Materials, Trash & Recycling
I learned that plastics labeled numbers one through seven mean that it's very easy to recycle these things. As long as its fully one plastic and there aren't any other types of plastics with that because everything in recycling facilities gets separated such as the numbered plastics. Each is individualized so there's only plastics labeled number one in a certain area and there's only plastics labeled twos in another certain area and so on for plastics labeled three, four, five, six or seven. If there is a plastic bottle and you put it in the recycling bin with the lid you will have just contaminated the recycling stream because there's now one kind of plastic that doesn't belong to the same pile of plastics as the bottle.
If you put something that could potentially contaminate the main stream recycling into the recycling then you might have just made the recycling facility have to dump that whole load of recycling into the landfill because it's all contaminated. For example, if I were to put a used pizza box into the recycling bin they would have to dump that whole load of recycling because there was food residue on the box that contaminated everything else. If I put anything that held food in it in the recycling center and its not cleaned properly or can't be cleaned properly that's a huge impact because that whole load of recycling just became contaminated and is not recyclable anymore. Not recycling leads to things such as the turtles getting plastics stuck in their windpipes and nostrils and dying because of that and it also doesn't bio degrade or anything close to that so if you leave it on the ground it will be there for longer then we have been on this earth.
I learned a lot about how things are recycled and why they should or shouldn't be recycled such as a pizza box, it has to be thrown in the trash because the grease contaminates anything it touches if it were to be recycled. I also learned that hinged plastic clamshell containers aren’t recyclable because the hinge is made out of a different plastic than the rest of the container. It all has to be sorted at the facilities so we need to make sure that we recycle correctly so we don’t contaminate the recycling flow. I learned exactly how things are sorted in the recycling facility and its usually by hand and all the separate plastics are thrown down different shoots by hand and the steel cans get magnetised out and the aluminium cans go down to the recyclables.
If you put something that could potentially contaminate the main stream recycling into the recycling then you might have just made the recycling facility have to dump that whole load of recycling into the landfill because it's all contaminated. For example, if I were to put a used pizza box into the recycling bin they would have to dump that whole load of recycling because there was food residue on the box that contaminated everything else. If I put anything that held food in it in the recycling center and its not cleaned properly or can't be cleaned properly that's a huge impact because that whole load of recycling just became contaminated and is not recyclable anymore. Not recycling leads to things such as the turtles getting plastics stuck in their windpipes and nostrils and dying because of that and it also doesn't bio degrade or anything close to that so if you leave it on the ground it will be there for longer then we have been on this earth.
I learned a lot about how things are recycled and why they should or shouldn't be recycled such as a pizza box, it has to be thrown in the trash because the grease contaminates anything it touches if it were to be recycled. I also learned that hinged plastic clamshell containers aren’t recyclable because the hinge is made out of a different plastic than the rest of the container. It all has to be sorted at the facilities so we need to make sure that we recycle correctly so we don’t contaminate the recycling flow. I learned exactly how things are sorted in the recycling facility and its usually by hand and all the separate plastics are thrown down different shoots by hand and the steel cans get magnetised out and the aluminium cans go down to the recyclables.