Those deflated air pockets can be dropped off with other plastic bags, usually at a grocery store.

As for the other plastic recyclables, who knows? In my imagination they are ground up and remade into new plastic containers.

It’s a great question which I’ve often thought about. I’ve also thought it would be a great project for a kid to attempt to follow the recycling chain and educate the community on what exactly happens to the stuff they sort out.

Several years back I met someone who owned a recycling business and he said that regardless of what your municipality says, the only thing that actually gets recycled is #1 plastic. How true that is globally I don’t know, but I fear it’s more true than not. That’s over a decade ago and he’s in a different area (NC) but I often think back to that comment when doublechecking codes against my refuse calendar.

The way I see it, all I can really do is comply with what they’re asking for. If something ends up in the dump, well it would have ended in the dump anyway had I just thrown it out with the regular trash. What I avoid is being a “hopeful recycler” throwing in stuff that I’m not sure about or that’s not specifically requested. I don’t want to add cost to the effort.

As for your packaging, that should be recycled just like plastic shopping bags. Some supermarkets and many big box stores have recycling bins specifically for these products.

Most plastic recycling is virtually impossible, I understand. The little triangle symbol they put on packaging is basically a marketing ploy. The numbers that can be recycled here are #1-#7, with restrictions. There's also a tool on our city website that you can use to look up if an item can be accepted or not, apparently many people do not, because I see all kinds of stuff they specifically prohibit poking out of curbside bins.

Mechanical sorters cannot accept plastic films of any kind, since they tend to jam the machinery. Some stores here accept plastic film and bags for recycling, but there's no telling if that really happens. I try not to collect grocery bags, but hubby never remembers to take a reusable bag from the car inside the store, so we end up with a bunch, unfortunately 😒

They make good wastebasket liners, tho.

I've written here before about a recycling (private) company that started here in the PNW. I don't know how far their reach is, but they are growing quickly and moving into new areas. (There is a list of cities at the link below). They ethically recycle some hard to recycle items that my regular recycle company doesn't. They recycle plastic bags (including the pillows and bubble wrap).They contract with Trex to take the plastic and it's turned into decking. They take wine corks that are recycled into cork flooring. They contract with different companies to take things like plastic clam shells, plastic lids from containers, metal lids from bottles like wine bottles. They recycle cords from devices, phones and such. And also small devices like phones and laptops. They take batteries, lightbulbs, and styrofoam - we used to be able to recycle styrofoam at our landfill, but they stopped taking it last year so there was nowhere in the county to take it. Every two weeks they have a featured category, like string lights at the holidays, or warm coats in winter. They also take textiles, clothes they donate for reuse, or if not usable, they send to be recycled into other things. If this interests you, read about them and put in your zip code. I suspect they expand into areas where they track interest from their website.

RIDWELL

More Ridwell Info

“…because I see all kinds of stuff they specifically prohibit poking out of curbside bins.”

Same with me, Carol. I frequently check the “What Goes Where Guide” on our trash service’s website but am sure I still get some things wrong.

The term is 'wishcycling', I believe. I'm continually fishing things out of our bin that hubby can't seem to remember don't belong there 🙄

I agree with above. Most recycled plastics end up as decking or mixed into wood products that are turned into picnic tables and such. When a bottle says it is made with recycled plastic it is manufacturing waste not household waste. It is like toilet paper that claims to be made from recycled paper which it is but it is actually manufacturing waste-a good thing but not what they want you to think.

It is frustrating that all those wretched #1 clamshells arent recyclable where I live. They took them for a while along with my yogurt containers but apparently people put too much junk in and they cant possibly check the number on all of it. It hurts my soul to put them in the trash.

Our city has had summer interns part of whose job was to educate the citizenry by looking into the curbside bins! Sounds intrusive, but when we saw them putting a note on our can we went out to chat. They gave us some advice on things in there that we didn’t know our recycler couldn’t take, like black plastic (from the deli, even though it has an accepted number on it), and containers with too much liquid inside (we rinse, but if you can swirl water at the bottom, it isn’t empty enough), etc.

Some tv station put trackers in plastic bags at local stores’ recycle-bag bins. They ended up in various landfills, not recycled.

Remember when they touted carpet made from recycled plastic? Whatever happened to that?

Have you seen the TV ad from the plastics manufacturing industry showing rows of clear plastic bottles being magically transformed into colorful NEW plastic containers. As the feel-good music swells, the chain morphs into a lovely neckless. I *think I know* that only 7% of plastic is recycled.

We used to buy berries in cardboard boxes, not plastic 'jewel boxes' (clamshells). The butcher used to wrap meat in paper; no foam platforms. It's amazing that bananas aren't packaged!

One of our local grocers (Jewel) accepts plastic bags. I stuff all the other plastic packaging they sell into that bin as well.

It’s hard to keep up with the recycling rules. I have three boxes full of packing pellets. They aren’t white styrofoam, but I’m not sure what the material is. The UPS store used to accept packing pellets for reuse, but no longer. I don’t know what I will do with them if the dump won’t take them, leave them in the attic for the next homeowner?

@Fun2BHere - This is exactly why there are ”Buy Nothing” groups. Those packing peanuts would be picked up quickly in the one I’m part of.

@Fun2BHere do they dissolve when you get them wet? Some biodegradable peanuts are made from plants:

Biodegradable packing peanuts are made from naturally derived starches like wheat and cornstarch. Entirely plant-based, biodegradable packing peanuts will dissolve in water, making it impossible for them to wind up polluting oceans, lakes, rivers, or waterways

Ha-ha on the few things that are left un-packaged. The streets of Bangkok are filled with food stalls and vendors and the only items I noticed as pre- packaged was grapes and maybe bananas.

In Uruguay milk, yogurt, and many other liquids come not in cartons or bottles but in bags that will stand up while they are sealed. Take home, open, and transfer to a pitcher.

There is very little that our recycling company (Green Team) even takes anymore. Only plastic is bottles, like water and milk jugs, no yogurt or sour cream type containers, no deli or produce packages. They take cans and jars, they want them to be clean. They take paper and boxes that are like from cereal but no corrugated boxes.

The bags and plastic packing pillows can go to the grocery store that has a large bin in front of the store. I think Walmart has a receptacle in their store for the plastic bags. Some stores and libraries have places to take batteries.

They say that if there's bad stuff in the trucks, the whole load has to be trashed! I'm not sure how much really gets recycled because I see wrong stuff in the bins all the time. I would think every load would be contaminated!

Doesn't Canada sell milk in bags? Not sure a plastic bag is any better than a plastic jug, tho. Maybe less energy to produce?

Less material is used for plastic film than for bottles - and they take up less space in landfills as well - which you have to know is where a lot of it winds up.

Our city bins have signs on top listing the acceptable items, and the unacceptable ones as well, but hardly anybody seems to pay any attention to them. One thing I did notice is that it doesn't specify the types of accepted plastics - that's on their website and brochures/calendars.

But it does clearly state NO plastic film - and I see people put their recycling out in trash bags every week 🙄

My limited understanding is that plastic bags and such gum up the separator machines so they want that apart from the hard plastics like bottles and such. I understand that shredded paper also gums up the work and should be recycled separately from say newspapers and junk mail.

It's very location and company dependant, and places can differ tremendously. In Toronto, plastic bags of almost all sorts are acceptable, but where I live now, they're not acceptable in the recycling bin. Toronto also takes polystyrene (the foam packing around electronics etc), but they don't take it here - but Toronto won't take black plastic, but they do in Uxbridge. You've got to really learn your own place's rules.

If you don't think that they'll tell you the truth about their recycling, ask to visit their facilities -- they may not be able to give you a tour, but it might ease your mind if you go and speak to someone there and see if they actually have real facilities to deal with things. It's also harder to lie to someone face to face than in an email.

' Doesn't Canada sell milk in bags? Not sure a plastic bag is any better than a plastic jug, tho. Maybe less energy to produce? "

Yes, but not the kind that stand up on their own - they need a plastic jug for easy pouring.

And they're only sold in bags if you buy 4L at a time (a bag of 3 bags is 4L); if you are buying just 1 or 2 litres, they come in cartons.

Not only do bags use less materials, they also take up less space in shipping and storage, I've been told. Apparently, it was easier to switch to bags when Canada started switching to metric 50+ years ago.

Interesting, thanks!

Toronto, I never understood why all my in-laws didn’t decant the bagged milk. Maybe into a bottle and jugs with top. That plastic jug is exactly what they all have.

They only place I've heard of that sells bagged milk was Kwik-Trip gas station and they just announced they were discontinuing that product. Has anyone made a trip to their local landfill? We got with #2DD once a year --to deposit yard waste and pick up their fabulous FREE compost. It's FRIGHTENING to see the pits of STUFF people have discarded. Miles and miles of all sorts of things. If you truly care about this #1 is never ever buy water in a plastic bottle!!

I think only Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces sell milk in bags. I haven’t seen bagged milk in Alberta for years.

FWIW, I watch a Canadian cooking show on YouTube (Glen & Friends) and he uses bagged milk in a pitcher. Not sure where he's located, tho.

Glen & Friends is Toronto based, so no surprise about the bagged milk.

Yes, only Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes sell milk in plastic bags.

Where I live (suburb of Vancouver) we can't even get plastic bags at the grocery store for groceries and I really miss having them for certain things.

I've seen several articles in highly reputable publications--The Week was one--that states that most plastic recycling is indeed "wishcycling," that only some 6% of plastic is actually recycled. The real key is to use as little plastic as possible. I'm encourage to see that some companies are cutting back on using plastic--Penzey's spices for one used to be glass, then went to plastic, but now back to glass.

I use plastic store bags to line little trash basket for litter cleaning. I use mine and get lots from friends. At least those bags get a second use. But I'm waiting for true plastic like material that's not plastic and will actually break down.

I work with a HUGE amount of recycled material....building materials are often made out of recycled plastic.

Quote:

Eco-Friendly, Recycled Plastic Decking "TREX"

Trexhttps://www.trex.com › why-trex › eco-friendly-deckingWe make Trex® eco-friendly composite decks from an innovative blend of up to 95% recycled plastic film and reclaimed sawdust—that's almost the whole thing.

or................microfiber bed sheets....

Yes, some microfiber sheets are made from recycled plastic bottles. Recycled microfiber sheets can be a more environmentally friendly option than other synthetic bedding because they use less energy and water to produce, and they reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills.

" made out of recycled plastic "

Most of my patio furniture (Muskoka chairs and tables) are made out of recycled plastic - over 90% post consumer plastic.

Consider that the county or whoever is in charge of trash collection is putting a lot of money into recycling facilities, workers, trucks etc. I really doubt that they would do that if there was no market for the particular plastics that they accept.

I've seen a statistic similar to the "only 10%" one mentioned, but the one I saw was about the amount recycled vs. the amount manufactured. Not how much that arrives at a recycling facility is really recycled.

It is a problem when non-recyclables get mixed into the recyclables - they can't sell the pelletized plastic if it is contaminated with the wrong stuff. I know that my local recycler does try to catch the "wishcycling" junk as it goes through the sorters.

The kinds of plastic that can be recycled and used have increased a lot over the years. I do recall that at first it was very limited, and facilities had to invest in upgrades to be able to process more types. I also recall how many pushed back against the whole idea of recycling and that is when I first heard claims that it was all "a fake scam".

There's more money in cardboard and metals, I believe.

nicole, microfiber material is believed to be damaging to the environment.

From its nascent years until a few years back, the "recycling" effort in the US paid for itself at least partially because China was an enthusiastic buyer of waste it could reprocess. The self-sustaining or at least partially sustaining situation changed when China stopped buying. Now, with the diversity of materials that become waste and can't be further used, recoverable value is limited or nil and it has become much more expensive for waste companies to pick up and handle the items treated in the refuse stream as recyclable that aren't.

I should have mentioned that most Western European countries and a few others elsewhere have a common, non-landfill solution for disposing of normal refuse and non-recyclable or not easily recyclable plastics. They burn it. Some use the somewhat cynical term "thermal recycling" to describe the practice.

The heat produced is used to generate electricity.

There are many hundreds of such facilities in Western Europe. Denmark has one (Amager Bakke) with some notoriety as an attraction because there's a year-round ski slope of plastic artificial snow built into the structure.

Despite careful monitoring and the presence of scrubbers and catalysts on the stacks intended to remove dangerous combustion by-products from exhaust gases, there remain disagreements and controversy about whether trash to energy incinerators are safe or not.

One thing we can all do is to think before we buy products or packaging that can't be recycled.

Can I give up my flossers? This was the most common item found in a recent clean-up event at the Chicago River. These itty bitty pieces of green plastic! Not so long ago they were pulling shopping carts out of the very dirty river, but now it is clean enough to draw people to restaurants along a River Walk.

chisue, it sounds like part of the Chi River problem is people not properly discarding their trash. Even paper that breaks down in in the environment in time creates garbage clutter when not properly disposed of.

I personally try to make thoughtful choices with matters of significant impact and don't sweat the small stuff. For household purchases, how something is packaged or what it's made of (vis a vis reprocessed waste) has little importance to me in choosing items I wish to have. As an experiment, we once bought an area rug made of reprocessed waste plastic. I won't condemn all items of this type from our experience, but it was total cr*p and discarded in about 6 months.

Going the other way, we've had excellent experience with Trex decking products, made from recycled plastics. It's pricey though.

Many USA American cities burn trash and the items we are brainwashed to think are recycled, not just Europe. In Minnesota and by law a hauler must provide a disposal disclosure where the stuff is going. My hauler takes it to the resource recovery points they disclosed where automated sorting is done and leftovers are used by Xcel energy to be burned for energy along with other trash. Not to be confused with resource recovery facilities Three waste to energy plants exist in Minnesota, 3 in California, 12 in Florida and many more in 18 other states. These plants are expensive because of the pollution control equipment use.

Automated sorting is done in layers using star wheels to fluff and bring up paper and cardboard. This is the main reason they don't want plastic bags in your recycle bin because they jam the star wheels. The ferrous metals are removed with magnets and aluminum cans with eddy currents, and what's left is plastics and trash. Sensors and optical scanners analyze density, color, and even size and shape based on a database with selected plastics blown out of the stream to be visually examined by humans . What is reject or can't be sold is burned, the recycled plastic percentage is low and the recycling triangle is never looked at.

What will increase actual recycling of plastic is near-infrared spectroscopy that will tell exactly what the plastics composition is and drastically increase recycling. But plastics have just as many or more BTU's per pound as other hydrocarbons used to fuel boilers for electricity, and IMO the best place for it. The pollution equipment on these resource recovery facilities cost 100's of million and scrub out all pollutants with some able to capture CO2, so again it's the best place for plastic.

My preference would be seeing more Plasma Waste Converters used in this country. Right now there are 21 in the United States, and many more in china and Japan. They are expensive but convert all waste into it's pure elements (see periodic table of elements) with a byproduct of Co2, hydrogen and slag. The Co2 can be captured and the hydrogen can be used to to fire boilers for electricity, and the slag is used in various applications. The US government has a bunch for chemical agents and biomedical waste destruction. It doesn't matter the composition of the material because the plasma gasification will completely destroy everything no matter how dangerous it is with one exception, radiation.

Very interesting Kevin. Can you tell how you came to know all this fascinating stuff?

We briefly had an incineration plant for garbage in our county but it was a mess. Not well designed and polluting. Unfortunately it convinced everyone it was a bad option for dealing with trash. That was back in the 80's. Technology seems to be catching up to need.

"Can you tell how you came to know all this fascinating stuff?"

Basically because I'm odd, with a high level of curiosity on how things work, so I dissect anything peaking my interest down to the small details of how they work. The subjects I described have crossed my path at some point in my life which I spent time understanding, and my recall was triggered by Elmer's post about burning trash in Europe to correct the fact burning trash wasn't limited to just Europe.

Since the age of 8 I recycled anything I could to make a dime to get spending money, and still have this odd interest today. It's in my blood, I've roamed garbage dumps, scrap metal recycling yards and always wanted an auto salvage yard of my very own since I was 8. I still see treasures in other people's trash and still collect and recycle for a dime in my spare time. My interest in a subject connects me to the information just as anyone else looking for information on their own interests.

I also spent much of my life as a machinery mechanic troubleshooting and repairing the simplest mechanical machine to the most complicated and expensive in manufacturing and automation. This required extensive knowledge in all the trades involve to make a machine do work including how they worked so it's become second nature to me.

Knowing plastic came from my A-Hole brother's venture into recycling manufacturers plastic waste for them in 1990. He asked me to help install the machinery he bought using his house and everything he had as collateral to buy the machinery. He was successful and for thirty years I had to listen to him talk plastic to no end and how great he thought he was.

I stumbled upon the topic of plasma waste converters, also known as plasma gasification in 2000 and was intrigued, so I spent months reading what little data I found on the subject, but there wasn't much because the commercialization was still in it's infancy. I found a company building them but with no sales yet as a start up with a price, sol had an idea! Why not buy a small plasma gasifier, charge the same fee as medical waste disposal facilities and landfills, capture and compress the hydrogen to use in fuel cells and generate electricity for an additional return. Clean everything and I could make a dime using any trash including hydro rich old tires to make a dime! Win win, right? Financial analysis of the process suggested it was feasible to make a dime, but the banks weren't all to excited because it was something no one had done before and refused to finance. I had no knowledge how to solicit investors so the idea died. Bottom line I'm a mechanical techy who also sees trash as a value to make a dime, oh and I'm somewhat of an environmentalist. Sorry you asked? Want to hear something else very odd?

Since my brilliant Idea in 2000 Japan built a plasma gasification plant in 2003 capable of totally destroying 300 tons of trash per day producing enough syngas (short for synthesized gas) to generate 26 Kilowatts of electricity per ton, and only requiring 2% of this power to run the plasma gasification plant running. They closed the plant in 2013 not because it didn't work but because they couldn't find enough trash per day to keep it running. So what is wrong with this world? The technology is available, it's proven to work and cleaner than anything available with dioxins measured at levels 100 times lower than a 2000 degree incineration plant. There shouldn't be an old used tire in this world, no plastics in the ocean, or landfills in operation. It also completely destroys sewage sludge just as well, including any deadly chemicals or man made product ever produced (except radioactive waste). So when someone asks how do we get rid of all this stuff just say a 40,000 degree Plasma arc will work. Well anyway thanks for asking Patriciae and hope It didn't bore you to much, and FWIW my last run to the scrap yard was in April after causally picking up curb offerings over the last couple of years with a return of nearly a $1000 in dimes for spending money and I enjoyed it.