Recycling has been the thing for the last 30 years. You drink a can of Coke, toss the empty can in the recycle bin and, voilà, climate change is delayed by a few milliseconds.
Lots of us are losing interest in recycling, especially since the Concord Solid Waste Disposal and Recycling Curbside Collection Program dropped off those ridiculously large recycle bins. They’re made of more plastic than the average family uses in a decade. Very little of what we put in the recycling bin has any value, and plastic is useless; no one wants it.
In a recent news story, there were huge bales of recycled plastic piled up in a parking lot in Hopkinton. We used to pay the Chinese to “recycle” our waste plastic, but they don’t want it any more. Then we started sending it to other Asian countries, where it would pile up on empty lots, likely to get dumped into the rivers and wind up floating in the Pacific Ocean. In Sweden they deal with plastic waste by burning it. They collect all plastic waste, not just the few container plastics that can be sort of recycled. Burning solves the problem of plastic waste dumped in landfills and keeps it out of the Pacific Ocean. The Swedes also use the heat from burning plastic to produce electricity.
But in the U.S., we probably will never have the facilities to generate electricity from waste plastic. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not real recycling.
Frank Breen
Philip Farm Road