Left Holding the (Plastic) Bag
In theory, plastic bags can be recycled. The reality is a lot messier.
a halo of squawking seagulls rings the Sims Metal Management recycling center along the Hudson River in Jersey City. This is where all of New York City's curbside recycling goes for processing—more than 240,000 tons annually. Though all the recyclables that come here have some resale value, some simply aren't worth the effort. At the very bottom of the recycling food chain are plastic shopping bags—and the dreaded "trommel snake."
Plastic bags, regardless of whether they're stamped with a recycling symbol, are not welcomed by New York's recycling program, and like most such facilities, Sims can't handle them. The stringy sacks gum up the mechanical sorters known as trommels, causing several work stoppages daily. Workers must then climb into the sorting cylinder and hack away at the trommel snake—a twisted bundle of film plastic as long as 20 feet. It goes into the plant's towering trash heap, part of the 3.8 million tons of plastic film that go to landfills every year. Sims salvages what it can, though a half-ton of dirty plastic bags is worth no more than $20.
New Yorkers use more than 1 billion plastic bags a year; just 1 percent are recycled or resold. (Nationwide, the figure is 9.1 percent.) Last year, both the city and the state started requiring large stores to collect used bags and sell them to reprocessors. But the new laws don't discourage the use of bags and provide no incentive for consumers to bring them in, so most still end up in the trash—or, when well-meaning residents put them in their recycling bins, they wind up feeding the trommel snake.
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Where Plastics Go to Kill
Beware the revenge of the nurdles.
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Plastic. Fantastic?
Can we learn to live with (and even love) plastic?
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Pop Culture Shards From the Trash Heap of History
Memorable garbage from Woodsy to Wall-E.
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Waste Not Want Not
We're burying the planet in garbage. Here's how to dig out.
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Plastic Bags
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I use them to put my trash in. If I didn't I would be putting it in a plastic trash bag! So what's the difference. One is free and one you have to pay for!
trommel snake
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I use old T-shirts from the free bin of a thrift store for trash bags. Tie the neck shut with string, a broken shoe lace or the hem of the shirt. Put it in a 5 gallon bucket. When its full, tie it shut, pull it out of the bucket and put it out by the curb. Throw away less by buying less and refuse the plastic bag. Work to get your municipality to tax thin film bags at 5¢. feed the remains of your vegetables to the chickens, or make compost. Somehow the human race managed to survive for thousands of years with out disposable plastic bags and mounds of trash, we can do it again.
Of course, those thousands
Of course, those thousands of years didn't include population densities of tens of thousands per square kilometer, and billions of people
Charge for the bags
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tagged as:
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When the cost of something is hidden and distributed, it is difficult to control. This is the problem with Carbon pollution; those who driver Hummers don't bear the cost in proportion to the amount of Carbon that they emit.
A tax is the answer. Tax plastic bags and pass the tax on explicitly to the consumer. The consumer should see the cost of the bag on their receipt. If Bloomingdales charged $1 for every plastic bag (with the money to be passed on to independent recycling services) and put that at the top of the receipt in large bold text, even Manhattanites will reduce the number of shopping bags that they discard after 15 minutes.
Plastic Recycling
Hi,
I understand that the whole process of recycling plastic product is very messy but it should not be avoided just for the sake of better environment!
Plastic bags are becoming a great danger for our environment and health these days and they should either be properly taken care of by any means!
wedding dresses
When the economy became a bit less predictable, more women started looking for ways to make their wedding dresses a little less costly. Some women opted to donate their used wedding dresses to other brides-to-be. Others still choose to cherish this garment, saving it for future daughters or granddaughters to wear in their weddings.
The new shop, designer wedding gowns, is almost directly opposite his existing ready-to-wear and couture boutique, at No. 27, which opened in 1984.
The models this week were nine divorcees who were willing to give their designer wedding dresses major makeovers! The designers had to turn old wedding dress into a hip outfit they “can wear in the next chapter of their lives.”
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