Sunday, April 19, 2009

Take A Little Time To Clean Your Recyclables


Seriously

In what America considers to be, and uses as her own personal dumpsters, live people who spend their days cleaning out or recyclables.

We are definitely not the only ones who ship our recycling off to other countries, but from what I have recently experienced we are the only ones that dispose of our recyclables without cleaning them.

I spent a couple of years living in France and a couple in Germany and in both places, three things always took place with respect to recyclables: (1) they were placed into individual bins (i.e.: white glass, aluminum, paper, packaging, etc.); (2) the recyclables were not placed inside of bags that were of a different makeup (i.e.: putting plastic bottles inside of a paper bag); and (3) recyclables with perishable items were always cleaned prior to disposal. I asked over and over again, “Why is this necessary? We never do this in the U.S.,” this was always the response that I received.

Modern technology is still not able to clean and sort our recyclables one hundred percent. This is why people are required in order to take out recyclables out of packaging that may not be recycled the same way (if at all) and must empty out massive amounts of remains by hand prior to recycling the products. As Americans, we believe there is the magical place where garbage goes, never to return again. If you do not recycle, you need to start today. If you do recycle, take a little time to rinse out or completely use up whatever is inside of your recyclable materials.

Seriously.

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