When I decided to look into my waste as my Free Inquiry, one of the first things on my mind was my recycling. Particularly I wanted to know: Does what I put into my blue bins actually get properly recycled? Or, does it just go to the landfill anyway?
I originally got spooked upon my first Google search when I saw a stat from America that say that only 60-80% of what we put in the recycling actually gets recycled. I was of course relieved to find out that in British Columbia our numbers are a lot better than that, with about 90% of what we put in the recycling ending up being recycled. The same article discusses how factors such as contaminated products and non-recyclable goods in the recycling account for most of the lost 10%.
Ranking the Recyclables
To understand the recycling process I read a few different articles and websites, focusing on paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum. Across all of them, the consensus was that aluminum is least of all evils because it has very high recycle rates and can be recycled an infinite number of times. With glass and paper, the can be recycled multiple times, but the paper often becomes soiled and the glass often breaks. The glass containers have a high carbon footprint to originally be made, but are more reusable and recyclable than plastic. Plastic is the worst of all, because very few people actually recycle their plastic, plastic can only be recycled one or two times before being downcycled, and it is difficult for governments to get people to buy their plastic recycling.
Local Resources
Next, I wanted to double-check some assumptions I had about what can or can’t be recycled. One of the first thing I found from the CRD’s (Capital Regional District) website was a link to the game Ready, Set, Sort! which can help people to understand what can and cannot go in the recycling. While I didn’t really learn anything new by playing the game, I think it would be a great resource to use with kids.
Something I did find more interesting was that Recycle BC has posted it newly accepted items as of January 2023. this includes some items that I previously may have just through out, like plastic utensils, aluminum foil pie plates, and bubble wrap!
Finally, I did a double check of my apartment building’s recycling program and was shocked to find out that they dump all of the glass in the glass bin into the garbage and send it to the landfill. I’ll be contacting my building managed and dropping my glass off at the recycled depot myself until that shameful, corporate greed behavior can be fixed.