green living
Wishful Recycling
What Not to Put in the Bin by Yvette C. Hammett
F
or those that have been putting recyclables in a plastic bag and placing it in a curbside bin, it’s likely going straight into a landfill. That bowling ball, those yard clippings and dirty pizza boxes are contaminating the recycling
stream and increasing the cost of recycling programs nationwide at a particu- larly challenging time amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The continuing rise in contaminated items is known in the biz as “wishful recycling”. The current crisis is only making it worse. In some places, recycling itself is becoming wishful. As stores and restaurants struggle to survive, local tax revenues have dropped sharply,
forcing municipalities to slash budgets. Many small towns and a few big cities have stopped recycling programs altogether. Others have cut back on what they will accept or substituted drop-off bins for curbside pickup. States are pulling back from encouraging bottle-deposit returns. T e plastic masks, gloves and wipes mistakenly tossed into recycle bins are endangering waste workers that must remove them. With the coronavirus shown to cling to plastic for three days, many workers around the country have become ill from such exposure. Meanwhile, waste is mounting. Consumers are now having groceries delivered,
picking them up or ordering them online, adding hundreds of millions more plastic bags and cardboard boxes to the waste stream. T e Solid Waste Association of North America estimates that U.S. cities saw a 20 percent average increase in municipal solid waste and recycling collection in March and part of April. And because China stopped accepting 99 percent of the world’s recyclables two years ago, recycling operations are struggling for disposal locations. “T ere is the potential for households to generate more waste than they did before,
but there is also an opportunity to focus on waste prevention, increase your reuse and re- cycling eff orts, and use food more effi ciently,” the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency advises on
epa.gov. “Now is a great time to focus on waste prevention where possible, and
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when recycling, keep the materials as clean and dry as possible.” To be more conscious about recycling
habits, “Instead of, ‘When in doubt, throw it in,’ it should be, ‘When in doubt, throw it out,’” says David Keeling, president of the National Recycling Coalition. T e Washington State nonprofi t
Sustainable Connections estimates that 25 percent of what goes into recycling con- tainers is not recyclable. “Contamination signifi cantly increases the cost to process recyclables and makes it harder for proces- sors to market their products, creating a huge economic challenge,” according to
SustainableConnections.org. “We rely on the private sector to take away our waste, and they need to be able to turn a profi t in order to run a viable business.” Unfortunately, “Across the country
and within Florida, we are seeing a grow- ing trend on contamination in recycling,” says Travis Barnes, recycling coordinator of Florida’s Hillsborough County, which in- cludes Tampa. T e worst off enders, he says, are people that don’t suffi ciently clean out mayonnaise or ketchup containers, as well as put plastic bags in the recycling bin that can become entangled in multimillion-dol- lar equipment, bringing the entire sorting process to a halt. Beth Porter, climate campaigns direc-
tor for the nonprofi t Green America and author of Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine: Sorting
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