

While recycling is a global industry, it’s really a “hyper-local process,” she pointed out.

Lawson provided a map Curbie produced that shows where collected and sorted items actually go. 

What moves the fastest? The slowest?

Besides having a buyer to make recycling practical, Curbie also needs a sizable amount of a material. 

A map and chart provided by Curbie show where recycled materials are shipped once they’ve been sorted at the Woodin facility.

“We wouldn’t recycle anything that we can’t get 40,000 pounds of,” Lawson said. “That’s the threshold. In order for us to ship something out of our plant, we ship 40,000 pounds. That’s the truck weight going down the road.”

Aluminum cans are the most valuable commodity Curbie handles, followed by clear or natural colored milk jugs. The least valuable commodity is glass, which Curbie breaks and grinds up when it comes in.

The highest volume material is cardboard, followed closely by mixed paper — junk mail and office paper. Confusion remains here, too, though, as some kinds of paper, such as tissue or receipts, are not recyclable. 

“So almost all of our paper and cardboard go to container board manufacturers,” Lawson said. “All of those plants will take that and break down those fibers or break down the paper into the fiber, and then they’ll kind of press it into big long sheets that are hundreds of feet long.”

Thanks to Asheville Watchdog, a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County.

And a great quote for today, a poem from Mary Oliver: