Recycling Woes

Recycling Woes was Originally Posted on November 21, 2014 by lavarock

I want to do the right thing and recycle, but they make it so hard.

I live in a particularly sensitive area, the mid Pacific. Yes, we can bury some trash here, but it is not easy. We live in relatively close quarters and what is under us is mostly rock. Much of what we cast off is packaged up and sent off island, sometimes to foreign shores and some to the U.S. mainland.

I guess we are trying to separate paper products that can burned to create power, however we also create power from wind and geothermal and burning imported oil and perhaps even ocean waves.

So we are asked to put cardboard aside, but no wax covered cardboard or paper. I guess glossy is not waxy but is there really waxy cardboard or paper around? Probably those milk cartons I guess. No food or oil contaminated material. Does contaminated mean food still on them? Can I wash them first or just toss them.No Styrofoam. No fluorescent paper. No bright paper.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

So I am going to recycle plastic. One recycler says no plastics #3, but one recycler says TO recycle #1, #3 and #5. So 3 is OK in some recyclers I guess. Some containers have a body of one type and a cap with another or it is not noted. So if it is not noted what recycle number a part is, I pull it off and put it with general plastic. Some plastic items have a number but it is so small or hidden I can’t read it.

Prescription medicines are to be saved and twice a year can be dropped off at the Police station to be destroyed.

Small batteries are collected twice a year so save them, but they start leaking.

Car batteries can be recycled at a special recycler who pays per pound.

So I collected all the aluminum cans of the property and took them down to recycle and found that the guys started looking at the tops of my cans. They were not going to pay me 5 cents a can. Here we have “HI-5” cans, ones that are marked 5 cent deposit Hawaii. We only started recycling cans and bottles maybe 7 years ago and if you mix HI-5 and non HI-5 items together, you don’t get paid the 5 cents back. The thing is, we paid a 6 cent deposit on the items when we bought them, but get only 5 cents back. However, one recycler pays the 5 cents from the state, but also pays you scrap aluminum price for the cans too. You are still out part of that extra penny though. So I took the bags of cans back home and started sorting them. When I bought the farm, the previous tenants were starting to recycle and flattened many cans but never took them to the recyclers, probably because they were not paying 5 cents for them. Thus I had *tons* (a technical term) of mixed HI-5 and non HI-5 cans. I think when I was done, I had $65 worth of cans.

The HI-5 plastic bottles are a different story. They don’t count plastic, they weigh it (along with large numbers of cans). So I had small, medium and large plastic bottles all mixed. The newer plastic is marked HI-5 but if you don’t sort out any non HI-5 you don’t get paid 5 cents. Also, since they weigh them, you have to separate the large from smaller bottles too. If you mix small and large bottles together, they dump them in a “mixed” plastic HI-5 and you get (I guess) an averaged price between large and small weights.

Glass: Separate dark from clear.

Metals: Aluminum, brass, copper, lead, stainless steel (rinsed tuna, catfood and soup cans, cars, large appliances). So I have rinsed OTHER cans that are not soup or catfood, does that count? Maybe they had beans in them.

I could go on but I think you get the idea. You end up with about 12 containers to recycle. Here on the outer islands we are rural. That means we have transfer stations near us, a county dump up in town (1/2 hour away) and small county recycle stations. However, the private recyclers are the ones that pay recycle fee for HI-5 AND spot aluminum price.

Thus you can cart some stuff to the local transfer station (only open Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday), or take stuff up to town most any day. You would want to go to the private recycler across town for the HI-5 items and cardboard (I think they pay for cardboard, maybe not so the private place might be the one to go to first to check on cardboard and get paid for the cans and bottles). Then two Saturdays a year to the warehouse area where they take electronic items, but this is not the same 2 Saturdays to drop off prescription drugs at the police station. Hazardous materials can be dropped off at the county station in town, where hazardous is paint and pesticides (household not business pesticides). I don’t know if they consider a farm a business, but the state does, so maybe I can’t drop off pesticides.

As you can see, recycling is very different here. We try to do the right thing and recycle, but while we are driving around from place to place, all our recycles stuffed in the back of the truck in 12 different bags and ends up flying out all over the roads. The highway crews put it all in one big bag and throw it in the landfill. SIGH!