Before putting out the trash

Doing it every week! Do you? Just like clockwork in The Woodlands, like every other urban area these days, we make a trip to the curbside. Trouble is, we have to make decisions what goes where and when. In my neighborhood, once a week, we must put out our recyclables first thing in the morning or the evening before trash pickup day.  To organize the little green bin takes some doing, but more stressful than trying to be orderly, we ask ourselves, what exactly is allowed in that green thing? I look at our bin in the garage and see all this stuff my family has presented me in our container. I must take out what does not belong. Nope, no bottles. Nope, no plastic bags. Nope, no Styrofoam. There are a bunch of nope's! Yep, I can leave the plastic milk bottle in the bin, but need to take the lid off. Ugh! Wish the family had rinsed it out first. That is nasty! Bet it was put in here a full week ago!

Well, most of us want to be do-gooders, but when it comes down to execution, maybe we are not too thrilled or knowledgeable about the task. Tonight, our community sponsored a lecture about the recycling process here and generally how it works in Texas and globally. I have to thank Lynn Aldridge from the association for organizing the little very informative presentation. Everyone in the community was invited, but the little room in the library was only half full of spectators. Not much interest on this Monday night, but generally, there is not a lot of enthusiasm to attend these presentations. What few people do attend are definitely interested though. There were plenty of questions and plenty of answers. I do wish more residents would take an interest in these lectures. Lynn manages to have guest speakers who are subject matter experts at each meting. Many of us know her from Environmental Services as she is one of  the senior staff who works full time to make the environment be part of our lives, on our platter of concern, and the quality of our lives better.

On this particular occasion, I saw flaws in our recycling process. The association staff are quick to point this out. Like so many other recycling communities, we fall far short in our attempt to reclaim what can be reused. If we are diligent, we leverage not only curbside pickup of reusable trash, but we also take some items to the local recycle plant and grocery store. Most residents don't go that far. Curbside yes; retaining and delivering stuff elsewhere is not so popular. Much of it gets put into the trash can, to help fill our diminishing land fill areas.

Our curbside process in The Woodlands only supports plastic #1 and #2. We have what is called a single stream  of recyclable materials. We can put folded boxes at curbside, other cardboard boxes, newspaper, magazines, and some plastics in the green bin. On arrival at the processing center here, the materials are baled to be sent to another location for sorting and packaging as a commodity for a third party to purchase. This is simple and archaic, with a relatively low overall material recovery rate. In The Woodlands, we should have a much better process. I wish we would be recycling on a much higher plane. In my opinion, we do not exhibit sufficient environmental responsibility for this day and age. Lynn tells us that it is a financial issue and that the staff in the association has the same desire and long term goal to do much more. I ask that it be brought forward to residents to decide if they want to expend more to take on a higher level of responsibility on this subject. Maybe we need a special interest group to push this in the Township.  

Plastics are graded by their chemical makeup and melting point. They have to be fairly "clean", of low contamination, to be considered a valuable commodity by the marketplace. There are seven grades of plastic that can be recycled. We process only two of them in our single stream processing system. Do you know you need to take plastic bags to the grocery store for recycling? What do you do with glass? That should not be placed in the bin either but delivered by you to the county's recycling plant at 1122 Pruitt Rd, easily accessible from The Woodlands. What else? Look at the definition of the plastic grades.¹ What I want to do is put every plastic out for curbside pickup, but we do not have the technology to process them. A new contract is being prepared by the association, soon to be the Township. In about a year, the current contract will end. We need to rethink where we are and where we want to go with recycling here.  In this economic climate, it is generally felt that we should not set out on anything new, but maybe that is exactly what we need to do. Start-up of something new always requires cash, but hopefully the Environmental group here will be challenged to come up with a strategic plan, a road map to achieve true partnerships with service companies that can help us get unstuck and free us to move forward in this 21st century. I am happy we added folded boxes to our curbside pickup. We however need more, much more. Bottles, Styrofoam,  aluminum cans, plastic bags and other recyclables need to be part of the curbside pickup. We also need a larger container for some families.

The list of plastics that can be recycled are cited from earth911 ¹. We process only #1 and #2 plastics. On many containers, the type of plastic is actually printed on the bottom of the container. So look for PET or HDPE on the bottom for helping to sort it out. I looked at a few bottles in my frig; Hunt's Catchup had PETE on it as did another product. RAGU had nothing, but I would guess PETE. I will put them both in the recycle bin when they are empty.

#1 PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) (normally called PETE) – Fizzy drink bottles, oven-ready meal trays and water bottles
#2 HDPE (High-density polyethylene) – Milk bottles, detergent bottles, yogurt and margarine tubs, cereal box liners and grocery, trash and retail bags
#3 PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) – Cling film (plastic food wrap), vegetable oil bottles, loose-leaf binders and construction products such as plastic pipes
#4 LDPE (Low-density polyethylene) – Dry cleaning bags, produce bags, trash can liners, bread bags, frozen food bags and squeezable bottles, such as mustard and honey
#5 PP (Polypropylene) – Ketchup bottles, medicine bottles, aerosol caps and drinking straws
#6 PS (Polystyrene) – Compact disc jackets, grocery store meat trays, egg cartons, aspirin bottles, foam packaging peanuts and plastic tableware
#7 Other - Three- and five-gallon reusable water bottles, certain kinds of food containers and Tupperware

So how about bottles? These days the value of glass continues to be high enough to produce recycled products. There is substantial savings to recycle glass, but it needs to be prepared, just like other materials for selling as a commodity. Colored glass must be separated. We used to have curbside collection of glass and it has been discontinued. We just don't have the facilities to safely and efficiently sort it out and deliver it to a processing manufacturer.

And paper? We miss a great deal of paper products to sell. There are many types of paper we do not process. I will put telephone directories, pamphlets, magazines and newspaper into the bin.

And cardboard? paperboard and cardboard can be placed in the bin. It should be clean from food.

And aluminum cans? Yes, they should be placed in the bin.

Further information on recycling or trash pickup, please refer to the association website.

On the back side of our routine, we must remember to put the bin and garbage can back out of sight from the street, before the next morning. That is a requirement here, and we agreed to do that when we signed our covenant when we purchased our home (or rented it). That makes our community more aesthetically pleasing and believe me, residents appreciate their neighbors doing that. No one wants to see a garage can on the curb more than 24 hours! And we don't want to see it in front of the garage either. It should not be a part of the landscape. 


References
¹ Earth911 website - plastics
 
² Earth911 website - paper