Got this article from Pete D., Sky Country Club. He asked us to post and that’s what we do. 
It’s a good read and important for folks to know about.
Thanks Pete.
As good citizens trying to properly steward the resources of our home, community and nation, we should actually recycle everything possible. At least I do. But I’ve noticed that there are an awful lot of folks who, while giving lip service to the idea of recycling, just don’t know how to do it effectively. That’s why I thought it might be time to explain how we do it. Start by not putting plastic trash bags full of recycling and trash in the cans – dump the bag so more will fit in!
We should begin at square one by being conscious of how wasteful the packaging may be on a product we are considering buying, and refrain from buying things that are really wastefully packaged. Vote with your purchasing dollars, and suppliers may eventually get the message and we won’t have to pay Waste Management Co. for the privilege of recycling, like we do now. There was an outcry about MacDonalds’ packaging some years back, and it was effective. Now MacDonalds’ packaging is simple and efficient – and no styrofoam, that immortal form of trash that never goes away.
A product we all use a lot of is soft drinks. The days of reusing soda and milk bottles is long gone, even though it was the most efficient way to recycle glass containers. Most soft drinks come these days either in aluminum cans (another energy intensive use) or in plastic bottles. The plastic bottles do get recycled into many products, from parking lot wheel bumpers to outdoor furniture and picnic benches, to synthetic deck boards that never rot. While there is a marked difference in appearance in such containers, they are usually all made from PET-1 or PET-2 plastics, which are easily recyclable.
On the other hand, Deli plastic containers – you know, the ones the cooked chicken, cold cuts, fruit compote or the chip’n dip comes in – are #5 or #6 plastic and recycle for these is harder. The number in the triangle refers to how easily that material can be recycled, with #1 being the easiest and #6 being very hard to recycle. The highest numbers are garbage, doomed to take up space forever in the landfill. That’s why I always look at the number on the container before I buy, and don’t buy stuff in a high number package unless there is no choice.
Before placing any of these containers into recycle, rinse them out! Food and drink residue attracts vermin, and recyclers will send dirty containers to the dump rather than store them and attract vermin.
Plastic bottles come in all sizes from 8 oz. thru 1 gal. Milk jugs, and can take up a lot of space when you are saving them for recycling. If you don’t rinse them out with clean water and throw away the caps before you save them, chances are the recycler will send them to the landfill anyway. Recycling filthy smelly containers and ones with caps of some unknown plastic just isn’t practical. That’s why we have to do our part. Here are a few practical tips.
Discard all caps (they are usually #5 plastic), including the little snap-off ring that gets stuck on the neck of the container. Always remove the caps and rings before recycling bottles. Ever notice that the thickest part of the bottle is the threaded neck? The neck represents 36% of the total bottle weight -more than a third of the weight of the bottle! Why is this important? Because the recycler can’t afford to take the time to remove the bottle cap and the little ring that you could have removed easily, so he cuts the whole neck of the bottle off on a band saw, tosses the neck and cap away, and just recycles 64% of the bottle weight, and 36% goes into a landfill somewhere, anyway or worse yet, may get burned and pollute the atmosphere.
Taking a few seconds to recycle that bottle correctly yourself would guarantee that 100% of the bottle weight gets recycled. Shame on you if you don’t take this simple step to protect our earth!
Keep a sharp razor knife with a retractable blade handy near your recycle bin, and I’ll tell you a way to make those bottles a lot less bulky while you are storing them for recycling. More on that in a minute.
Rinse every container and drain well before storing. Sort by recycle number (in the triangle) is no longer required. Non-recyclable plastics are things like cellophane or saran packaging and food wrap, packaging that has no visible recycle number on it, and several others. Like aluminum foil and pie tins, this stuff, too, is garbage and doesn’t belong in the recycle bin.
An easy way to save bin space is to take a sharp razor knife or bread knife and carefully cut the bottom almost all the way off (but not completely) leaving it attached by a 1” or so tab. Then slit the upper part of the bottle from just below the screw neck, down to the bottom circular cut you first made. Now you can nest several smaller bottles inside larger ones, using a lot less kitchen recycle bin storage space and increasing the fuel and carbon emissions efficiency of the truck they cart them to the recyclers in.
Our recycler doesn’t require us to sort, so aluminum (POP CANS ONLY - no foil or pie tins; wrong kind of aluminum), tin (steel) cans and the three kinds of paper (newsprint, glossy paper, and corrugated) can all go into recycle together. Be careful not to break glass bottles or they become landfill trash, broken glass being too dangerous to handle.
When you open a tin can, don’t cut the lid all the way around, or the sharp lid becomes dangerous garbage. Instead, cut the lid mostly around so it remains attached by a 1” tab. After emptying the can, rinse well and cut the other end almost all the way around the same way. Then fold the cut lids inside before stomping on the can to collapse it. Some cans don’t have attached bottoms, and stomping them flat is a little harder, but it can be done. Flattened cans are easier to handle, take less room in the recycle can and less transportation room, and are less dangerous since the sharp edges are all inside the flattened can.
Keep all paper dry. Moldy, soggy paper is garbage and won’t be recycled (but wet corrugated will). Newsprint (not the glossy sort we get so much of with the Sunday papers) has good recycling value,. Put it neatly inside those large brown kraft paper bags the supermarket gives you. (What? They give you plastic only? Demand paper and you’ll get paper, which can be used in the recycling process.)
Take your supermarket plastic bags back to the supermarket and let them recycle them. Empty them first, since even a paper cash register receipt will contaminate the recycling of the plastic bag . If your favorite market doesn’t take back recycling bags, shop elsewhere where they do. Vote with your feet. Or you can save some of those plastic supermarket bags and use them as trash pail liners. You can even get waste baskets that are made with four corner posts to hold a shopping bag as a liner.
Open both ends of corrugated cardboard and chipboard (non-corrugated) boxes so they can be flattened, and recycle them. You will notice that most breakfast cereals are now boxed in recycled chipboard box materials. Lots of things come in cardboard – it can all be reincarnated if you treat it right. Dirty pizza boxes can’t, so toss ‘em in the garbage.
Recycling is (or should be) a way of life for anyone who plans to live on this planet a while. We say we are obliged to steward the resources of the Earth, but do we? We must all become more knowledgeable about the recycling processes available in our communities, and how best to take advantage of them. Start with making informed purchasing decisions, and end with the recycling mandated by state law in every Washington community. Don’t just talk the talk about it. Actually walk the walk.
“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it.” — Chinese Proverb
Dis n' Dat, Index Bulletin Board, Misc. Information, News, News As IT HAPPENS | Vox Populi | 
May 12, 2012 6:47 pm | 
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