Happy July everyone!

 Whoohoo! Summertime is here for sure!

Hot days bring everyone to the pool. So the parking lot is mobbed and us seniors either have to hike a ways to get to classes and lunch, or get there really early since the pool doesn't open all that early. Speaking of parking. The other day...

My trunk is packed with folding chairs. I've loaded my picnic lunch in its cooler into the car, as well as a big shopping bag of things to give Teresa, who I'm meeting for lunch.

BUT, the recycle bins haven't been emptied yet. And the maintenance guy put them out where the truck could easily access them without banging them against the sides of the car which is parked facing the little corral where they are usually kept.

The trash corral on another day.

So I texted Teresa to come pick me up. In the mean time, the maintenance guy moved the bins enough for me to back out. I texted Teresa never mind, I could get my car out now. She didn't get that text, because as I back out she arrives, and follows me driving down the hill where I turn around and go back to my original spot. And maintenance guy shouts, the recycle truck just arrived anyway.

So I park and make sure to leave space for the bins to be taken back to their corral, while MM tells Teresa the recycle truck just arrived, and then I unload my stuff into Teresa's car, while she waits right behind mine...after the recycle truck had done it's duty.

I could just imagine the entertainment factor for the seniors in the rockers on the porch across the way. I felt like the keystone cops had just arrived.

We had originally intended to do a Blue Ridge Parkway drive up to Mt. Mitchell for our picnic...and to give me a chance to breath at higher elevation. But it looked partly cloudy, and that would have kept us from seeing any views from the highest mountain east of the Mississippi. So we went to Lake Tomahawk instead, and ate in the picnic pavilion with a great breeze off the lake. I didn't take any more photos.

Then there was the  fiasco of the ironing board.

I had asked the maintenance man how to dispose of several items, a lamp which had shorted out, and the ironing board, which was metal. I asked if I could put it out to recycle. Nope, he said it should go to the household items pick up on Friday...the next day. These things, including beds and furniture, are placed at the foot of the hill of our parking lot. He offered to take things from my front porch for that pickup.

So the lamp, a couple of indoor/outdoor rugs, and the ironing board, and a whole plastic milk crate full of old VCR tapes were put on my front porch before I went picnicking.

He didn't take the blue recycle bin, perhaps because the ones here are green. I can use it to pack something in anyway.

I mentioned to Teresa that I was giving away the ironing board, and she said she really wanted it. She does something called slow stitching. OK, I was pretty sure I could ask the maintenance man to give it back. I didn't get to see him, but mentioned it to the landlady, who passed it on to him, and within a few hours he brought it back. 

I wonder if the porch sitting elders got to see the ironing board go down the hill and then back up again within a few hours. And then Saturday Teresa came back and loaded it and some Christmas wrapping paper into her car. I certainly don't plan taking rolls of wrapping paper out west with me!

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Another note is to wish family members much joy as they attend World Cup games in Atlanta and Philadelphia. Here's a quote from a UU minister who writes a daily newsletter, shared on Substack. 

Keith Kron from Keith Kron What Really Matters

My favorite part of the World Cup happening here in the US is that people from other countries are rediscovering that the American people is not reflected in its government’s political rhetoric. The tourists are reminded that the Americans have more in common with them than Americans do with their own currently elected federal officials. The people of the United States are reminded of how much in common we have with people in the world. Tourists love our ranch dressing. Americans love the competitive fight of players’ loving their countries, the raucous joy of Norwegian fans rowing like Vikings and the drinking ability of the Scottish fans. We love the polite kindness of the Iranian team and their notes of appreciation to the people of Los Angeles. We root for underdogs like Cape Verde when they advance and the accomplishment of being here for countries like Curacao, Haiti, and Jordan, and Uzbekistan. We feel the mutual love and admiration that Lawrence, Kansas, and the Algerian national team have developed for each other.

The world can be amazing and be a place of hope. Thank you World Cup fans for bringing hope for the humanity of the world this month. As you’ve embraced us, we’re grateful to have embraced back.

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And getting back to climate change

 "Our mother spanked us and sent us to bed without dinner."

 There. That was finally the feeling as I drove past the horror of Swannanoa's crushed buildings again and again. I'm not going to immunize myself to it. They may scrape up the mud turned to hard clay, and the many branches and roots of trees. They (our really great workers) are making some places be able to operate almost as normal. I drove through the Dunkin Donuts and picked up a Boston Cream Donut yesterday! Then looked across the street at the decimated buildings next to the Swannanoa River.

Mother nature is definitely mad at us. Here we are, the people who love the woods, hiking, fishing, swimming...working just in order to have weekends and vacations enjoying her bounty. But we sure forgot how to live in harmony with her. (And this goes up to a much higher chain of responsibility...not only political but religious!)

It started maybe a hundred years ago...commerce along highways. People wanting to live closer to their work sites and thus building nearer and nearer waterways. Not making laws to protect the steep slopes as people built up and up on the sides of mountains.

Yep, Mother Nature, our mother just spanked us good! Western North Carolina was a really safe climate change habitat from all intents and purposes. We had to learn our lesson though. I don't mean causality, that the people themselves who suffered made this happen. It is the fault of our civilization, our communities doing just what they wanted without having nature in the equation.

I don't mean to berate anyone. I just want to share that I feel like I've been sent to bed without dinner after that shameful spanking of Hurricane Helene.  We who kind of were working to help the problem of disassociated humans perhaps coming awake enough to save our planet from climate change...as well as many completely unaware people...boom, we're back to horse and buggy life. No water or electricity, many without safe homes, and get this... days without internet or cell service! That's a big BOOM to all of us.

I'm sooo very grateful that after 52 days of using bottled water to drink (I hadn't before, because of the plastic thing of course) we can now drink safely out of the tap. I'm just doing dishes and showering for now with tap water. Lots of these bottles in my house to use anyway.

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From Heather Cox Richardson last Monday:

On Sunday, speaking from the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, President Joe Biden said that it would not be possible to reverse America’s “clean energy revolution,” which has now provided jobs across the country, primarily in Republican-dominated states. Biden noted that the U.S. would spend $11 billion on financing international responses to climate change in 2024, an increase of six times from when he began his term.

But President-elect Trump has called climate change a hoax and has vowed to claw back money from the Inflation Reduction Act appropriated to mitigate it, and to turn the U.S. back to fossil fuels.

His intended choice of Secretary of Energy is a laugh...an oil czar!

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I must take a deep breath and pay attention to the "things I can control in my life." Politics has left the building. But I read, and listen half-heartedly to the news, and console my friends. And look and listen around me.

Folks, there are some dangerous things happening out there now, just around the corner from you, from me, from my relatives in the bigger city. It's as if the hate groups have been let out of the cages and they are going rampant.

I'll go more in depth about my thoughts and their experiences in another post, trying to keep climate change the focus on this one. It's so easy to digress...

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A bit of good news: all the Black Mountain and Asheville plastic water bottles - are they recyclable?

YES!'

We have plenty of capacity to bring all of those bottles into our facility to process and ensure that they are properly recycled,” Lawson said via email. “Markets may go up and down on plastics and other commodities. However, we have and will always accept plastic bottles for recycling.”

Source: Asheville Watchdog Answer Man interview with co-owner of "Curbie" (Curbside Management"  in August 2024

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Today's inspiration:

As a human being living on earth, it is important to learn to ground yourself in relation to your earth mother.

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:

The Plastic Bags Fiasco in North Carolina

 A very good article (in 2 parts) discusses the convoluted process of our (many many friends) efforts to ban plastic bags in our towns, cities and county. I can't speak for any broader group in NC, but the article does. Local politics seem pretty interesting these days!

Photo not from this article. I'll share our county's article about how the recycling is going in Buncombe County NC soon. That's part two of these articles. Here are some excerpts...and the link if you wish to read the whole article.

buncombe-residents-use-millions-of-recyclable-plastic-bags-a-year-nearly-all-end-up-in-landfills

"... the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association (NCRMA) spearheaded the effort to have a provision inserted into the state budget last fall that prohibits localities from enacting plastic bag bans. 

"...Under the argument that the North Carolina state constitution does not allow counties and municipalities to regulate commerce, the NCRMA and its supporters in the General Assembly inserted into House Bill 259, a budget bill, a provision stating that “no county may adopt an ordinance, resolution, regulation, or rule to restrict, tax, charge a fee, prohibit, or otherwise regulate the use, disposition, or sale of an auxiliary container.”

(Auxiliary container...like plastic bags!)

Any chance for a solution, or a new ban?

The budget provision seems pretty airtight to Mayfield and Manheimer.

“So, there’s no workaround,” Mayfield said. “Our lawyers have looked at that pretty closely, but we’re (MountainTrue) not giving up. We have retrenched and are working on several different strategies.”

Asked if any other avenues toward a ban or reduction in usage of plastic bags exist, Manheimer said, “Voluntary (elimination of plastic bags), or get the legislation repealed.”

The odds of a repeal, she said, are “worse than getting marijuana legalized.”

Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Brownie Newman also agrees that the ban seems locked in.

“Anything that is done would have to be purely voluntary, such as a public education initiative,” Newman said. “I don’t think we have the regulatory capacity to restrict it at the retail level.”

So my friends and myself carry our cloth bags into stores. This article points out who has been involved in these efforts, and what they've contributed. 

Note, this is the first of 2 parts about recycling in Buncombe County.

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(Health note for Thursday, when I wrote this.) Felt well enough to do 2 chores this morning, one load of laundry across the parking lot, and took out the trash! Hooray me. Cough is needed for clearing out my lungs, and it's been a productive day so far. Working in blogland is always fun! Rain has started from Debby the slow hurricane. Hope she follows predictions and moves along faster now.

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Today's quote:

How do we see the world as sacred again? By radical noticing. Looking for awe in all of life.

LUCY JONES

Recycling solar panels - is it doable in circular economy?

 Inside Climate News offers this:

Making Solar Energy as Clean as Can Be Means Fitting Square Panels Into the Circular Economy

Adam Saghei, CEO of We Recycle Solar, stands in front of pallets of resell-ready solar panels on August, 8, 2023 at the company’s facility in Yuma, Ariz. Credit: Emma Peterson.

"To keep panels out of landfills, the company prioritizes reusing PV panels that still have life in them. They put about 60 percent of the whole panels that come through their doors back on the market, often for about half their original price. Of the remaining 69 million pounds of material they receive in a year, 99 percent can be taken apart and recycled back into the supply chain, Saghei said.

"But glass is just one problem, and one that is easier to solve than some others, like the cost disparity between recycling solar panels and sending them to the dump. 

It currently costs about $5 to put a panel into a landfill, compared to $20 to recycle it, said Taylor Curtis, regulatory and policy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 

It doesn’t help that there are no government incentives to promote recycling the panels."

 

What really can be recycled?

 Asheville's Recycling Info.

What is Recyclable

 

Guidelines below explain what items may be placed in your blue recycling carts. For information about bulky items, hazardous household waste, or other hard to recycle items, see how to dispose of large, seasonal, or unusual items.

 

Yes! Recycle Right

• Plastic – including bottles, tubs, jugs, and jars (please empty)
• Metal – including metal cans (please empty)
• Glass – including glass bottles and jars (please empty)
• Paper – paper including all paper, cartons, and cardboard (please flatten boxes)

 

Please Don’t Bag Your Recyclables.

 

Know Your No’s

• no styrofoam or peanuts
• no plastic wrap, pillows, or bags
• no tanglers like cords, hoses, wires
• no scrap metal
• no clothing or textiles
• no food waste
• no hazardous or medical waste
• no receipts, shredded paper, paper towels, or napkins

 

Keep these items out

• all batteries
• aluminum foil
• ceramic items
• diapers
• disposable cups or lids (plastic and coffee)
• electronics
• household glass or mirrors
• scrap metal and wood
• straws
• tires
• toys

Black Mountain may have at least one difference! We are required to jam all our recyclables into a blue (no other color please) plastic garbage bag. It is collected every 2 weeks.

I'm calling Black Mountain Town to find out what other differences we may have. The posted list that I have reflects when the Asheville refuse company was picking up our trash and recycling. I know  since then that Town of Black Mountain decided to do their own.

OK, you never need to call any more, just go to their web site, and ask for recycling info...and there you have it. Now I just need to figure out how to put a PDF doc into this blog...OK, screen shots it is!

What I'm glad to read is to put tops on bottles and jars. Yay, since I've been doing that.