Living Like Ed

by Ed Begley, Jr.

  For example, the city of Napa, California, estimates that urban miners—they call them thieves—“ steal” as much as half a million dollars’ worth of cans and deposit bottles a year. So they urge residents and business owners to call a nonemergency hotline if they spot people going through their recycling bins. In Los Angeles County, you’re supposed to call the sheriff’s department, so these scavengers can be fined or even serve jail time.

  Though I would not condone fines or jail terms for homeless folks trying to make a buck, I would suggest finding ways to make every recycling program more efficient and more cost effective.

  SORTING YOUR TRASH

  Whether or not your city has a curbside recycling program, you’re still going to need to sort your trash. Even cities that don’t have a curbside program usually have neighborhood drop-off locations where you can bring your recyclables. If you live in an apartment or a condo that doesn’t have recycling bins, you can do the same. No matter how your trash gets to the recycling facility, the first step is always the same: sorting.

  In many cities, it’s been made pretty easy. The Department of Sanitation issues different-colored bins. In Los Angeles we have three:

  • Black is for stuff that goes to the landfill.

  • Green is for yard waste.

  • Blue is for recycling.

  We’re lucky in that we can put most of our recyclable stuff in one bin, including several different kinds of plastic, aluminum cans, glass, even mixed paper. That’s a lot of stuff. My blue bin is always topped off with recyclable materials.

  In Brooklyn, New York, on the other hand, paper for recycling gets its own separate bin and pickup, while mixed glass, metal, and plastic go in another, and yard waste is not recycled at all except at certain designated times of the year. So it’s important to check the local regulations carefully, and put only the items in your recycling bins that are designated on your bin or in the materials list issued by your municipality. You don’t want to put things in there that shouldn’t go there. Nor do you want to put in anything that’s dirty—no cat food cans with cat food still inside—because it contaminates other materials. Putting the wrong stuff in the recycling bin just creates extra work, since the people at the recycling center wind up throwing that stuff away. You’re literally making them spend more money to pick up and transport your trash, which makes a mess of the recycling program. So don’t put stuff in the recycling bin that’s not supposed to go there.

  Nearly everything can be recycled, even Styrofoam.

  As for the green bins, every week I have one or two filled with yard waste. The city does two things with all that stuff. One is a really good form of recycling; the other is only kind of recycling.

  The good thing they do is they make something called L.A. Grow, a soil amendment. The plant material is put in a big drum grinder, and ground up and mixed with other things to make this very beneficial mulch, which is made available to L.A. residents.

  Another way yard waste is used is not really recycling but it’s still a fine use of this stuff at the landfill. Each time they lay out a layer of garbage, they cover it with a layer of green sediment. Another layer of garbage, another layer of green sediment. Otherwise, you just have rotting garbage and sea-gulls and a real mess, with the stench and the possibility of disease. Rather than waste good topsoil to cover each layer of garbage, which is what land-fills used to do, now they can use green waste.

  What can’t go into my compost bin gets chopped up and put in the green trash bin.

  Of course, I don’t put everything that can go in the green bin into the green bin. I recycle most of my own green waste—grass clippings, yard waste, and also table scraps—into compost (more on that in Chapter 5, “In the Garden and Kitchen”). So my green bins get stuff put in them only when it’s not compostable, things I can’t take a machete to and chop up. Even so, I fill one or two green bins with stuff every week, because it’s a big property with lots of drought-tolerant plants and lots of shrubby stuff—things with thick branches and stalks that I can’t compost.

  What about the black bin, the stuff that goes to the landfill? On a weekly basis my black bin is usually one-eighth to one-quarter full. It’s never even half filled. There’s just not a lot of trash to be thrown out in this house. When I was single, there was even less—so little it would fit in my car’s glove compartment! Now that there are more people with different habits living in the house, we do produce more trash, but still, we send very little to the landfill.

  So what goes in our black bin? Things that simply cannot be recycled, like used kitty litter. You can’t recycle or compost that. There also comes a point where you’ve gotta throw some things away. Things that Freecycle won’t even take. When you’ve got a vegan tennis shoe that is tattered and the heel has come off and you’ve reglued it several times and it’s now torn, nobody wants that. If you give this stuff to Goodwill, you’re just making them work to throw your stuff away; they’ve got to pick it up and then pay the trash disposal cost to get rid of it. So be honest about what can be reused. Still, you’ll find—as I have—that most things you want to get rid of have some value to someone. Empty soup cans, glass jars from pasta sauce, yesterday’s newspaper—they all have value. So now let’s look at these different kinds of materials and see how they can be recycled.

  RECYCLING METAL

  Obviously, there are many different kinds of metal—aluminum, steel, copper, gold, to name just a few—and most of them can be recycled.

  You likely will have lots of aluminum to recycle, since 99 percent of all beer cans and 97 percent of all soft drink cans are made of aluminum.

  Now, you may not want to put those cans in your curbside recycling bin, because many states offer a cash value for those empty cans. They’re not really paying you, of course; they’re just refunding your money. They charge something like a 5¢ deposit for each can when you buy a six-pack or a twelve-pack. Then when you bring the empty cans back, they refund your deposit. Either way—whether you collect the cash or throw the cans into your curbside recycling bin so your city can collect the cash—those aluminum cans will get recycled.

  Fortunately, aluminum is easy to recycle. You don’t have to remove any labels. You just rinse out the cans. When it’s recycled, aluminum gets processed at such a high temperature that it easily eliminates contaminants. You rinse the stuff primarily to prevent odors and make life easier on all the people who have to touch that can after you’re done with it—the people who sort all the stuff that goes in the recycling bin, and then later, the people at the plant that recycles the aluminum.

  Where does that aluminum get reused? To make more cans, mostly.

  What about steel? Believe it or not, more steel gets recycled each year than all other materials combined, including paper. This is due in part to the fact that you can attract steel with a magnet. So it’s easy to sort it out when it’s mixed in with other materials. Steel can be salvaged fairly easily even if it’s mixed in with construction debris or debris from a demolished building. It might come out of a junked car or an old appliance.

  Recycling that steel not only keeps it from going to a landfill, but also saves energy and natural resources. Every ton of steel that gets recycled reduces the need for 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal, and 120 pounds of limestone.

  So what kinds of metal can go into curbside recycling bins? Obviously aluminum cans. Also other common household stuff, like clean aluminum foil, pie tins, tin cans, and jar lids (which should be put in separately from the jars).

  If you have metal trash that can’t go in your curbside recycling bin—anything from an old screen door to a cast-iron skillet—there are other recycling resources. There are scrap-metal yards all over the country, places that will even give you a little cash based on the quantity of the metal you bring in. Even precious metals like gold and silver can be recycled. They can literally be melted down to make new jewelry or new coins or what have you.

  RECYCLIN
G GLASS

  Glass is one of the easiest materials to recycle. Every single glass food and drink container you get can be recycled. It may not be as valuable as aluminum, but it’s still well worth the effort.

  Again, you don’t even have to remove the labels before you recycle glass containers. Just rinse them out. The high-temperature processing will remove any contaminants.

  The important point about glass is that some types cannot be mixed together. You can’t mix glass bottles with windows—car windows or building windows—or mirrors or glass dishes or drinking glasses or things like Pyrex kitchen bowls. You have to keep ceramic stuff separate, too, since it will contaminate glass. For the most part, that means you can put only glass bottles and jars in your curbside recycling bin.

  What happens to the glass you send off for recycling? Odds are you will wind up buying it again. Most of the glass recycled in the United States gets used in new glass containers, though some of it is used to make fiberglass, too.

  RECYCLING PLASTICS

  When it comes to plastic, Ed knows more than anybody. There are seven different kinds of plastic, designated by seven different recycling numbers. I marvel at Ed’s ability to retain all those numbers and what they mean.

  All I know is they put a recycling symbol on the bottom of all plastic stuff. In the middle of the symbol is a number. That number tells you if the thing can be recycled or not. I always have to turn things over and look at the number—and then ask Ed to figure out if it can go in the recycling bin.

  We have blue bins for recycling and I think you can only put no. 1 and 2 plastic in the bins. I think no. 5 is not good, but maybe it’s 6. I just can’t remember.

  In a city like L.A., until very recently, you could put only two kinds of plastic in the blue recycling bin, no. 1 and no. 2. You couldn’t put no. 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7plastic into the bin, but you still could recycle some of them.

  The only things you couldn’t recycle in this house were those made of resins no. 3 and no. 5. The plastics industry would say it’s all recyclable, and I’m sure it is, but I don’t live near a processing plant that takes it. Your town might have different guidelines (or other facilities). You can find out more from your local municipality or from the community relations people at factories in your area.

  THE SEVEN KINDS OF PLASTIC

  * * *

  No. 1 Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) This kind of plastic is used to make things like 2-liter soda bottles, boil-in the-bag pouches for frozen foods, and microwave food trays.

  No. 2 High-density polyethylene (HDPE) This denotes stuff like laundry detergent bottles and motor oil bottles, milk jugs, aspirin bottles—that kind of thicker plastic.

  No. 3 Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) This is clear food and nonfood packaging, including cooking oil bottles, medical tubing, wire, cable insulation, etc.

  No. 4 Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) This includes dry-cleaning bags, bread bags, frozen-food bags, the plastic wrap that you use to cover food, the bags you pull off the roll in the grocery store’s produce department, and also certain squeezable bottles, like for mustard.

  No. 5 Polypropylene (PP) This kind of plastic is used for certain medicine bottles, tough plastics that resist heat and moisture. It’s also used for yogurt containers, shampoo bottles, straws, margarine tubs, and syrup bottles.

  No. 6 Polystyrene (PS) This is actually plastic foam, better known as Styrofoam. It is used for grocery store meat trays, egg cartons, plastic plates, cups used for hot drinks, plastic cutlery, fast-food clamshell containers.

  No. 7 Other Code 7 indicates a plastic made with a resin that’s not one of these other six codes, or a plastic made from more than one individual resin.

  * * *

  Because I couldn’t recycle them, I avoided 3 and 5 plastics when possible. I looked at an item before I bought it and if it had a 3 or a 5 on the bottom, I would see if I could get the same product that wasn’t packaged in a no. 3 or no. 5 resin. Unfortunately, there’re certain things that come in 3 and 5 only and they’re products that you need, so you buy them.

  There’s another reason I tend to avoid no. 3 resin. PVC is one of the least environmentally friendly materials around. People have actually gone so far as to call it evil, and not without reason. I’ll let my friend Josh Bradley from 360 Interchange tell you more about PVC, and about a new material called ecoFoam, which in many cases can replace no. 3 resin.

  * * *

  Ed’s Green Friend: ecoFoam

  PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is one of the most ubiquitous and most destructive materials made by man. It’s also one of the most versatile plastics.

  * * *

  We interact with PVC almost every minute of every day. When you start your day, you’re likely having your first contact with PVC, since it can be used in mattresses, pillows, pillow covers, and mattress covers. Your contact with this plastic continues as you walk across the carpet to the bathroom, where you pull back the shower curtain and water flows through PVC piping. Then you walk on a vinyl floor in the kitchen, where you reach into the refrigerator and pull out food wrapped in plastic for breakfast. On your way out the door, you stop to pick up some of your children’s toys, then slide onto your car’s vinyl seat and prepare to drive away while enjoying that “new car” smell. After work, you come home to water your lawn with your garden hose or your sprinklers, then relax in the plastic patio furniture.

  PVC is all around us because of its versatility, ease of assembly, and low cost, but at what price to our health and environment?

  The production of PVC creates vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and hydrogen chloride (HCl), both of which have been linked to dramatic health issues, including liver cancer, respiratory damage, failure of the circulatory system, and death. Equally dangerous are the plasticizers used to make PVC more flexible for many of the products we use. These additives, called phthalates, help to create everything from the soft plastic toys that your children play with to the IV bags that provide vital fluids in the hospital. An EPA website lists more than 190 articles on the potential hazards of phthalates. Many places, including Japan and the European Union countries, have banned the use of some phthalates because of their impact on children’s health and their tendency to leach into the water system.

  Throughout the entire life cycle of products made from PVC, we find damage to health and the environment. PVC is not degradable, it’s difficult to recycle, and it releases toxic fumes when burned. That means the 7 billion pounds of waste per year—and the 300 billion pounds of PVC nearing the end of its useful life—have all the makings of an environmental catastrophe.

  Seventy percent of this waste comes from homes. We have the power to buy products made from less damaging, more easily recyclable plastics—and from more traditional materials, such as wood, glass, and natural fibers.

  Plus, a new material called ecoFoam can replace PVC for most applications, without the harm to our bodies and our environment. Though still a petroleum-based product, ecoFoam uses no heavy metals in production. It contains no chlorine or phthalates. And it does not outgas toxic fumes. Additionally, the material is photodegradable and recyclable, so many generations of products can be made from the same amount of original material.

  EcoFoam can take a variety of forms, from a soft foam to a more dense, rubberlike foam, as well as a material that can replace vinyl, making it nearly as versatile as PVC. Also, ecoFoam’s lightweight, closed-cell construction makes it resistant to moisture absorption, and it can be formulated to dampen sound and vibration. It also can be combined with other materials to increase strength—even laminated onto fabrics. And in most cases, ecoFoam can replace PVC with little to no effect on manufacturing processes, which makes it a logical next step in removing PVC from our daily lives.

  —Josh Bradley

  * * *

  So that’s PVC, which is no. 3 plastic. And then there’s no. 6 plastic, better known as Styrofoam. I certainly do not buy Styrofoam in any form. But whether you buy it or not, you’re
going to get some Styrofoam. If someone sends me something with Styrofoam packing material in the box, I am never going to throw it away. I’ll reuse it as a packing material or take it to a recycling program.

  The plastic industry claims—and I take them at their word—that they want people to recycle Styrofoam, and so they take these things back in cities across the nation. It should be easy to do a Google search and find a place in your area that accepts Styrofoam. So before I could throw it in the blue bin, I would save no. 6 plastic. Rachelle and I even have friends who would bring their Styrofoam to our house. And then I took it to a place in the City of Commerce called Free Flow Packaging two or three times a year.

  And there’s other stuff that supposedly cannot be recycled, like plastic bags. You can’t put them in most cities’ recycling bin. But there are dry cleaners and markets that will take plastic bags back. You just have to do a little research and a little legwork.

  RECYCLING PAPER

  There’re all kinds of paper: white office paper, notebook paper, paper napkins, paper towels, milk cartons, newspapers, magazines, catalogs, paper shopping bags, junk mail, toilet paper rolls, telephone books, corrugated card-board boxes used for shipping, chipped cardboard boxes such as cereal boxes. And most of that paper can be recycled. Most of it is also accepted by cities’ curbside recycling programs.