Living Like Ed (16 page)

When you consider the low-hanging fruit, the most energy saved is by collecting and recycling aluminum. If you go back to the top of the pyramid—the amount of aluminum recycled vs. mined in Jamaica—it’s still a beneficial trade-off.

Critics also argue—and they are correct—that there have been highly inefficient recycling programs that do not make a positive environmental contribution. They are operating at a net loss, an environmental deficit, by generating diesel fumes.

There’s another challenge to making these programs environmentally viable: our urban miners. For years we in the recycling realm have praised those—our homeless and others who clearly are not homeless—who go around picking the gold (in this case aluminum) out of the recycling bins. When the recycling that’s picked up by the town or city has already been cherry-picked of most of the valuable materials, the city can’t get its redemption value—that is, the deposits you and I have paid on aluminum cans and glass bottles and other containers. The municipalities running these recycling programs count on that money. And suddenly, they’re picking up mostly corrugated cardboard, and there’s not as much money coming into the coffers to support the program. There’s no money to be made in a curb-side program from chipped cardboard (especially if it’s contaminated with other waste), different papers, and glass containers. Deciding to reclaim these materials is a judgment call at best, because you’re basically hauling around sand. That’s all glass is made of. There may be a deposit on it, but sand is heavy, and it may not be as economically viable to recover as those aluminum cans.

For example, the city of Napa, California, estimates that urban miners—they call them
thieves—“
steal” as much as half a million dollars’ worth of cans and deposit bottles a year. So they urge residents and business owners to call a nonemergency hotline if they spot people going through their recycling bins. In Los Angeles County, you’re supposed to call the sheriff’s department, so these scavengers can be fined or even serve jail time.

Though I would not condone fines or jail terms for homeless folks trying to make a buck, I would suggest finding ways to make every recycling program more efficient
and
more cost effective.

SORTING YOUR TRASH

Whether or not your city has a curbside recycling program, you’re still going to need to sort your trash. Even cities that don’t have a curbside program usually have neighborhood drop-off locations where you can bring your recyclables. If you live in an apartment or a condo that doesn’t have recycling bins, you can do the same. No matter how your trash gets to the recycling facility, the first step is always the same: sorting.

In many cities, it’s been made pretty easy. The Department of Sanitation issues different-colored bins. In Los Angeles we have three:

•
Black is for stuff that goes to the landfill.

•
Green is for yard waste.

•
Blue is for recycling.

We’re lucky in that we can put most of our recyclable stuff in one bin, including several different kinds of plastic, aluminum cans, glass, even mixed paper. That’s a lot of stuff. My blue bin is always topped off with recyclable materials.

In Brooklyn, New York, on the other hand, paper for recycling gets its own separate bin and pickup, while mixed glass, metal, and plastic go in another, and yard waste is not recycled at all except at certain designated times of the year. So it’s important to check the local regulations carefully, and put
only
the items in your recycling bins that are designated on your bin or in the materials list issued by your municipality. You don’t want to put things in there that shouldn’t go there. Nor do you want to put in anything that’s dirty—no cat food cans with cat food still inside—because it contaminates other materials. Putting the wrong stuff in the recycling bin just creates extra work, since the people at the recycling center wind up throwing that stuff away. You’re literally making them spend more money to pick up and transport your trash, which makes a mess of the recycling program. So don’t put stuff in the recycling bin that’s not supposed to go there.

Nearly everything can be recycled, even Styrofoam.

As for the green bins, every week I have one or two filled with yard waste. The city does two things with all that stuff. One is a really good form of recycling; the other is only
kind
of recycling.

The good thing they do is they make something called L.A. Grow, a soil amendment. The plant material is put in a big drum grinder, and ground up and mixed with other things to make this very beneficial mulch, which is made available to L.A. residents.

Another way yard waste is used is not really
recycling
but it’s still a fine use of this stuff at the landfill. Each time they lay out a layer of garbage, they cover it with a layer of green sediment. Another layer of garbage, another layer of green sediment. Otherwise, you just have rotting garbage and sea-gulls and a real mess, with the stench and the possibility of disease. Rather than waste good topsoil to cover each layer of garbage, which is what land-fills used to do, now they can use green waste.

What can’t go into my compost bin gets chopped up and put in the green trash bin.

Of course, I don’t put everything that
can
go in the green bin
into
the green bin. I recycle most of my own green waste—grass clippings, yard waste, and also table scraps—into compost (more on that in Chapter 5, “In the Garden and Kitchen”). So my green bins get stuff put in them only when it’s not compostable, things I can’t take a machete to and chop up. Even so, I fill one or two green bins with stuff every week, because it’s a big property with lots of drought-tolerant plants and lots of shrubby stuff—things with thick branches and stalks that I can’t compost.

What about the black bin, the stuff that goes to the landfill? On a weekly basis my black bin is usually one-eighth to one-quarter full. It’s never even half filled. There’s just not a lot of trash to be thrown out in this house. When I was single, there was even less—so little it would fit in my car’s glove compartment! Now that there are more people with different habits living in the house, we do produce more trash, but still, we send very little to the landfill.

So what goes in our black bin? Things that simply cannot be recycled, like used kitty litter. You can’t recycle or compost that. There also comes a point where you’ve gotta throw some things away. Things that Freecycle won’t even take. When you’ve got a vegan tennis shoe that is tattered and the heel has come off and you’ve reglued it several times and it’s now torn, nobody wants that. If you give this stuff to Goodwill, you’re just making them work to throw
your
stuff away; they’ve got to pick it up and then pay the trash disposal cost to get rid of it. So be honest about what can be reused. Still, you’ll find—as I have—that most things you want to get rid of have some value to someone. Empty soup cans, glass jars from pasta sauce, yesterday’s newspaper—they all have value. So now let’s look at these different kinds of materials and see how they can be recycled.

RECYCLING METAL

Obviously, there are many different kinds of metal—aluminum, steel, copper, gold, to name just a few—and most of them can be recycled.

You likely will have lots of aluminum to recycle, since 99 percent of all beer cans and 97 percent of all soft drink cans are made of aluminum.

Now, you may not want to put those cans in your curbside recycling bin, because many states offer a cash value for those empty cans. They’re not really paying you, of course; they’re just refunding your money. They charge something like a 5¢ deposit for each can when you buy a six-pack or a twelve-pack. Then when you bring the empty cans back, they refund your deposit. Either way—whether you collect the cash or throw the cans into your curbside recycling bin so your city can collect the cash—those aluminum cans will get recycled.

Fortunately, aluminum is easy to recycle. You don’t have to remove any labels. You just rinse out the cans. When it’s recycled, aluminum gets processed at such a high temperature that it easily eliminates contaminants. You rinse the stuff primarily to prevent odors and make life easier on all the people who have to touch that can after you’re done with it—the people who sort all the stuff that goes in the recycling bin, and then later, the people at the plant that recycles the aluminum.

Where does that aluminum get reused? To make more cans, mostly.

What about steel? Believe it or not, more steel gets recycled each year than all other materials combined, including paper. This is due in part to the fact that you can attract steel with a magnet. So it’s easy to sort it out when it’s mixed in with other materials. Steel can be salvaged fairly easily even if it’s mixed in with construction debris or debris from a demolished building. It might come out of a junked car or an old appliance.

Recycling that steel not only keeps it from going to a landfill, but also saves energy and natural resources. Every ton of steel that gets recycled reduces the need for 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone.

So what kinds of metal can go into curbside recycling bins? Obviously aluminum cans. Also other common household stuff, like clean aluminum foil, pie tins, tin cans, and jar lids (which should be put in separately from the jars).

If you have metal trash that can’t go in your curbside recycling bin—anything from an old screen door to a cast-iron skillet—there are other recycling resources. There are scrap-metal yards all over the country, places that will even give you a little cash based on the quantity of the metal you bring in. Even precious metals like gold and silver can be recycled. They can literally be melted down to make new jewelry or new coins or what have you.

RECYCLING GLASS

Glass is one of the easiest materials to recycle. Every single glass food and drink container you get can be recycled. It may not be as valuable as aluminum, but it’s still well worth the effort.

Again, you don’t even have to remove the labels before you recycle glass containers. Just rinse them out. The high-temperature processing will remove any contaminants.