Living Like Ed (17 page)
Authors: Jr. Ed Begley
The important point about glass is that some types cannot be mixed together. You can’t mix glass bottles with windows—car windows or building windows—or mirrors or glass dishes or drinking glasses or things like Pyrex kitchen bowls. You have to keep ceramic stuff separate, too, since it will contaminate glass. For the most part, that means you can put only glass bottles and jars in your curbside recycling bin.
What happens to the glass you send off for recycling? Odds are you will wind up buying it again. Most of the glass recycled in the United States gets used in new glass containers, though some of it is used to make fiberglass, too.
RECYCLING PLASTICS
When it comes to plastic, Ed knows more than anybody. There are seven different kinds of plastic, designated by seven different recycling numbers. I marvel at Ed’s ability to retain all those numbers and what they mean.
All I know is they put a recycling symbol on the bottom of all plastic stuff. In the middle of the symbol is a number. That number tells you if the thing can be recycled or not. I always have to turn things over and look at the number—and then ask Ed to figure out if it can go in the recycling bin.
We have blue bins for recycling and I think you can only put no. 1 and 2 plastic in the bins. I think no. 5 is not good, but maybe it’s 6. I just can’t remember.
In a city like L.A., until very recently, you could put only two kinds of plastic in the blue recycling bin, no. 1 and no. 2. You couldn’t put no. 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7plastic into the bin, but you still could recycle some of them.
The only things you couldn’t recycle in this house were those made of resins no. 3 and no. 5. The plastics industry would say it’s all recyclable, and I’m sure it is, but I don’t live near a processing plant that takes it. Your town might have different guidelines (or other facilities). You can find out more from your local municipality or from the community relations people at factories in your area.
THE SEVEN KINDS OF PLASTIC
| No. | 1 | Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) | This kind of plastic is used to make things like 2-liter soda bottles, boil-in the-bag pouches for frozen foods, and microwave food trays. |
| No. | 2 | High-density polyethylene (HDPE) | This denotes stuff like laundry detergent bottles and motor oil bottles, milk jugs, aspirin bottles—that kind of thicker plastic. |
| No. | 3 | Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) | This is clear food and nonfood packaging, including cooking oil bottles, medical tubing, wire, cable insulation, etc. |
| No. | 4 | Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) | This includes dry-cleaning bags, bread bags, frozen-food bags, the plastic wrap that you use to cover food, the bags you pull off the roll in the grocery store’s produce department, and also certain squeezable bottles, like for mustard. |
| No. | 5 | Polypropylene (PP) | This kind of plastic is used for certain medicine bottles, tough plastics that resist heat and moisture. It’s also used for yogurt containers, shampoo bottles, straws, margarine tubs, and syrup bottles. |
| No. | 6 | Polystyrene (PS) | This is actually plastic foam, better known as Styrofoam. It is used for grocery store meat trays, egg cartons, plastic plates, cups used for hot drinks, plastic cutlery, fast-food clamshell containers. |
| No. | 7 | Other | Code 7 indicates a plastic made with a resin that’s not one of these other six codes, or a plastic made from more than one individual resin. |
Because I couldn’t recycle them, I avoided 3 and 5 plastics when possible. I looked at an item before I bought it and if it had a
3
or a
5
on the bottom, I would see if I could get the same product that wasn’t packaged in a no. 3 or no. 5 resin. Unfortunately, there’re certain things that come in 3 and 5 only and they’re products that you need, so you buy them.
There’s another reason I tend to avoid no. 3 resin. PVC is one of the
least
environmentally friendly materials around. People have actually gone so far as to call it
evil,
and not without reason. I’ll let my friend Josh Bradley from 360 Interchange tell you more about PVC, and about a new material called ecoFoam, which in many cases can replace no. 3 resin.
Ed’s Green Friend: ecoFoam
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is one of the most ubiquitous and most destructive materials made by man. It’s also one of the most versatile plastics.
We interact with PVC almost every minute of every day. When you start your day, you’re likely having your first contact with PVC, since it can be used in
mattresses, pillows, pillow covers,
and
mattress covers
. Your contact with this plastic continues as you walk across the
carpet
to the bathroom, where you pull back the
shower curtain
and water flows through
PVC piping
. Then you walk on a
vinyl floor
in the kitchen, where you reach into the
refrigerator
and pull out food wrapped in
plastic
for breakfast. On your way out the door, you stop to pick up some of your
children’s toys
, then slide onto your car’s
vinyl seat
and prepare to drive away while enjoying that
“new car” smell
. After work, you come home to water your lawn with your
garden hose
or your
sprinklers
, then relax in the
plastic patio furniture.
PVC is all around us because of its versatility, ease of assembly, and low cost, but at what price to our health and environment?
The production of PVC creates vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and hydrogen chloride (HCl), both of which have been linked to dramatic health issues, including liver cancer, respiratory damage, failure of the circulatory system, and death. Equally dangerous are the plasticizers used to make PVC more flexible for many of the products we use. These additives, called
phthalates,
help to create everything from the soft plastic toys that your children play with to the IV bags that provide vital fluids in the hospital. An EPA website lists more than 190 articles on the potential hazards of phthalates. Many places, including Japan and the European Union countries, have banned the use of some phthalates because of their impact on children’s health and their tendency to leach into the water system.
Throughout the entire life cycle of products made from PVC, we find damage to health and the environment. PVC is not degradable, it’s difficult to recycle, and it releases toxic fumes when burned. That means the 7 billion pounds of waste per year—and the 300 billion pounds of PVC nearing the end of its useful life—have all the makings of an environmental catastrophe.
Seventy percent of this waste comes from homes. We have the power to buy products made from less damaging, more easily recyclable plastics—and from more traditional materials, such as wood, glass, and natural fibers.
Plus, a new material called ecoFoam can replace PVC for most applications, without the harm to our bodies and our environment. Though still a petroleum-based product, ecoFoam uses no heavy metals in production. It contains no chlorine or phthalates. And it does not outgas toxic fumes. Additionally, the material is photodegradable and recyclable, so many generations of products can be made from the same amount of original material.
EcoFoam can take a variety of forms, from a soft foam to a more dense, rubberlike foam, as well as a material that can replace vinyl, making it nearly as versatile as PVC. Also, ecoFoam’s lightweight, closed-cell construction makes it resistant to moisture absorption, and it can be formulated to dampen sound and vibration. It also can be combined with other materials to increase strength—even laminated onto fabrics. And in most cases, ecoFoam can replace PVC with little to no effect on manufacturing processes, which makes it a logical next step in removing PVC from our daily lives.
—Josh Bradley
So that’s PVC, which is no. 3 plastic. And then there’s no. 6 plastic, better known as Styrofoam. I certainly do not buy Styrofoam in any form. But whether you buy it or not, you’re going to get some Styrofoam. If someone sends me something with Styrofoam packing material in the box, I am never going to throw it away. I’ll reuse it as a packing material or take it to a recycling program.
The plastic industry claims—and I take them at their word—that they want people to recycle Styrofoam, and so they take these things back in cities across the nation. It should be easy to do a Google search and find a place in your area that accepts Styrofoam. So before I could throw it in the blue bin, I would save no. 6 plastic. Rachelle and I even have friends who would bring their Styrofoam to our house. And then I took it to a place in the City of Commerce called Free Flow Packaging two or three times a year.
And there’s other stuff that supposedly cannot be recycled, like plastic bags. You can’t put them in most cities’ recycling bin. But there are dry cleaners and markets that will take plastic bags back. You just have to do a little research and a little legwork.
RECYCLING PAPER
There’re all kinds of paper: white office paper, notebook paper, paper napkins, paper towels, milk cartons, newspapers, magazines, catalogs, paper shopping bags, junk mail, toilet paper rolls, telephone books, corrugated card-board boxes used for shipping, chipped cardboard boxes such as cereal boxes. And most of that paper can be recycled. Most of it is also accepted by cities’ curbside recycling programs.
But while I could put pretty much all my waste paper into the blue curb-side recycling bin in L.A., for extra credit, I save certain kinds of paper—my white office paper and my colored paper—and I shred it up and use it as packing material when I ship my cleaning products, Begley’s Best. And if I’ve shredded all I can use, I take the rest of that paper to Alpha Recycling in North Hollywood. There, I can put it in the white and colored-paper bins.