Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast again. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chaz Bryant, there's Jerry Jerome
Speaker 1: Roland over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know again.
Speaker 1: Why are you say it again? Well, so, before we recorded,
Speaker 1: I want to tell all of you, Chuck confided in
Speaker 1: me a tabit of concerned. Right, can we reveal all
Speaker 1: this or is this going to get edited out? We'll reveal.
Speaker 1: So we we have done an episode on recycling again
Speaker 1: or before this is again? Um? Before it was from
Speaker 1: my understanding, it was the premise was is what you're
Speaker 1: recycling actually getting recycled? Right? That was the basis of it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of everything, and then we just kind of
Speaker 1: went over recycling here there. Yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was year two of the show. It's about a
Speaker 1: half an hour in linked that was long for back then,
Speaker 1: and probably eight minutes of that covered the garbage patch,
Speaker 1: which we went on to do in an episode just
Speaker 1: on that did. Yeah, for sure, we talked about the
Speaker 1: eight minutes of the garbage patch something. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the name of the episode was recycling in the Great
Speaker 1: Pacific garbage Patch. Did we combine those two into one?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I'm having some sort of
Speaker 1: weird like flashback or yeah. So here's the deal, though, folks.
Speaker 1: We're redoing recycling. Updating is what it's called. We're updating
Speaker 1: with new information. And there may be some of the
Speaker 1: same stuff. But I listened to that episode, and we
Speaker 1: weren't very good at what we did back then. I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought we. I'm almost positive we did a separate
Speaker 1: episode on the Great Pacific Garbage We may have. But
Speaker 1: all of this to say is don't freak out and
Speaker 1: say you as are repeating yourselves. Are we Are we
Speaker 1: already there? Because no, we're not. No, No, this is
Speaker 1: an update. This is so important, and things have changed
Speaker 1: enough since what two it may have even been nine. Yes,
Speaker 1: quite a bit has changed since back then. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, Um, we've gotten better recycling, we've gotten
Speaker 1: worse at recycling. Simultaneously, recycling has turned into a huge business.
Speaker 1: We understand it more. And then there's been major colossal
Speaker 1: changes just this year to the global recyclable material commodities
Speaker 1: market that is going to change everyone's life one way
Speaker 1: or another. If you care at all about recycling because
Speaker 1: of China. Yeah, and you know what, we'll we'll get
Speaker 1: to that, but I'm just gonna come out and say
Speaker 1: it good for China, all right, but depending that one. Right,
Speaker 1: we've been putting pins all over the place. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: that we have just bins everywhere. No, we've been going back.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've left a single pin in place,
Speaker 1: which is unusual for us because we do that a lot.
Speaker 1: And I also want to say that it's nice that
Speaker 1: we're all three together again. Yeah, Jerry is back again.
Speaker 1: She keeps leaving, but she's back, and she has a
Speaker 1: summer cold. Yeah, that's just the worst that that to
Speaker 1: me is like that is a clear indication that you
Speaker 1: have been working too hard. If you go on vacation
Speaker 1: and get sick because you're like work, work, work, and
Speaker 1: then you relax on vacation and your your immune system
Speaker 1: goes down. You interesting, you gotta take it easy, You
Speaker 1: gotta you need like a step down vacation like a
Speaker 1: work and then staycation and then vacation. Jerry. Jerry gave
Speaker 1: a thumbs up, sickly thumb it's a little pale green.
Speaker 1: Uh so chuck, Yes, I think I think also, Uh,
Speaker 1: we agreed that you're going to participate even more and
Speaker 1: I'm going to participate less. Well, the last one it
Speaker 1: was pretty funny to listen to. You should give it
Speaker 1: a listen. Oh, we'll see if you notice. Oh I've
Speaker 1: noticed before, like sometimes I'm just like cringing and pinching
Speaker 1: the bridge of my nose, like shut up, josh. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that is the last we will speak of that episode.
Speaker 1: And let's just pretend like we're starting a new or
Speaker 1: updating recycling. What is it? So let's talk about recycling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the three the third best of the three rs.
Speaker 1: That's your favorite one, or it's the your least favorite
Speaker 1: of Well, it's not the least favorite, it's it should
Speaker 1: be the third option. As a green human, you should
Speaker 1: try and reduce and reuse first. Yes, And that's why
Speaker 1: they put them in that order, because recycling is the
Speaker 1: the last line of defense. Yeah. I thought it just
Speaker 1: kind of float off the tongue a little more. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that they had them in order. It's in
Speaker 1: order of preference. Well that's cool, okay, So you it
Speaker 1: is best to reduce reuse and then when all else
Speaker 1: fails recycle. That's an ideal world, right, yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you go to a website and you look up like
Speaker 1: can I recycle my toilet paper tubes and the recycling
Speaker 1: ben Sure. Yeah. But if you go to like you know,
Speaker 1: tree Hugger and all these other sites are like, well
Speaker 1: you can, but what you should really do is this,
Speaker 1: And then it's they first, find a way to not
Speaker 1: use toilet paper at all, and so you don't have
Speaker 1: those that would be the reduce. Turn it into the
Speaker 1: stand for like a pipe cleaner tree. Well, that's everything else,
Speaker 1: that's the reuses. They're they're like, there are so many
Speaker 1: crafty things you can do with toilet paper too. You
Speaker 1: can use it as a telescope, which will eventually end
Speaker 1: up in the trash. You can use it as a harmonica.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can do this all day. We should so,
Speaker 1: actually I don't think we should. So when you recycle
Speaker 1: that toilet paper too, when you drop it into a
Speaker 1: bin out front, you may notice that you're also dropping
Speaker 1: in like glass like you're your old like Captain Morgan's
Speaker 1: bottle or um it took you eight years to drink? Sure, uh,
Speaker 1: you're drinking them run these days? Oh, I love rom
Speaker 1: I'm not big on Captain Morgan, but I love rom alright,
Speaker 1: It's one of my highest favorite I'm like, wow, I
Speaker 1: really like Rum. I say that every time I take
Speaker 1: a sip of rum. Just look at my glass and go, wow,
Speaker 1: I really love romdd everyone in the house Momo rolls,
Speaker 1: rolls her little eyes, um, big eyes, so um. You
Speaker 1: dump all this stuff together in a single bin, and
Speaker 1: you may stop and be like, wait, wait, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: How am I dumping all this stuff in a single bin?
Speaker 1: Didn't we used to have to separate? Yes, we did.
Speaker 1: But thanks to the event of single stream recycling, people
Speaker 1: recycle a lot more stuff than they ever did before.
Speaker 1: Recycling participation is up. You may have noticed, like back
Speaker 1: in the nineties, early two thousands, they gave you like
Speaker 1: a little tiny bin. Now you get like a big
Speaker 1: old garbage can with wheels on it so you can
Speaker 1: put even more stuff in it. That's how much recycling
Speaker 1: participation is up. Programs all over the country, everybody's recycling.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, it's really good that we
Speaker 1: have single streamer cycling because it makes people more likely
Speaker 1: to recycle. On the other hand, it also makes us
Speaker 1: more likely to recycle stuff that we really shouldn't be
Speaker 1: recycling or or using as much up to begin with. Right,
Speaker 1: But even if it's stuff that, like, um that, even
Speaker 1: if you're you're reducing and reusing, you people still have
Speaker 1: a tendency to throw stuff in that recycling ben even
Speaker 1: though it can't be recycled. Yeah, with that one article
Speaker 1: you sent called it aspirational recycling. Yes, like, I don't
Speaker 1: really know if this can go in there, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it because it makes me feel good, right,
Speaker 1: I hope, So I hope it can be recycled. So
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like that bad of a deal, you know,
Speaker 1: if like you're like, okay, well it can't be recycled,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't get recycled, it cares you know, it
Speaker 1: just disintegrates into nothingness magically. Right, it's actually not what
Speaker 1: happens that stuff ends up at the landfill. Right, So
Speaker 1: you're basically saying, here, recycling company, throw this away for me,
Speaker 1: will you. Yeah, And if you listen to our show
Speaker 1: on landfills, which was a good one, yeah, um, we
Speaker 1: we sort of had glowing praise for landfills and that
Speaker 1: was I think in terms of in the context of hey,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have a landfill. They're really have
Speaker 1: made leaps and bounds from the old days. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: but obviously we want to do this instead of the landfill. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The ideal situation would be for us to UM to
Speaker 1: basically close the loop on our all of our materials,
Speaker 1: on our metals, on our plastics, on our paper and that,
Speaker 1: and figure out a way to reuse them. And now
Speaker 1: there's enough of everything, and we never have to cut
Speaker 1: down another tree, we never have to dig up another
Speaker 1: piece of box site, we never have to do anything.
Speaker 1: We've got enough, and then we just have these perfect
Speaker 1: like reusing UM reprocessing techniques and we've just got to
Speaker 1: close the loop of these materials. That would be ideal.
Speaker 1: We're pretty far from that, right, um, But it is
Speaker 1: a good step in the right direction that we are recycling. Right.
Speaker 1: So when you recycle, when you put that stuff in
Speaker 1: that bind, we're gonna get to all this really great stuff.
Speaker 1: I just tease something that you don't even know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about yet, dear listener, what box eye. That
Speaker 1: was one thing, um, But the the aspirational recycling turns
Speaker 1: into play later on. So when you recycle, you put
Speaker 1: it out on the bin, and then some people come
Speaker 1: up and what looks like an old garbage truck or
Speaker 1: a modified garbage truck, except it's usually much cleaner, maybe
Speaker 1: a pleasant blue or pleasant green color. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: no juice usually dripping out of the back garbage juice. Um.
Speaker 1: And they pick it up and they cart it off,
Speaker 1: and that begins the the plastic bottle or the toilet
Speaker 1: paper tubes journey. Yeah. And um, this is a grabstar article.
Speaker 1: It's nice to work from one of those. Again. Head
Speaker 1: points out though, that when things are recycled, it's pretty
Speaker 1: rare that, um, you get the same thing as the
Speaker 1: original material. So like that soda can, that beer can
Speaker 1: may not end up a beer can. Right. Does that
Speaker 1: make you sad that person out there listening. Um, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I was saying. Like in an ideal world,
Speaker 1: it would it would become another beer can, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But we're not there yet because when we recycle stuff,
Speaker 1: it degrades. Yeah. And that's why you can't recycle paper
Speaker 1: and think that it's going to be the next thing
Speaker 1: that you print something on. Uh, it's not gonna come
Speaker 1: back like clean Lily White does printer paper No, and
Speaker 1: that's called downstream recycling, where that that office paper you
Speaker 1: printed on that you recycle ends up becoming like, um,
Speaker 1: a coffee clutch for your coffee. And then you recycle
Speaker 1: that and it becomes low grade like napkin, and then
Speaker 1: after that it just basically ends up in landfill because
Speaker 1: it can't be recycled, an then it becomes airport toilet paper.
Speaker 1: It's just the lowest form of paper. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Like it's just you can see right through it. Yes,
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything anything, It just provides a false sense
Speaker 1: of security and then your fingers go right there. Uh uh.
Speaker 1: Up cycling is a little different, and that's pretty rare,
Speaker 1: but that's when something is made more valuable than the
Speaker 1: original product. Yeah, and I like the example that egg games.
Speaker 1: You could take a hub cap and turn it into
Speaker 1: a decorative bird bath. Yeah, that counts. Good job, ed. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm all about that. Uh, found Art, like those people
Speaker 1: do a valuable service. We should redo that episode, remember
Speaker 1: that one found Art that we didn't do that? Now
Speaker 1: I think you're joshing. No really, I'm promised. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to look that one up. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the history a bit though, because Ed makes
Speaker 1: great pains to point out that it's interesting that, um,
Speaker 1: most people probably think like man in the seventies, in
Speaker 1: the sixties, that's when it all started, But recycling actually
Speaker 1: kind of started because of the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it wasn't like necessarily it didn't have green and d well. No,
Speaker 1: it was more like do you remember when we did
Speaker 1: the extinct job titles when and we talked about armors
Speaker 1: and you can't find a suit of armor from the
Speaker 1: fourteenth or fifteen centuries because they reused that stuff that
Speaker 1: was just par for the course back then. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: things were just too valuable to throw away. You just
Speaker 1: found a way to reuse it. And that was pretty
Speaker 1: much the way people lived for many many years until
Speaker 1: basically the post war economic boom led to this consumer
Speaker 1: society that we live in today where it's just very
Speaker 1: very cheap to produce stuff, including like packaging and materials,
Speaker 1: and we use it out the yen yang and we
Speaker 1: just throw it away typically. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: I think the first Earth Day that recycling came back again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's when it definitely had a more of a
Speaker 1: green tent on it. For sure, which is good. Um
Speaker 1: add points out to that that you know, there were
Speaker 1: some leneers here and there. I think recycling the United
Speaker 1: States really had its heyday in the nineties. That's when
Speaker 1: I first remember it becoming like this thing is a
Speaker 1: thing now. Yeah, And I've got a couple of stats here. Um,
Speaker 1: it peaked in actually it peaked in recent years. And
Speaker 1: this is you know, I believe how many tons are
Speaker 1: diverted from the landfill. So if you're going by that stat,
Speaker 1: it peaked in two thousand eleven at thirty four point
Speaker 1: seven Um, what is that million tons? Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: thirty or four point seven percent. I would think, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty four point seven percent of the hundred and whatever.
Speaker 1: What have we send today? About a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million tons? I saw, so I saw different things, like
Speaker 1: I think that that's from the e p A. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Actually in the eighties it was about a hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Now we're down to about a hundred. I think that's
Speaker 1: going to the hundred million tons that's going to the
Speaker 1: and fill. Yes, yeah, yeah, but but our recycling is up,
Speaker 1: But are I think our actual waste production overall is
Speaker 1: up to Yeah, and more people of course, Stu, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But that's that's actually a thing that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that recycling masks. Um Like, we're throwing away way more
Speaker 1: stuff and luckily we're recycling more than ever, so we're
Speaker 1: actually putting less than ever in the landfill. But if
Speaker 1: we would do that first thing, reduce, and then the
Speaker 1: second thing we use, we could really have a significant
Speaker 1: impact on it without recycling. Yeah, for sure, recycling is
Speaker 1: much What would be your guests as to the the
Speaker 1: number one thing recycled in the United States? My guests
Speaker 1: would be aluminum cans, that is all the way down
Speaker 1: to number eight. What, um, I'm gonna say, rubber chickens then, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you nailed it, um, acid batteries. Batteries are the number
Speaker 1: one thing. Like people, what multiverse did you come from? Today?
Speaker 1: I think people understand, they seem to have an understanding
Speaker 1: that you just don't throw batteries away anymore. What do
Speaker 1: you do with them? You recycle them? Where do you
Speaker 1: recycle them? Seriously, you throw batteries away, I just like
Speaker 1: throw them in the closest body of water I can find. Well,
Speaker 1: they were known to float. Where do you recycle these?
Speaker 1: Like in your recycling bid. Well no, I mean you
Speaker 1: have to take them somewhere. Where do you take them?
Speaker 1: Like a recycling place? Yeah, like like there are places
Speaker 1: that accept batteries. Are you talking about little batteries? Are
Speaker 1: you talking about car batteries? Lead acid batteries? Is that
Speaker 1: a car battery? Actually, I don't know. I think that's
Speaker 1: a car battery. Okay, yeah, yeah, I know you recycle cars.
Speaker 1: That makes sense because you get a little juice when
Speaker 1: you buy your new battery if you plunk down your
Speaker 1: old one. Yeah, that would make sense. But still you
Speaker 1: would think aluminum Kansas number eight, Yeah, number two was
Speaker 1: corrugated at boxes number three, steel number four or his newspaper,
Speaker 1: and then all the way down to number numbers eight
Speaker 1: and nine or soda and beer cans and bottles. That
Speaker 1: is really bizarre. Yeah, but that you know, how did
Speaker 1: they say Brenstein? I don't know. I'm not sure. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, we've we've been bouncing around over the
Speaker 1: last decade, somewhere in the thirty two to thirty five
Speaker 1: percent range. So peaked is a percentage of waste diverted,
Speaker 1: Like you can't say peaked then, like it's been inching downward.
Speaker 1: I predict it's going to continue to inch downward, and
Speaker 1: then it's going to start going up again more than
Speaker 1: the peak, the recent peak. Yeah, in the next ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen years. That's my prediction. Would be great. In America,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to know, is number five in the world,
Speaker 1: behind Austria, Germany, Belgium, in Switzerland as far as um
Speaker 1: most recycling participation or something. Yeah, diverting the most tonnage
Speaker 1: away from landfills. Number what number five? That's not good,
Speaker 1: it's okay, And and numbers three through six are virtually tied.
Speaker 1: It's really Austria and Germany or like ten percent twelve
Speaker 1: percent more those guys will recycle anything. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: America's only city on the list. Take a guess there,
Speaker 1: I bet you know that one. I M say Portland's
Speaker 1: good guests, Seattle closer, uh, further away somewhere in Wyoming.
Speaker 1: San Francisco is the number one city or recycling. It's
Speaker 1: the only American city to make like the All Star
Speaker 1: Recycling list. So I think that means we're done, right.
Speaker 1: I'll bet we didn't mention that before in the last episode. No,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we're not mentioning that should we take a break.
Speaker 1: Then let's take a break, man, all right, we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about landfills and all kinds of
Speaker 1: recycling stuff. All right, Chuck, I think this is going
Speaker 1: very well. So far. Great, So let's get back to
Speaker 1: that process we kicked off and then abandoned, and now
Speaker 1: we're getting back to it. When you drop something in
Speaker 1: your recycling bind and the people come and pick it up,
Speaker 1: and it begins this beautiful journey of discovery, coming of
Speaker 1: age maybe of um, really coming to understand oneself. For
Speaker 1: the say, plastic water bottle that you set off, and
Speaker 1: when it's collected, depending on where you are, it may
Speaker 1: be either collected by a city worker or a worker
Speaker 1: for like a private company, um, and it will be
Speaker 1: taken somewhere along this chain. What this is a big picture,
Speaker 1: and this is something I didn't quite understand fully but
Speaker 1: for until this time around researching this article, Like that
Speaker 1: water bottle or that beer can, or that toilet paper
Speaker 1: roll you just threw out that you just recycled, You
Speaker 1: just threw it away as trash. It's just it's being
Speaker 1: put into a different trash stream, the recycled stream. Right,
Speaker 1: So When you do that, it becomes you were saying, here,
Speaker 1: this actually has value. I don't want anything in return
Speaker 1: for it. I just want the peace of mind that
Speaker 1: it's going to have another life. It's going to stay
Speaker 1: away from the landfill. You do whatever you want with it,
Speaker 1: and it enters with that exchange into a global commodities market,
Speaker 1: where it goes from a sorting facility to a place
Speaker 1: where it's put together with other stuff similar to its kind,
Speaker 1: sent into put into bails, and then sold on the
Speaker 1: commodities market to be reprocessed back in of raw materials
Speaker 1: and then sold the manufacturers who use those raw materials
Speaker 1: to make new stuff that you then buy that then
Speaker 1: you hopefully ideally recycle and the whole process continues again.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when you drop it in a bin
Speaker 1: and it goes off. That's ideally. Yeah. And China, like
Speaker 1: we mentioned, is a big I think, like the number
Speaker 1: one buyer of US garbage. They were until like late
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen ish when they said no on certain things.
Speaker 1: So here's why I said, UM, good for China. UM.
Speaker 1: China said that they did not want to be the
Speaker 1: world's garbage dump any longer. And um. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why why recycling rates kind of started to climb
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties is because there was a
Speaker 1: market for this stuff. Right. If there had never been
Speaker 1: a market for it, it just would not have been viable.
Speaker 1: It would have cost too much to pay somebody to
Speaker 1: reprocess it. But the fact that you could sell it
Speaker 1: to somebody who could then reprocess it and then sell
Speaker 1: it as raw materials to manufacturers that men have value
Speaker 1: to it. So okay, now we've got like something going here.
Speaker 1: And the way that this was able to go, the
Speaker 1: reason why there was value to it is because China said,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna become manufacturers to the world.
Speaker 1: Give us all materials you can you can send us.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they got into was reprocessing
Speaker 1: things like paper and plastic, and so countries around the world,
Speaker 1: especially in the West and the developed West, started sending
Speaker 1: all of their trash, but they're recyclable trash to China,
Speaker 1: and China would reprocess it, make it into like little
Speaker 1: plastic toys or paper goods or whatever, and then sell
Speaker 1: it to the world. And because of that, recycling was
Speaker 1: able to take off well. China finally said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is not working any longer. We're actually on our
Speaker 1: feet economically more than we were before. And you guys
Speaker 1: have been sliding in a lot of your trash with
Speaker 1: these recyclable materials, and we don't want it anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: and China had has not historically done a great job
Speaker 1: with their own trash, like they hadn't even sorted that
Speaker 1: out much less to be able to take on all
Speaker 1: this trash from all over the world. And we're talking
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of tons of recyclable materials and I
Speaker 1: saw something like ten percent of that weight was just
Speaker 1: straight up trash that was slipped in with this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it says here and estimated one point three to three
Speaker 1: point five million metric tons enters the oceans from China's coastline,
Speaker 1: right because it just was falling out of this out
Speaker 1: of the recycling stream, right, unbelievable, and into the into
Speaker 1: the oceans. That was how many tons, one point three
Speaker 1: to three point five million metric tons, So that's out
Speaker 1: of like twelve million metric tons worldwide, So about a
Speaker 1: quarter of the plastic entering the ocean was going into
Speaker 1: it from China. Yeah, that's a huge amount, Right, So
Speaker 1: China finally said this is not okay, this is not sustainable.
Speaker 1: We're just we're stopping, like we're not going to accept
Speaker 1: this any longer. We're not going to accept that any longer.
Speaker 1: And the stuff we do accept can't be any less
Speaker 1: than one percent to half of a percent impure, meaning
Speaker 1: like if we're buying a bail, a giant biale of
Speaker 1: plastic bottles, no more than half of a percent of
Speaker 1: that bail bail's total weight can be anything but the
Speaker 1: plastic bottles that we're buying. So this this is a
Speaker 1: big deal because the world's market since the nineties and
Speaker 1: as far as like recyclable materials has been sent to China,
Speaker 1: like a third of the world's recyclable materials goes to China,
Speaker 1: and China was buying it, and they said we're done,
Speaker 1: We're not doing that anymore. And so the market just
Speaker 1: went came to a screeching halt. And so what happened.
Speaker 1: All that stuff that you were recycling, um that was
Speaker 1: originally going to China is now just being diverted to
Speaker 1: landfills because America's recycling recyclers, the UK's recyclers, Europes recyclers
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with it. The market just stopped,
Speaker 1: and so they they're just sending it to landfills. Now,
Speaker 1: So the stuff you're recycling a lot of people, not
Speaker 1: all of it, and not not everything that everybody's recycling,
Speaker 1: but a significant amount has been going to landfills so
Speaker 1: far in two thousand. Yeah, and this is not the
Speaker 1: old school argument where people, you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, they don't even take it to recycling anyway,
Speaker 1: they just throw it in the trash. I know, if
Speaker 1: you believe that, then now you're saying, see there, I
Speaker 1: told you this is something new because of a new
Speaker 1: policy within the last year, right, So this is not
Speaker 1: like that old line. I just want to make that clear.
Speaker 1: And again, the reason why that that argument didn't hold
Speaker 1: before is because China was there to buy the stuff,
Speaker 1: So why would you throw it would be like throwing
Speaker 1: away money. So that was a stupid argument. Now it's
Speaker 1: not even argument, it's just a fact, like they're having
Speaker 1: to divert some of this and their stockpiling. These people
Speaker 1: who are basically recyclable material distributors are actually stockpiling the
Speaker 1: stuff in warehouses hoping that the market will come back,
Speaker 1: and there are countries taking up the slack. I think
Speaker 1: like Malaysia, India, UM, Indonesia. They're starting to buy more
Speaker 1: of this than they were before. But China accepted so
Speaker 1: much of it, bought so much of it that you
Speaker 1: just can't fill that void. It's gonna take a little while,
Speaker 1: and then hopefully one of the ways that we will
Speaker 1: handle this is countries like America or like the UK
Speaker 1: will say maybe we should start getting into the reprocessing
Speaker 1: business more than we were before and start handling our
Speaker 1: own recyclables. Yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about that loop. Let's let's say, let's talk about
Speaker 1: let's give an idea of what happens to your recyclables
Speaker 1: when they're carted away, and let's say it just stays
Speaker 1: in country. Okay, okay, alright, so let's uh. I guess
Speaker 1: we can start with paper because that's one that is
Speaker 1: widely recycled. And there's a bit of a um not
Speaker 1: a misnomer, but you know, trees are are grown to
Speaker 1: be used for paper. Um. It's there's a couple of misnomers.
Speaker 1: It's not like people go out and cut down these great,
Speaker 1: old old forests to make the paper that you print
Speaker 1: on they have, you know, they do this from pulp
Speaker 1: with trees. However, a lot of times old growth forests
Speaker 1: are chopped down to create room to plant these pulp
Speaker 1: with trees. Ter. Yeah, so it is a bit of
Speaker 1: a thing like while they may not be making paper
Speaker 1: out of it, they are clearing area to plant the
Speaker 1: pulp would trees to make the paper, right, it would
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty big waste of those old growth
Speaker 1: trees to just turn them into paper when you can
Speaker 1: make like furniture and stuff out of them. But they
Speaker 1: are cutting them down for this paper stuff. But once
Speaker 1: that happens, it's not like they're growing the old old
Speaker 1: growth or us back again. Right, No, right, okay, uh
Speaker 1: so then that paper is sorted and you're gonna hear
Speaker 1: a lot of the word sort a lot, because that's
Speaker 1: what happens at a sorting facility, depending on how heavy
Speaker 1: it is. What color apparently, like really brightly colored paper
Speaker 1: isn't good to recycle, um at all? Or good to
Speaker 1: look at? Yeah, like construction papor sure like um you
Speaker 1: know neon green flyers, Oh good lord, they'll get your attention,
Speaker 1: but they're bad for the environment. They're bad for the environment. Uh,
Speaker 1: A hot chemical and water bath can reduce the stuff.
Speaker 1: And that's really what you want to do, is to
Speaker 1: make this slurry, the soupy mix of fibrous you know
Speaker 1: what was once paper. Uh. Then they have like if
Speaker 1: you always wonder should I take my my paper clips
Speaker 1: and staples off? If you got a minute, it's probably
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. But they do have magnets and
Speaker 1: things and filters to get out the glues and the
Speaker 1: staples and all that stuff. Yeah, they basically have a
Speaker 1: lot of different rings along this line that um or
Speaker 1: the stream that that can handle your laziness. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean from paper clips to a little bit of mayonnaise
Speaker 1: left in the jar a little bit, a little bit,
Speaker 1: they can handle that. But well, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: like I said in the previous episode, I'll just say
Speaker 1: it again, that's stuff stinks in your kitchen anyway, So
Speaker 1: that's why you should clean it out right or stinks
Speaker 1: next to your house, Like who want? Who wants a
Speaker 1: gross dirty mannai'se jar? Nobody beside their house, certainly not
Speaker 1: your local recycler. No. Uh, so they're gonna get the
Speaker 1: staples and all that stuff out generally with the magnets,
Speaker 1: but if you want to do it yourself, that's great too.
Speaker 1: They remove the ink a lot of times chemically, or
Speaker 1: sometimes this is really interesting, they'll blow it to the
Speaker 1: surface and skim it off, bleach that pulp, and you've
Speaker 1: got this pulpy slurry where they can then uh spray
Speaker 1: it and roll it into a sheet, press it and
Speaker 1: dry it and it becomes paper. Again. Remember we talked
Speaker 1: about making paper in our toilet paper episode. That one.
Speaker 1: How it's made, that hypnotic how it's made episode, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um, So that what you just described probably
Speaker 1: doesn't take place in like your local town or something
Speaker 1: like that. That's gone from your your curb to your
Speaker 1: town's sorting facility to like a material um material recovery
Speaker 1: facility or MURF is what that's called. And then probably
Speaker 1: what you just described has done it like a someone
Speaker 1: who specializes in paper reprocessing, right, Um, their money right exactly.
Speaker 1: But along the way, your town made money by not
Speaker 1: sending something to landfill, because most towns have to pay
Speaker 1: for landfill stuff. So by diverting this from the landfill,
Speaker 1: the town just saved money. And if it's a big
Speaker 1: enough town because say millions, tens hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in fees um, and then once it entered that
Speaker 1: murf then they start to sort it for resale to
Speaker 1: reprocessors and the money started to come in right about that, Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: all right, So what about glass glasses like similar to paper,
Speaker 1: and that they'll usually sort it. And again, so sorting
Speaker 1: is can be done by machines in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of human beings who are
Speaker 1: employed in this process whose job it is to say,
Speaker 1: brown bottle goes here, green bottle goes here, clear bottle
Speaker 1: goes here. I really like Rome, right exactly, Captain Morgan's
Speaker 1: and they drop them down these different shoots and it's
Speaker 1: a convey convey about going past them, and they're like
Speaker 1: kind of I love Lucy's style, like just grabbing the
Speaker 1: stuff and mixing it around and putting it sorting it themselves. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And glass is significant because, um, you've also heard people
Speaker 1: say that you know you do you burned just and
Speaker 1: there have been people that have taken great pains to
Speaker 1: try and prove that recycling actually uses more energy than
Speaker 1: just making new stuff and throwing it away. Uh uh,
Speaker 1: and that is very fair about it. He points out
Speaker 1: that it really depends on your material as a whole recycling,
Speaker 1: I think without question, um uses less energy as a
Speaker 1: whole from what I understand. Yeah, but if you want
Speaker 1: to break it down to the individual things, some of
Speaker 1: them are a little tougher to get, you know, your
Speaker 1: money back out of or your energy usage. But glass
Speaker 1: is one of those that has a significant energy cost savings,
Speaker 1: right and and in some cases UM glass recycling basically
Speaker 1: is just the intact bottle is being washed and sterilized
Speaker 1: and then reused again. Sometimes so when you drink out
Speaker 1: of like a glass coke bottle or something that may
Speaker 1: have been used because it's nineteen, you're at the soda jerk.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you think about it like that's
Speaker 1: if you could buy just glass bottles, you're probably it's
Speaker 1: probably better off as far as recycling is concerned, because
Speaker 1: they probably are just reusing the bottle as long as
Speaker 1: you don't smash it on the ground, then sweep it up,
Speaker 1: put it in the recycling bin. Well, that's another thing
Speaker 1: that can be done with glass, right. They might reuse
Speaker 1: it like wash it out, burn the label off, put
Speaker 1: the go put have it go through the whole process again,
Speaker 1: so it's basically like new, or they may smash it
Speaker 1: up into pieces and um, those pieces will get melted
Speaker 1: down and turned into glass again, which is another reason
Speaker 1: why the glass gets sorted, because if you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of different colored glass mixed together when you melted down,
Speaker 1: it has like kind of a modeled color that nobody
Speaker 1: would want. So it's very important to have your green
Speaker 1: glass over here, and your clear glass over here, and
Speaker 1: your brown glass over there. Yeah. And I think I
Speaker 1: said on the show they announced in our county or
Speaker 1: maybe city that they were not doing glass anymore, and
Speaker 1: so they set up the big ben's like in certain
Speaker 1: places around the county. That's for you and your wine
Speaker 1: o friends congregate. Right, Absolutely, what a great bottle that
Speaker 1: was so um. Hey, you know something You can reuse
Speaker 1: a wine bottle by putting a candle in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: make it into a candle holder, or make it a
Speaker 1: water a feeder for your plants. That I've tried that before.
Speaker 1: I've never gotten it to work. What does it? What
Speaker 1: does it do? Well? You fill it up and then
Speaker 1: you plunge it into the soil, and I guess like
Speaker 1: the I don't think it's ever come out. It's either
Speaker 1: stuck in there or it's just poured out. I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I don't think this is working. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Has it worked for you? You know? It comes out
Speaker 1: very slowly, like it's not like you're gonna see go
Speaker 1: glug glog glog globe, because then you might as well
Speaker 1: just pour the water on it. No, I know, I
Speaker 1: think I left it in there for a good week
Speaker 1: or two and this plant is dead now. It didn't work, huh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're sure it was water like on
Speaker 1: no way to put grain alcohol alcohol. It was weird.
Speaker 1: Uh So is that good on glass? They ground it
Speaker 1: up into culor it. Yeah, that's like the ground, the
Speaker 1: ground stuff that they eventually melt down. Yeah. Well, the
Speaker 1: neat re reuses of glass or recycle the one of
Speaker 1: the neat things that glass and be recycled into his fiberglass.
Speaker 1: It can be extruded into fiber ak a fiberglass, meaning
Speaker 1: it's glass. It may have been your coke bottle at
Speaker 1: one time, and now you're keeping your house. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that. I always think of like
Speaker 1: house installation it's like the pink panther. Yeah. What about
Speaker 1: steel steal is a big one. It's usually recycled. At
Speaker 1: least of American steel is recycled. Is made of recycled
Speaker 1: steel from what I couldn't find that anywhere but in
Speaker 1: this in this article. But yeah, he's smart. But the
Speaker 1: the reason why is number one is just useful to
Speaker 1: recycle steel. But also apparently it's very easy. You just
Speaker 1: melt that stuff down and reuse it. Yeah, and Ed
Speaker 1: mentions the giant machines at shred cars. Uh did you
Speaker 1: see these videos? I've seen it before. It's about the
Speaker 1: best thing ever to watch, Yeah, is to see a
Speaker 1: man e van just get sucked into a a tooth machine.
Speaker 1: It's really amazing. Yeah, and it feels like there's nothing
Speaker 1: that can clog this thing. No, I mean a minivan
Speaker 1: can't clogg it. Yeah, nothing can can't. Yeah, man, I
Speaker 1: could have watched that stuff for hours. And steel too.
Speaker 1: So they don't just do minivans, chuck. They do buildings,
Speaker 1: old buildings, Um they do. Uh, there's something called ship breaking,
Speaker 1: where like you know those old huge ships, Well they
Speaker 1: get torn apart and recycled eventually. Um, that's actually one
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily very good for the environment because there's
Speaker 1: so many like toxic metals and like old diesel and
Speaker 1: stuff like that that gets like leached out into the environment.
Speaker 1: But an old ship is probably one of the worst
Speaker 1: like environmental disasters. It's it's pretty bad. But what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Just like sink it. You have to
Speaker 1: do something with it. So, um, that's steal. Another one,
Speaker 1: this one stuck out to me is um plastic water bottles. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So with plastics and general, it's tricky because if you
Speaker 1: ever get into an argument with somebody who's just hell
Speaker 1: been on proving that recycling is actually not green because
Speaker 1: they like to rain on people's parade or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: they will point to plastic and they are absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Like you, you just can't argue it's cheaper and probably
Speaker 1: less polluting to produce plastic new than it is to
Speaker 1: recycle plastic. It's just that's how cheap making plastic is.
Speaker 1: We've got to do an episode on plastics. It's just
Speaker 1: like we live in a plastic age, right, So, um,
Speaker 1: that is true, it is. It's it's it's more costly
Speaker 1: both environmentally and I think economically to recycle plastic than
Speaker 1: to just make it new. But that's not to say
Speaker 1: that you just shouldn't recycle plastics. So if you do
Speaker 1: recycle like a plastic water bottle, one thing that I
Speaker 1: ran across it I didn't know before is screw that
Speaker 1: cap on tightly. And if you'll notice that plastic cap
Speaker 1: is a different type of plastic than your plastic water bottle. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you throw the cap away separately, it'll just
Speaker 1: end up in the landfill, even if it's in your
Speaker 1: recycling bin, if you screwed on the The way that
Speaker 1: the plastics reprocessors are set up these days is that
Speaker 1: whole bottle goes through and the plastic is separated by density.
Speaker 1: So the stuff in the cap, I believe, floats and
Speaker 1: the stuff in the bottle sinks in in like whatever
Speaker 1: liquid bath they create for it and melt it and
Speaker 1: then they separate it like that. But if it's just
Speaker 1: your caps or whatever, it's not going to make it
Speaker 1: through the machine. The machines are set up to separate them.
Speaker 1: Connected with your cap connected to the to the water bottle,
Speaker 1: still screwed on. A commonly argued that we now have
Speaker 1: given you the answer to, Yeah, and now I think back,
Speaker 1: I'm like, how many times I've been like, well, I
Speaker 1: got to unscrew the cap and throw it in separately,
Speaker 1: had no idea. Now I know I won't be doing
Speaker 1: in that again. I can assure you, Chuck, I'll chick
Speaker 1: through these recycling symbols real quickly. For plastic, instead of
Speaker 1: going into great detail, there is one through seven that
Speaker 1: you will see stamped on the bottom usually of whatever,
Speaker 1: or you know sometimes on the side of your plastic.
Speaker 1: Number one is p E, t E or PET. Number
Speaker 1: two is hd p E, Number three is V or PBC,
Speaker 1: final four is ld p E. Number five is PP
Speaker 1: and these all have you know, longer scientific names. Number
Speaker 1: five is like your yogurt container. From what I've seen
Speaker 1: yogurt containers catch a bottles or bottles, medicine bottles, although
Speaker 1: most pharmacies ask you to bring back here script bottles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am so green. I just go and like make
Speaker 1: a little basket out of my hands, just say, put
Speaker 1: the pills in here, just dump dump it into my hand.
Speaker 1: Number six is polystyrene. That's styrofoam. And then number or
Speaker 1: seven is other and miscellaneous. That's where everything else goes.
Speaker 1: So every single one of those plastics can be recycled.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the big things about recycling.
Speaker 1: We can recycle. About seventy of the stuff that we
Speaker 1: throw away can be recycled. We recycled what about thirty
Speaker 1: of it? And the reason why is in large part
Speaker 1: because there's no money in recycling some of those other ones,
Speaker 1: like styrofoam. You can recycle styrofoam, but the process for
Speaker 1: recycling styrofoam is so difficult and expensive that it is
Speaker 1: it costs money to recycle styrofoam. Therefore, no one recycles styrofoam.
Speaker 1: And when you step back and think about all the
Speaker 1: styrofoam packaging out there, and the styrofoam peanuts and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, it's not getting recycled. You put it in
Speaker 1: with your even though it has the recycling symbol, it's
Speaker 1: saying this can be recycled. In theory, there's no one
Speaker 1: out there, almost no one out there that recycles it,
Speaker 1: so it's just going straight to the landfill. The problem
Speaker 1: is even worse than that, though, and this is thing
Speaker 1: I was talking about before, Chuck at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: You put that styrofoam in there, you put enough styrofoam
Speaker 1: in there. Then you might do what's called contaminating the batch.
Speaker 1: Where these the recycle um sorting center, the murph might say,
Speaker 1: it's not even worth paying human beings to sort through
Speaker 1: this stuff. There's so much styrofoam in here. Just send
Speaker 1: that whole batch to the landfill, including the stuff that
Speaker 1: can be recycled. So that's another big deal. Why we're
Speaker 1: not recycling a lot of stuff is because we're mixing
Speaker 1: stuff that can't be recycled or won't be recycled in
Speaker 1: with the stuff that can and should be recycled, and
Speaker 1: it's diverting the whole batch off to the landfill, which
Speaker 1: is a big problem. Which is the way the best
Speaker 1: way to address that is for people like you and
Speaker 1: me to go onto our local recycling website and say
Speaker 1: what can I actually recycle in my area and they'll
Speaker 1: tell you, and then the stuff that can't be it
Speaker 1: feels terrible to throw it away eight but throw it away,
Speaker 1: like I can tell you by like with experience. It's
Speaker 1: not a good feeling to throw a big piece of
Speaker 1: styrofoam away into a dumpster that's going to the landfill.
Speaker 1: But you can take solace in the fact that it's
Speaker 1: not going to spoil the batch of recycling that actually
Speaker 1: is going to the recycling center. Yeah. So our community
Speaker 1: has a styrofoam recycling day like twice a year, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start bringing my styrofoam to your No, don't
Speaker 1: do that, because we already have loads. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: stuff does is recycled, but it's you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: look out for it. It's very specific programs that ask
Speaker 1: for your styrofoam, uh, and they do recycle it. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like electronics recycling, right, it's
Speaker 1: really expensive. It's uh to do it costs money. Um.
Speaker 1: So our community like twice a year again, in fact,
Speaker 1: I think it's at the same time has electronics recycling
Speaker 1: and you actually have to pay and you go and
Speaker 1: pay them some money to donate your old whatever you know. Um.
Speaker 1: Very ironically, I was going through stuff you should know
Speaker 1: Selects and I can't remember what episode it was, but
Speaker 1: in the listener mail, we basically read a p s
Speaker 1: A for something called free I t Athens. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that, Yes, And it's freed to I think is
Speaker 1: what it's called. But um, I looked it up and
Speaker 1: they're still around, but you can give them, at least
Speaker 1: in Athens, Georgia, your old e waste, your old electronics
Speaker 1: and and um specifically computer stuff, and they take it,
Speaker 1: refurbish it and then donate it to people in need.
Speaker 1: And they're still doing it. And I guarantee that that Athens,
Speaker 1: Georgia is not the only town in the country that
Speaker 1: has a program like this. So rather than paying somebody
Speaker 1: like a chump to recyclist, give it to somebody who
Speaker 1: can refurbish it. Well, yeah, because a lot of times
Speaker 1: like this old Mac is just out of date. It
Speaker 1: works fine, yeah, and just let me throw it in
Speaker 1: the trash. Yeah, got an old got an old computer monitor?
Speaker 1: You can you can trade that to an anarchist for
Speaker 1: their goods and services. They love those things. So to
Speaker 1: quickly finishing up on these symbols, they say avoid three,
Speaker 1: six and seven, look for two, four and five. They're
Speaker 1: considered to be the safest um and number one is
Speaker 1: considered safe. But that's the one that's soda bottles, water bottles, um,
Speaker 1: salad dressing containers, mouth wash, peanut butter. Uh. It can
Speaker 1: be recycled and it is safe. But they're just I
Speaker 1: think they're on a mission to try and get people
Speaker 1: to use less of that stuff. Especially in ED points
Speaker 1: out one of the gripes against recycling, one of the
Speaker 1: few they actually agree with, is people recycle. So they're like,
Speaker 1: I'm I buy a case of water every two weeks,
Speaker 1: but it's fine because I recycle it. It encourages maybe
Speaker 1: for some people to think, because I'm doing this thing right,
Speaker 1: and then I can just keep buying water bottles right Precisely.
Speaker 1: That's probably the biggest argument against recycling today is it
Speaker 1: allows for this consumer society to keep flourishing and thriving.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break real quick and come back. Okay, chuck.
Speaker 1: So all that stuff has been sorted and um depending
Speaker 1: on what it is, say like um aluminum cans or
Speaker 1: plastic bottles or something like that, it is put into
Speaker 1: these huge enormous bails and then sent off to the
Speaker 1: reprocessors who then do things like you described with the paper.
Speaker 1: They basically um clean it, burn off any impurities, scrape
Speaker 1: off any impurities, get to the raw cial again and
Speaker 1: then turn it into small little things like um if
Speaker 1: it's aluminum in gets or if it's um glass. They're
Speaker 1: trying to cull it um or if it's plastics, they'll
Speaker 1: melt it down into nerdles. I can't remember what they're called,
Speaker 1: but those are mermaids tears, remember that's what they break
Speaker 1: down to and fish eat them and die. Um. And
Speaker 1: then those things go to manufacturers and they buy it.
Speaker 1: So that's that's this. That's the current state of recycling
Speaker 1: right now. And that last part, the last two parts
Speaker 1: them where the reprocessors by the stuff and then the
Speaker 1: manufacturers by the stuff from the reprocessors that has been
Speaker 1: disrupted with China coming in and saying we're not doing
Speaker 1: that anymore. So there's a lot of things that can
Speaker 1: change as a result of this. Right if all of
Speaker 1: these if these things that actually do have value start
Speaker 1: to build up as they are in all of these
Speaker 1: warehouses and facilities, um, so there another market is going
Speaker 1: to develop because these things do have value, because consumers
Speaker 1: do want to see like, oh, this thing I'm using
Speaker 1: was made with you know, post consumer recycled material. I
Speaker 1: feel good about that. I'm gonna buy this package over
Speaker 1: that package. There's value to this stuff. Right, So there
Speaker 1: will be a market that develops, But will it be
Speaker 1: this continued thing where we're like here, developing country, you
Speaker 1: don't have like um regulatory and safety and environmental protections
Speaker 1: like we have in our country. So take this and
Speaker 1: we can feel good about ourselves because it's out of sight.
Speaker 1: That's that's basically how the recycling commodities market developed in
Speaker 1: the nineties and up till two thousand eighteen, it was
Speaker 1: just like here, you take our our thing, and we
Speaker 1: can feel good about things, but but unwarranted and unwarranted
Speaker 1: feeling of of feeling good about um about recycling. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that the actual like real deal will develop
Speaker 1: and that will will continue to recycle and feel good
Speaker 1: about things, but it'll be you know, justified. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm hoping. That's what I think is going to happen.
Speaker 1: I think that single stream recycling is going to go away.
Speaker 1: I think that we're gonna have to start like being
Speaker 1: more conscientious and just know what we're doing more. Because
Speaker 1: if you put the average person who recycled in the
Speaker 1: nineties up against the average person who recycles today, do
Speaker 1: you remember back like in the nineties, like people knew
Speaker 1: what they were talking about with recycling and way more sideburns.
Speaker 1: Sure more so, but like I think of my dad
Speaker 1: like he's still just a religious recycler. Now. He got
Speaker 1: like the bug in the nineties because there's such a
Speaker 1: good campaign, a good public campaign, and yes, fewer people recycled,
Speaker 1: but the quality of the stuff that was entering the
Speaker 1: recycling stream was way better than it is today. Good
Speaker 1: stuff in the nineties it was so great because so
Speaker 1: depending on where you live in the country, in the
Speaker 1: United States and reckon all over the world, UM, you
Speaker 1: might have different options for recycling. The Abuse Center research
Speaker 1: study UM found that of the United States has something
Speaker 1: available to them UM, which is great. Uh, thirty percent
Speaker 1: has curbside only, drop off only and forty pcent and
Speaker 1: had a mix of both. And of any town with
Speaker 1: a population over a hundred and twenty five thousand have
Speaker 1: curbside pick up now and in the US over a
Speaker 1: hundred still yeah, a lot of America. Yeah. So those
Speaker 1: are the general ways that you're going to recycle, either
Speaker 1: at a recycling center, uh, like a drop off center,
Speaker 1: curbside pickup, which you know we love UM buy back centers.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever seen the aluminum can machines,
Speaker 1: we can collect aluminum hands, throw them in there and
Speaker 1: make some money. Uh, and then that's kind of part
Speaker 1: of the deposit refund program where you know in the
Speaker 1: good old days when you would you would drink a
Speaker 1: soda that you actually actually paid extra for that bottle.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, if it has like a five cent refund,
Speaker 1: it's called a refund for a reason because you paid
Speaker 1: an extra nickel to drink that coke out of the bottle.
Speaker 1: Out of the bottle. But you can always go take
Speaker 1: it back, sonny, and they'll give your five cents back.
Speaker 1: Then they take that bottle, wash it out, sterilize it,
Speaker 1: may fill it with coke again. Yeah. I don't drink those.
Speaker 1: I don't drink cokes at all. But there's something about
Speaker 1: that iconic bottle that I love. That green tinted, green
Speaker 1: tinta that's bright ribbed. No, no, no no, that the original
Speaker 1: coke bottle has that really faint green. It's not green
Speaker 1: green like this bright bottle. But yeah, and it's got
Speaker 1: like that. It's ribbed and it has that curve ribbed
Speaker 1: for your pleasure. It's very sexy bottle. They think about it.
Speaker 1: I wonder I loved it. You just went Should we
Speaker 1: talk about um stuff? You shouldn't recycle absolutely. Well, let's
Speaker 1: get to that. But let's talk about the criticisms. One
Speaker 1: of the ones we talked about was that it gives
Speaker 1: you and this is the one I think it sounds
Speaker 1: like we both fully agree with, is that recycling gives
Speaker 1: you a false sense of um, like you're doing something
Speaker 1: for the environment. Yeah, which you are, but not to
Speaker 1: the point where you can just be like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna buy everything and but I'm recycling it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely true. But also you're not fully like it's
Speaker 1: amateur hour with recycling these days, where before you you
Speaker 1: there was less being recycled, like only one to three
Speaker 1: percent of that stuff was being diverted to the landfill.
Speaker 1: Today there's like fifty increase in the amount of stuff
Speaker 1: that's being recycled, but up to like of that is
Speaker 1: being diverted to the landfill. Yeah. Right, So if you
Speaker 1: could just keep that number up, the increase over like
Speaker 1: the early nineties, and then decrease what's going to the landfill,
Speaker 1: that'd be fantastic. And you do that by teaching people
Speaker 1: what not to recycle. You should be the e pH
Speaker 1: chief I am. You know, like my pen cost me.
Speaker 1: You might actually want to protect the environment. There, it's
Speaker 1: right there in the job title. We're gonna get some
Speaker 1: email for that. Politics. Uh, this is one that we
Speaker 1: touched on a little bit. But um that it's basically
Speaker 1: a zero sum game. Uh with with the you know,
Speaker 1: the energy used, okay to recycle and like we said,
Speaker 1: it sort of you know, very much depends on the product.
Speaker 1: But many of the most common things we recycle. It
Speaker 1: is not a zero sum game. No. But even if
Speaker 1: even if Chuck you took all of material manufacturing and
Speaker 1: all of material recycling and it turned out that it
Speaker 1: was totally evened out energy energy wise, pollution wise, you
Speaker 1: would still be it's still be worthwhile to recycle because
Speaker 1: recycling has a demonstrably better impact on the economy. Like
Speaker 1: there are more jobs associated with it, there's more revenue
Speaker 1: associated with it. Um, there are more goods and services
Speaker 1: associated with it. It just has a greater economic impact
Speaker 1: than sending waste to the landfill does. Like there's money
Speaker 1: and sending sending waste to the landfill, it's true, but
Speaker 1: recycling actually has way more of a positive economic benefits.
Speaker 1: So even if pollution is the same, energy uses the same,
Speaker 1: it's just shown overall recycling is better money wise. Take
Speaker 1: the pin out of that one. Yeah. Uh, there isn't
Speaker 1: a garbage problem to begin with. There is no garbage crisis.
Speaker 1: Plenty of landfill space. Um, so we don't need to
Speaker 1: sweat it this one. You just say, can you just
Speaker 1: lean forward a little bit and you kick them in
Speaker 1: the butt. Yeah, technically there is plenty of landfill space.
Speaker 1: That does not mean that we should fill it as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. Right, that's probably the easiest way to
Speaker 1: debunk that, right, Yeah, I mean it's just because there
Speaker 1: is space doesn't mean all right, then fill it with
Speaker 1: drash exactly? Like who thinks that? Do you look at
Speaker 1: the ocean and go, well, we could dump a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in there, Like that's just that's just that's
Speaker 1: just dumb. I'm sorry that you're a dumb person if
Speaker 1: you think that. I don't say that very often, but
Speaker 1: when I do, I mean, alright, so I think now
Speaker 1: we can talk about things you're recycling wrong. Okay, So again,
Speaker 1: listen up, everybody, because if we can tell you what
Speaker 1: not to recycle or how to recycle things better, and
Speaker 1: you can tell other people and everybody just kind of
Speaker 1: figures this out and actually becomes like primo recyclers like
Speaker 1: we used to be in the nineties. This would have
Speaker 1: a signal forgetting positive impact on at the very least
Speaker 1: the amount of stuff going to the landfill, which we
Speaker 1: can all agree is not a good thing. Correct. Okay,
Speaker 1: So throw away that Starbucks cup. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: sad one. It is because you want to even if
Speaker 1: you wash it out with water and it's clean as
Speaker 1: a whistle, you cannot recycle that and you're gonna get
Speaker 1: stared at and people are gonna shoot spit balls at you,
Speaker 1: even though they don't have straws anymore. You just say stop, stop,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm on your side. You don't understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell him, Josh, that you know is what you should
Speaker 1: say back. Don't don't mention chuck. But yes, those disposable
Speaker 1: coffee cups have wax on them. It's a very fine
Speaker 1: film and you you know you can tell by looking
Speaker 1: at them. Um, that's why your coffee doesn't leak out
Speaker 1: all over through the paper, that's right, because yeah, it's
Speaker 1: either wax or plastic, I think. And the problem is
Speaker 1: is very tough to separate from the paper when they
Speaker 1: start running it through that reprocessing process. Yes, And there
Speaker 1: was a group of people at um stand Earth who
Speaker 1: did a little experiment where they actually had tagged these
Speaker 1: Starbucks cups and uh and where Denver, Colorado that went
Speaker 1: to the recycling bin and then they traced them. They
Speaker 1: ended up in the landfill. So yeah, with like electronic tags,
Speaker 1: they were tracking a dolphin. Yeah, or like your child.
Speaker 1: So throw them away. I'm sorry, Okay, but don't just
Speaker 1: throw the whole thing away. You feel dressed that thing, right,
Speaker 1: You pull the coffee clutch off, you pull the lid off,
Speaker 1: both of those can be recycled, and then you throw
Speaker 1: the cup away. Here's the even better thing to do
Speaker 1: by one of those like ten or fifteen dollar travel
Speaker 1: mugs and say I would like my Starbucks in this please,
Speaker 1: and they'll go okay, great. Or if you're sitting in there,
Speaker 1: I don't know that of Starbucks does this, but every
Speaker 1: mom and pop coffee shop will serve you your coffee
Speaker 1: and a big, delicious giant mug. Yeah. I think Starbucks
Speaker 1: does too, if you Yeah, but that that's the point,
Speaker 1: Like re reducing the number of paper cups that you
Speaker 1: have to throw away, so much the better. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what I do is um my, uh germophobes might think
Speaker 1: is creepy, but I take the little sleeve off what
Speaker 1: do you call it clutch to keep it from your
Speaker 1: hand from getting warm. I just stick that back in
Speaker 1: the thing with the other ones. What do you mean, Well,
Speaker 1: I use it and I take it off and I
Speaker 1: put it back where I found it. Oh, I see smart,
Speaker 1: just for the next person. So that's the second are
Speaker 1: yeah nice? Use nice? Just as long as you keep
Speaker 1: your hands clean. Yeah, I try to poopy hand. We've
Speaker 1: talked about pizza boxes before, but it is definitely worth
Speaker 1: saying again, we've talked a lot about pizza boxes. I
Speaker 1: think it's even they say a little grease is okay,
Speaker 1: a tiny amount. I think it's best to just cut
Speaker 1: out the grease spot and throw and throw the rest
Speaker 1: in the recycling bin. Or usually there's only grease on
Speaker 1: one side, the side where the pizza has been sitting.
Speaker 1: The other side's fine, just tear that off and throw
Speaker 1: the non greasy side and the recycling through the greasy
Speaker 1: side in the track. I'm saying, go the extra mile
Speaker 1: and cut around the grease because all those corners are recyclable.
Speaker 1: You go you know. Okay. And here's the other thing
Speaker 1: I said, throw the greasy side in the trash, no
Speaker 1: light it on fire. The that that, um, that can
Speaker 1: be composted. Uh yeah sure. The cardboard box almost always
Speaker 1: can be composted if even if it has grease on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, so um, pizza boxes, no grease equals recycling. Right,
Speaker 1: And I already talked a little bit about food stuffs.
Speaker 1: A little bit of food stuffs is okay. But again
Speaker 1: I just recommend like taking an extra thirty seconds and
Speaker 1: rents out that mayonnaise jar, right, rent it out. Um
Speaker 1: if if it if it has like the oily sheen
Speaker 1: from the mayonnaise and it's still that's fine. The plastic
Speaker 1: reprocessor is set up to deal with that. If it
Speaker 1: has lumps of mayonnaise and it's still, it's not it's
Speaker 1: too dirty. Um. Same with like peanut butter is another one. Um,
Speaker 1: if you have like a to go like plastic food
Speaker 1: tray or something like that, like like get the crumbs out,
Speaker 1: just get it, like, don't don't sit there and scrub
Speaker 1: it as I think this is A New York Times
Speaker 1: article points out like you're'll actually be wasting water at
Speaker 1: some point, but you do want to you want to
Speaker 1: kind of get it prepped. Don't just throw it in
Speaker 1: there like it's like you would the trash um like
Speaker 1: because it's trash. And again, if there's enough stuff in
Speaker 1: this batch that's going to the recycling center, they're gonna
Speaker 1: throw it away. So don't throw stuff that shouldn't be
Speaker 1: recycled in with the recycling. Yeah, I get we have
Speaker 1: a lot of guilt about take out containers. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: ordering in that's that's the one thing where just like man,
Speaker 1: I love ordering in food, love that Chinese delivery yeah,
Speaker 1: but all that waste. Yeah, and like the Chinese delivery boxes,
Speaker 1: I mean their waterproof too for a reason, so they're
Speaker 1: not getting recycled either. You've gotta just awsome. I saw
Speaker 1: something like this is made up. But it's something like
Speaker 1: seventy or eighty percent of plastic trash is one time
Speaker 1: use food packaging, like just some ridiculous amount. Where if
Speaker 1: and this is the weird thing, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You're gonna take like your own dishes to the Chinese
Speaker 1: food place or your own like tupperware and say put
Speaker 1: it in this please? People do that? Do they? But
Speaker 1: I mean, you are pretty hardcore if you're doing that,
Speaker 1: So there's gotta be another way. And chuck. This is
Speaker 1: another another thing we can do besides you and me
Speaker 1: being smarter and better at recycling, like just just making
Speaker 1: that like a side thing. It's demanding that manufacturers who
Speaker 1: make packaging make it with this end of life and mind.
Speaker 1: Make it so it can be reused, or make it
Speaker 1: so it can be very easily recycled, or make it
Speaker 1: so it has a minimal design rather than a bunch
Speaker 1: of like styrofoam and wrapping and all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: if you, I mean, just the smallest little things can help.
Speaker 1: Like if you're picking up food to go, uh, and
Speaker 1: they're throwing in a bunch of utensils that you take home,
Speaker 1: yeah to say no, Yeah, like you don't use that
Speaker 1: stuff if you're taking it home, So what do you do?
Speaker 1: You probably throw it away or there's a drawer in
Speaker 1: your house with those things, you know. Uh. Plastic straws
Speaker 1: are a big deal right now to like cities are
Speaker 1: banning them. I think Starbucks just said they weren't gonna
Speaker 1: use them anymore, So that's a big one. Um. And
Speaker 1: plastics again, plastic bags are really bad zip block bags,
Speaker 1: bubble wrap. None of that stuff should be in your recycling,
Speaker 1: none of it. None of it. Yeah, like don't. I've
Speaker 1: seen people take a bag full of alumium cans and
Speaker 1: throw the whole thing in there, Right, that bag is
Speaker 1: going to good like they're they're gonna say, well, this
Speaker 1: whole bag is trash, even though everything inside can be recycled,
Speaker 1: it's trash now because it's just not worth their time
Speaker 1: to empty the bag out. The conveyor belts going too fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dirty diapers can't recycle those that has human bio hazardous
Speaker 1: waste in it, even if you're even if you're using
Speaker 1: the diapers that do have plastic in them, get judge.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't use those either. But that's there the
Speaker 1: reason you might think you can recycle them because well,
Speaker 1: it's plastic. I can recycle plastic. You can't recycle like
Speaker 1: eight different kinds of plastic that are in the diapers.
Speaker 1: They again, they melt them down, and then yes, once
Speaker 1: you add the whole dimension of poop to it, it's
Speaker 1: bad news from your child who was eating plastic that
Speaker 1: was plastic in the poop. I can't wait to do
Speaker 1: a plastic episode. It's gonna knock everybody's socks off, chuck. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we're going to stop here and we'll pick this
Speaker 1: up again in eight years. Okay. Yes, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about recycling, go to your local recycling
Speaker 1: website and figure out what you can recycle and what
Speaker 1: you can't and do it. Okay. And since I said
Speaker 1: do it, it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this Zambardo follow up. Hey, guys, big fan of the
Speaker 1: show and also a fellow movie crusher. Well nice, thank you. Alex.
Speaker 1: Let's thing to the Stanford prison experiment and reminded me
Speaker 1: of my own discovery of Zimbardo. In high school, I
Speaker 1: took a psychology class and the teacher didn't really have
Speaker 1: a lesson plan for any day. He would periodically just
Speaker 1: put on episodes of the PBS show called Discovering Psychology,
Speaker 1: hosted by some middle aged guy who looked a bit
Speaker 1: like a Star Trek evil doppelganger. The episodes are pretty elementary.
Speaker 1: He seemed to be designed for student audience. The host
Speaker 1: would introduce himself, talk about something like perception or learning
Speaker 1: for a bit, and then read and then do a
Speaker 1: reading rainbow esque graphic. Uh cutaway to a famous experiment
Speaker 1: on the subject. Fast forward to this semester. We're given
Speaker 1: some free time to research UH, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to pick something good and I discovered the Standford prison experiment.
Speaker 1: It was only then that I realized that Zimbardo was
Speaker 1: the one hosting that PBS special that I had been
Speaker 1: watching for the past month. Frankly, guys, im will surprise
Speaker 1: at UH, the guy that had the lead role in
Speaker 1: when of the least at the cool psychology experiments was
Speaker 1: given Well, let's be fair, it wasn't one of the
Speaker 1: least ethical. Ever. Things have gotten way worse, But for
Speaker 1: as big as it was, I just want to be clear,
Speaker 1: they're poorly, poorly put together. I'm I'm surprised he was
Speaker 1: given a hosting role for an educational TV show targeting
Speaker 1: students twenty years after. Okay, fair enough, that's Alex's point
Speaker 1: of view. That is from Alex Aberman. Alex from Falls Church, Virginia,
Speaker 1: nice town, buddy NICs area. Yes for running it? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to um oh? Man, I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of the place. They're famous for peaking
Speaker 1: duck there. Oh really? Yeah? I can't remember. There's one specific,
Speaker 1: amazing Chinese restaurant that has the best peaking duck you'll
Speaker 1: ever had. Wow, try it all right, okay, um duck,
Speaker 1: but oh well, don't bother me. The rest of the
Speaker 1: food is pretty good too, but the peking duck is
Speaker 1: off your socks off. Um. So, if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about oh no, I already said that. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, go to
Speaker 1: our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com. It has
Speaker 1: all the links to all our social meds, and you
Speaker 1: can also send us an email, wrap it up, spank
Speaker 1: it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.