So Where Does Our Recycling Really Go?

Throughout the week, you praise yourself for sorting out the recyclables from the garbage. By trash day, you take the black, green, and blue bins out to the curb to be emptied by the trash collectors. You leave it on the curb without a second thought. Why would you? After all, it’s just trash; the garbage will go to the landfill, recyclables are given a second chance, and the compost will feed the little bugs that infest the outdoors.

But do you really know what happens to your trash after the garbage truck picks it up? You may be surprised.

The collectibles that the trucks have picked up is unloaded at the local recycling facility. It is mechanically and manually separated. About 65% of the content in we put into the black bin can be recycled. Depending on the facility’s policy, the sorted contents follow their separate fates.

The garbage may go to the local landfill or it may be incinerated. Aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles, mixed paper, and sheet metals are shipped far and wide. Aluminum cans may get bought by bottling companies and reappear on grocery shelves in sixty days. Glass bottles are reused in road building industries. Plastic bottles are sent to China to manufacture clothing and toys. Mixed paper is used for packaging and insulation. Sheet metals are turned into scrap metal to make cars, electricity pylons, etc.

There is a law in California that states that each city and county must divert 50% of its waste away from landfills through reusing, reducing, recycling, and composting AB 939). In 2006, California announced that they achieved their goal and even exceeded it by 4%.

At the citywide level, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco decided to set his own goal of 75% waste diversion by 2010. In May 2008, Newsom announced the city waste diversion rate was at 70%.

Jared Blumenfeld, the director of the city’s environmental programs, explains that the main export in the West Coast is scrap paper. It is sent to China to be made into packaging to hold our toys, electronics, and shoes. “San Francisco can charge more for its scrap paper because of its low levels of glass contamination. That is because about 15 percent of the city’s 1,200 garbage trucks have two compartments, one for recyclables. That side has a compactor that can compress mixed loads of paper, cans and bottles without breaking the bottles,” boasts Blumenfeld about the main reason the city keeps up its pressure to recycle.

The Los Angeles recently estimated a 59% diversion rate; San Jose, 62%, the best for a populated city of more that 900,000 people. Stockton reported a 47% diversion in 2000.

Waste awareness is very important. We’ve all heard that carbon dioxide is the major contributor of greenhouse gases. However, methane that gets released from landfills is worse and it cannot be offset by driving a Prius or installing solar panels.

Some waste-management experts found a way to take advantage of the methane gas by capturing it in a vacuum and use it to generate electricity. As of 2005, there are 1,654 active landfills in place in the United States. Environmentalists agree that this is an ingenious idea, but is worried that it is still not enough. Permafrost, or soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years, in northern Canada and Siberia has a lot of methane stored. Once it melts due to the rising temperature, the methane store would be released.

Reuse, reduce, and let recycling be your last resort.