I suspect that Tompkins County is receiving less income for it's plastics, now that it accepts a wider range. I have even heard that sometimes in some places recycled plastics are crushed and landfilled rather than recycled, because the market for them is so low. It may be that milk /juice/water jugs are easy to separate and sell to China for making PETE products, and that all other plastic gets tossed. I can't imagine anyone is looking at the bottom of every shampoo bottle to see which are made from #2 and which are #3. If hair care product bottles are sold at all, they are probably sold along with #7 as "least valuable mixed plastics."
Anyone from Solid Waste reading this who can fill us in on what happens to hair product bottles from here? There is a wonderful book called "Garbage Land: on the Secret Trail of Trash" that tracks trash and recycling from a household in Brooklyn to its final resting ground--or reuse, as the case may be. Reading it has made me as wary of generating recyclables as I am of generating trash. Here's a review which describes it better than I can: "Garbage Land is excellently written and doggedly researched and reported, and [Elizabeth] Royte is a funny and observant companion." Back to shampoo: even with the above recycling caveat, producing vinyl is as toxic as disposing of it, so we should avoid buying products with vinyl wherever possible. Anyone know of a non-vinyl version of duct tape? I still haven't learned how to live without it. Margaret _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
