Lately, as you wander through the grocery store aisles it doesn’t take long before you notice that some shelved items seem to be jumping out at you.   Many beverages, yogurts, snack foods, toddler meals, pet foods, cleaning and personal care products seem to be screaming, “Look at me!”  Glossy, vividly colored, labeled items do stand out from the crowd, but are they wreaking havoc in our recycling streams?

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No matter where we shop, the retail landscape is loaded with miscellaneous merchandise that tempts our impulses to gather and to purchase. Designed and packaged to best capture our attention, many goods are marketed in multi-material packaging to provide optimum shelf presence, safeguard product integrity, and reduce in-store pilferage. As a rule, multi-material packaging is not recycling friendly. Often comprised of both recyclable and non-recyclable materials, individual packaging components must be properly separated and sorted prior to reclamation. One such format, the blister pack, is both a merchandising marvel and an environmental nightmare. (more…)

Americans dispose of billions upon billions of paper, plastic, and foam cups. This year over 58 billion paper cups and 25 billion polystyrene foam cups will pass through our hands and end up in landfills. While the United States is still the world’s largest culprit of disposable cup waste, growing nations like China and India are fast catching up. It’s a cup carrying, cup dumping world! (more…)

Just Zip It. Zipper-type plastic storage bags have hundreds of uses and are fast becoming the quintessential storage solution for households and businesses. Foods, electronic parts, garden soils, and even crime scene evidence end up packaged in these convenient, storage bags. Although millions of these bags are used daily, recycling used zipper-type plastic bags is not so easy. (more…)

Plastic as a Recycling Foundation

Is the time right for MRF World to take plastics more seriously? Should plastics be at the forefront of curbside recycling? Just as co-mingling of recyclables has made collection at curbside easier, the co-mingling of information on recovered materials may provide some answers. Trust me. We are not mixing apples and oranges; the markets do share some interesting parallels. (more…)

If your municipality does not offer curbside pick up for lesser recycled plastics, like PP(#5) or PS(#6), phone the depot’s office and ask where you can recycle them. Many times the town right next to yours accepts different recyclables. If you live in a city, chances are the recycling office can tell you where such plastics may be publicly collected.