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Houston Expands Curbside Recycling Program


Jesse

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Yeah.. many friends in Woodland Heights and south of us got their nice big cans.. grr.. We are constantly overflowing our "bin" by about 4 times and have to take our glass to the Center St recycling place.. We're going to dump all our crap in our friends' bins now.. :P

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Apologies for hijacking a Heights post, but I think this speaks in broader terms as to the criteria the city applies. I live two blocks north of Alabama, below which the program is in effect, at least in areas adjacent to Woodhead. I don't begrudge any neighbourhood the containers at all - but maybe if we stopped recycling or something we'd get them.

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^^^Same here. Thankfully, we are getting ours something this week. Hopefully.

We're on the wrong side of Heights and won't be getting our right-sized bins anytime soon (since there is "no timetable for expanding the program"). My car will continue to smell like wet cardboard from weekly runs to the recycle center...

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I was looking over some of the program points and what should and shouldn't be placed in the green containers. UGH.

We can put paper napkins, paper plates, or paper cups in them. We can put plastic bags in them either. That seems like a lot to leave out... ugh.

Something about the plastic bags jam the machines? Come on....

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I was looking over some of the program points and what should and shouldn't be placed in the green containers. UGH.

We can put paper napkins, paper plates, or paper cups in them. We can put plastic bags in them either. That seems like a lot to leave out... ugh.

Something about the plastic bags jam the machines? Come on....

The 't after "can" is a lot to leave out when you want to make a coherent point.

Those things aren't easily recycled I guess. Plastic bags I get, it would take a huge amount to get any mass of material to work with. Paper cups and plates, maybe it's because of the wax they put on it. That wouldn't play well when trying to smash back into pulp.

Edited by 20thStDad
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Yeah sorry about that. :) My blood pressure was through the roof when I tiped that out.

I'm unsure how they are recycling them but it seems that somewhere in the process heat would be involved. Lots of it. Enough to kill any "contamination". And I dont buy the plastic bag thing either. I'll have to some digging around.

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If you consider that this takes an extra trash truck, the fuel and resources used to manufacture that truck, the fuel used by the driver to get to work, the fuel for the trash truck......does the recycling effort help the environment or is it a feel good thing?

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I was looking over some of the program points and what should and shouldn't be placed in the green containers. UGH.

We can put paper napkins, paper plates, or paper cups in them. We can put plastic bags in them either. That seems like a lot to leave out... ugh.

Something about the plastic bags jam the machines? Come on....

My understanding is that paper plates and napkins tend to be contaminated by greases and oils from food, and this would gum up machinery used to reprocess the materials.

If you consider that this takes an extra trash truck, the fuel and resources used to manufacture that truck, the fuel used by the driver to get to work, the fuel for the trash truck......does the recycling effort help the environment or is it a feel good thing?

Wouldn't all the rubbish require additional trash trucks, fuel, and resources to haul away regardless of the destination?

BTW, internet search is your friend. According to environmental consultant Jeffrey Morris, "it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu." The article goes on to suggest that recycling efficiency depends on the material, but recycling is generally far more efficient than gathering and processing from raw materials.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/recycling/4291566-2

Edited by barracuda
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If you consider that this takes an extra trash truck, the fuel and resources used to manufacture that truck, the fuel used by the driver to get to work, the fuel for the trash truck......does the recycling effort help the environment or is it a feel good thing?

gotta remember what recycling is. recycling is part of conservation, which is great for the environment. there are 3 parts of conservation, of which recycling is the last one (not least important, but the last one in the process), reduce, reuse, recycle.

the whole point of conservation is two fold.

1. if a person follows the 3 "Rs" of conservation, the waste products that go into landfills will be less.

2. the amount of raw materials needed per person will be less.

so conservation is more about saving the environment from a perspective of not needing as much raw materials from the Earth, and not needing to then return as much of the waste to the Earth in the form of trash in a landfill.

with this in mind, you'd have to compare the raw materials that are used in the entire process of recycling, vs the number of raw materials that don't have to be used because of the process of recycling.

really, unless the costs are being subsidized really heavily, they wouldn't want to do it unless they were able to turn a profit, and I would assume in order to turn a profit, there has to be less being used to make the process work than there is being made as a result of the process.

Anyway, conservation only really works if you follow all 3 of the steps, and not just recycle. it sucks, cause from what I can tell, the first 2 reduce and reuse are almost ignored, but then reduce goes against the way our economy runs, so I can see why that one is easily overlooked.

sorry for the tangent and greenway of my post, I'm just a real fan of conservation overall, to get on the subject of the big green cans (heh, martian ladies, hello!) my neighborhood was part of the pilot, and I don't have a lot of waste overall, but I find that a lot of stuff that would have normally gone to the landfill goes into the recycle bin, and I like that.

TL:DR version...

when you recycle, you not only have to think about the stuff used to do the deed of recycling, but you have to think about the stuff you don't use by not having to get rid of the trash, or on the front side of the raw material chain, through recycling you now have processed materials that are ready for use to make stuff that someone doesn't have to create from raw materials from the ground. recycling's a win win on both sides of the coin.

Edited by samagon
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Most grocery stores have recycle bins for plastic bags, dry cleaner bags, shrink wrap -- the thin, filmy kind of plastic that doesn't go in the curbside cans.

Yep. Im unsure why they make it so tedious though. One bin... for ALL recyclables. ALL OF THEM.

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Yep. Im unsure why they make it so tedious though. One bin... for ALL recyclables. ALL OF THEM.

it's probably got something to do with ease of separating the different types of recyclable materials.

I wish they took Styrofoam, but I think they don't allow it for the same reasons, ease of separation.

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  • The title was changed to Houston Expands Curbside Recycling Program

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