I found it particularly disheartening to discover that the place that I have been bringing my recycling materials has essentially reneged on me as far as some of the items they had planned on paying money for recycling. For many months, they have been telling me that they are "gearing up" to be a full-service recycling center and will recycle plastics and cardboard among other things that other centers do not pay money for. I called them yesterday and they said, once again, that they will be recycling plastics "really soon." The last time I called them was in October and they said the same thing. Before that, it was sometime in the springtime. They admitted on the phone that when they do recycle plastics, they would only pay for it in large quantities (something like 3 tons), but they would have drop bins to donate it for free. They also will accept cardboard for free as well.
This was quite a blow to me because I had been saving up plastics for many months now… meticulously removing any metal, rubber or other impurities that could interfere with the recycling process or devalue the material. I have been saving bins, boxes and buckets of scrap plastic for all these months and this stuff has been cluttering our space in my shop, our sheds and even in our kitchen… during the holidays even! It has been a real pain in the butt to save up all this stuff, only to realize that it is essentially worthless to me.
The second option was to take my plastics to the place where I had been taking it: to Relectronics. This is a nonprofit organization that recycles electronic equipment and sells the scrap to various recycling ventures - basically what I have been doing for the past 13 or 14 years or so, only they have access to industries that have more buying power.
So as a means to just get this clutter out of my space, I loaded up our minivan (pretty much to overfilling) with bins, boxes and buckets of scrap plastic for the purpose of just donating it to Relectronics. I got to the place and nobody was there. The shades were drawn and there was a "closed"sign on the windows. It didn't appear that it was just closed for the day though. The loading dock was cleared off and the plastics dumpster was not there anymore. There was a metal recycling dumpster there - probably waiting to be picked up by the local recycling company.
I was NOT going to drive home with that load of plastic. I looked up the number for the garbage dump that also offers recycling of certain items. I asked the woman who answered the phone if they recycled plastics and she said, "We accept plastics that are coded 1-7." In other words, none of this stuff was considered recyclable… or worth recycling. I drove there anyway and dumped the entire load into the bins that go to the landfill and paid… PAID $7.00 to get rid of this stuff… materials that can actually be worth money and worth recycling.
As for the cardboard… I had been saving cardboard for months also, under the speculative hope of being paid for my materials. Recyclables are actually worth money. Apparently, there are no recycling facilities in this area that pay money for them though. What I find ironic is that recently there was a ban placed on plastic bags in a (mostly symbolic) gesture to get people to buy and reuse grocery bags. This ban doesn't even make any sense to those who do a little investigating and thinking beyond the surface.
The garbage dump does accept cardboard free of charge though… however it would be more advantageous for people who are over 7-feet tall to be able to reach the top of the dumpsters.
All my efforts were in vain. All my plastic ended up at the garbage dump anyway. I would have been better off to just be throwing it all in the garbage can all along! So now I am adopting a new attitude: "Just throw it away!" In the end, when it comes to recycling, if it does not pay or if you have to pay to get rid of it, then why bother?
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