An inconvenient truth of being green

I was an avid re-cyclist, till about two months ago. I would diligently put all that is recyclable in the recycle bins. I recycled plastic and glass bottles, plastic bags, milk and juice containers, soda cans, paper, batteries and even used electronics like cellphones. I did this for almost 4 years. And something happened that altered my behavior.

My previous residence of three years had a huge recycle container and a regular trash collector very nearby. It took care of recycling the bulky items - soda cans, plastic and glass bottles. The paper and electronics were recycled at my wife's workplace which was close by and I delegated them to her. The only item requiring a little extra effort were the thin plastic grocery bags. I took them to a grocery store nearby that had containers for recylcing them. So it worked well for me while I lived there.

About six months ago, I moved to my current location. For all the grandeur of my current rental place, it does not have any recycling containers. The residents are left to device plans for themselves to recycle stuff. The weather was fine and dandy in fall. I found a school nearby that accepted plastic and glass recyclables. The plastic bags were taken to a local grocery store or Wal-Mart. I had to take the paper, like magazines, newspaper, junk mail etc, to my work place as my wives work did not have paper recycle containers at her new job. That was extra task I had to take up on myself but I felt good about do taking the extra step.

Things took a different turn with the onset of winter. I only ventured out if I absolutely had to. Now the recycle project became a hassle. It was causing a lot of inconvenience for a morally right thing to-do with questionable good. I was emitting carbon with my extra miles driving while trying to reduce carbon footprint. I was taking an extra trip to the local school, to the local grocery store or Wal-Mart for recycling. Recycling plastic bags has been the most trouble I had with recycling. Most places including Wal-Mart are highly inconsistent in their plastic bag recycling policies. Some places do and some do not have the containers to leave your plastic bags for recycling. A place that had the recycle receptacles today may not have them the next time you visit them. This inconsistency lead me to take extra trips to multiple places just to recycle plastic bags. I was driving a ton heavy car about 5-10 miles a trip to recycle couple pounds(if at all) of plastic bags.

Similar but a slightly different picture comes into play with the remaining - glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminium/plastic cans. Since these are bulky and I own a rental place without a backyard, they ended up piling in our small kitchen. Some like milk cartons smell really bad, if you forget to rinse off the remaining contents and thereby got me into trouble at home. My kid started playing with them and managed to open some of these bottles spilling the few drops left inside on the floor. I had to clean the floor and I hate mopping floors. Of course the hazard of my kid drinking the expired contents and putting the lids in her mouth exists. But those are trivial collateral damages for having a high moral ground. Unwanted cleaning of course is an inconvenience I cannot tolerate.

As always, this experience of mine, lead to a larger question. Is recycling worth the effort? Lets break it down.
Plastic bottles - First you have to remove the caps. The caps are usually made of different plastic and most times are not accepted for recycling. If you don't remove the lids, the odds that an employee at the recycling factory would throw the bottle away are very high. It is more work for the average Joe at the factory and he/she is not going to waste his time of separating the lids of every bottle. He is just going to throw the bottle away and it defeats the purpose of recycling. So might as well remove the lids. Then you need to rinse the bottles before recycling because the residue left can contaminate other plastic, thereby preventing your plastic from being fully recycled. You think you are done here. Well not yet; It is highly recommended that you crush the plastic bottles before you recycle for save space in the recycle bins/containers. From NPR, more on plastic recycling - For Empty Water Bottles, There's an Afterlife.

Paper - The paper recycling has it's own problems. The important being your identity. If you accidentally discarded an important document like a credit card bill or a bank statement, you risk identity theft. So you have to separate the sensitive documents from regular ones. The sensitive documents will have to be shredded and the rest could be dumped in recycle bins. Sometimes shredding alone doesn't prevent identity theft. Some smart folks could recover your shredded material and piece them together to gather information about you. So due diligence is required.

I have already listed the issues with thin plastic bags - inconsistent collection facilities.

Electronic Waste - one would think you did a good job by recycling your electronic waste. Most electronic waste recyclers will ship the waste to emerging countries like China, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc where they are valuable metal is extracted out of them. The metals are scavenged by workers with no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. Please refer to this link - After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?, for more information. Not only is electronic waste hazardous, it can also cause identity theft if not cleaned up properly before recycling. In certain parts of Africa rogues can purchase unwiped hard drives for $25 - $300. Needless to say these hard-drives can contain a lifetimes worth of data - sensitive and personal.

The bigger issue however is finding a responsible recycler who does due diligence in providing safe environment for the workers and also does the recycling in a responsible manner. Currently it is not very economical for recyclers without heavy support(subsidies/tax incentives etc) from the government. Follow this link from December 2008, when everything on earth was down - Falling Prices Take Toll On Municipal Recycling. In conditions like that the economics of recycling is a not very promising. Dream of every recycling enthusiast is "Zero Waste" and getting to zero waste with recycling is only possible by making going greener more profitable - Beyond Recycling: Getting to 'Zero Waste'.

So, with all the inconveniences of recycling, I am not surprised that most folks don't recycle. Unless these inconveniences are removed, unless it becomes much more easier to recycle, no amount of promotions in the media can help increase interest in recycling among our fellow citizens. Also recycling has got to be profitable for recyclers.

As for me, I will wait out this terrible winter to get back into recycling rigorously. I have the above valid reasons to excuse myself till it is more convenient for me to recycle more.