Most municipal recycling programs accept a lot of materials they do not currently recycle because retraining people is harder than sorting materials on their end, and not necessary since they sort it anyway.
After sorting they look for buyers of the raw materials. This varies depending on the market and quality of the material. Everything left over is sent to the landfill.
But does Seattle actually recycle all the plastic numbers? There are a number of places where all plastic numbers are accepted in the bin, but some (and sometimes all, depending on market conditions) of them are thrown into the trash later. The logic is that, overall, plastic recycling can be increased by not requiring people to decipher the codes.
Just because something is placed into a recycling bin doesn’t mean it will be recycled. And conversely, just because you throw something in the garbage, don’t assume it won’t end up in a recycling center (metal).
AFAIK plastic recycling is limited to polyethylene (clear plastic for bottles and so on) and high density polyethylene (larger containers, piping)
PVC, low density polyethylene, and polypropylene are either not recyclable or not worth recycling.
I just assume any plastic I throw in a recycling bin ends up in a landfill and any metal gets recycled.
We should stop pretending to recycle plastic other than HDPE and PET and focus on recycling those, or just landfill all plastics.
Most municipal recycling programs accept a lot of materials they do not currently recycle because retraining people is harder than sorting materials on their end, and not necessary since they sort it anyway.
After sorting they look for buyers of the raw materials. This varies depending on the market and quality of the material. Everything left over is sent to the landfill.
Do you have a source for this? I'd like to learn more and educate myself on this topic rather than stay ignorant
If you've got 20 minutes this has a good interview of someone who runs a municipal recycling program: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...
But does Seattle actually recycle all the plastic numbers? There are a number of places where all plastic numbers are accepted in the bin, but some (and sometimes all, depending on market conditions) of them are thrown into the trash later. The logic is that, overall, plastic recycling can be increased by not requiring people to decipher the codes.
Just because something is placed into a recycling bin doesn’t mean it will be recycled. And conversely, just because you throw something in the garbage, don’t assume it won’t end up in a recycling center (metal).
AFAIK plastic recycling is limited to polyethylene (clear plastic for bottles and so on) and high density polyethylene (larger containers, piping)
PVC, low density polyethylene, and polypropylene are either not recyclable or not worth recycling.
I just assume any plastic I throw in a recycling bin ends up in a landfill and any metal gets recycled.
We should stop pretending to recycle plastic other than HDPE and PET and focus on recycling those, or just landfill all plastics.