Gatineau Residents Will Get Fined for Not Recycling

Consumers Criminalized - Garbage Producers Empowered...

You could see this coming a mile away. Bigger and bigger conglomerates compete for recycling tonnage and contracts. Negotiations with municipalities get hot 'n' heavy. Conditions and quotas come into play. Recycling trucks race around in early mornings and on weekends to make sure someone doesn't actually pick up some of this stuff and re-use it...

Don't get me wrong. Recycling is a wonderful thing.

But how about running our municipalities with a little sanity and humanity?

The fact is that any amount of the recycling on the curb is there as a result of excessive, unnecessary and impractical packaging being used for the unnecessary goods we consume. So let's not put the cart in front of the horse here. Step one is to reduce packaging, not criminalize consumers.

But rather than call for laws against gratuitous and excessive packaging, like individually wrapping every frickin' cookie one-by-one or two-by-two in the box, consumers need to create a market for products that are well and appropriately packaged.

As for municipalities, here are some suggestions:

1. Think outside the box to promote re-use of materials (like a reusable box depot)
2. Provide more detailed information on how to prepare recyclables
3. Refuse to be dictated to by multinational recycling conglomerates
4. Encourage farmer's markets, shop local and other activities that reduce packaging, storage and transport

Japan Laws Target Homeless, Outlaw Collecting Cans, Bottles,

New by-laws appearing to target homeless street people in numerous wards of Tokyo and other Japanese cities have criminalized any removal of recyclables left at designated refuse locations.

On Oct. 1 a new regulation went into effect in the ward that makes it illegal for anyone except agents authorized to do so by the ward government to remove recyclables left at designated refuse locations. The ostensible reason for this law is to prevent removal companies that do not have contracts with Sumida Ward from taking recyclables such as cans, bottles and newspapers.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

These measures are just wrong on so many levels. First of all, the first objective of recycling should be to reuse, not to recyle. Reuse is far more efficient that recycling. So, if it is impossible to remove any item that is ever deposited at a refuse point, how can any item ever be reused? It is flat-out crazy prohibit that.

It is unclear based on the information available whether some or any of the aluminum cans the homeless in Japan collect have a deposit. Apparently not.

As it was before these laws came into effect, the homeless in Japan would have needed to work a full day bringing in piles of cans to collect maybe $25 worth of aluminum for scrap. Obviously it would be an exercise in futility for a homeless person to rely on cans found in random places. So, in effect, this law also puts an end to homeless people collecting litter, with obvious impacts on the environment and added costs to municipalities for cleaning.

What the Japanese need to do, if they wish to ensure that certain recycling companies do not infringe on other recycling companies contract territories, is construct a law accordingly. Organized collection by truck, from other companies' contracted recycling locations, is theft, pure and simple.

The work that homeless people do and the initiatives shown by those on the bottom rungs of society are practices to be nurtured, not nuked. If there is some way to turn it around to give these people an entree back into a life of self-respect and modest attainments, so much the better. Otherwise, just leave them alone.

What is the cost to clean recycling - how much time, energy and water is used?

Here is a question that we do not readily find an answer for on the net:

What is the cost to clean recycling - how much time, energy and water is used?

Obviously these questions have been analyzed to death by the recycling business, at least from the perspective of what is sorted, cleaned and recycled under their roofs. To a lesser extent, municipalities also review all sorts of benchmarks

But what about the portion of the job that is handled domestically? Neither the recycling industry, nor municipalities, are overly concerned with the amount of time, energy and resources that go into cleaning recycling in the home.

I haven't been able to find any information on this on the internet.

It brings up another question: Is it better to clean containers being recycled thoroughly, superficially or not at all?

I have often noticed that some people put  their recycling out super clean, super neat and sorted to the nth degree. Now, our area has gone to the large "unsorted" recycling bins. So, sorting is obviously more efficiently handled at the processing plant.

What about cleaning the containers with food waste in them?

If left to dry out, does this waste present a huge problem? Or is the water, energy and time we expend in the home to clean one container a complete waste? Or worse?

Of course the recycler can be marginally more profitable if all the containers coming in are pre-cleaned. But at what cost?

What do people use? 500 ml of cold water to clean each tin, or a gallon of hot water? Has this been researched?

So, say there are approximately 13 million households in Canada. Say each household turns on the tap an average of twice per day - once hot, once cold - to rinse out recycle items. And let's say each time the tap is turned on the average usage is one liter. OK, that would be 13 million liters each of cold and hot water per day. It has been calculated that it takes approximately 150 kj to heat a liter of water by 25C. So, if these numbers are anywhere near correct, then each day 26 million liters of water are used in homes to rinse out recycling - and 1.95, or you might as well say 2 billion, kilojoules of energy are used to heat the water. Because I'm just guessing about everything, I'm not going to bother figuring out how to relate 2 billion kjs to anything. But you may be curious enough to put a value amount on 26 million liters. Here's one view on it... Halifax charges $2 for a cubic meter (m3 = 1000 liters) of water at a bulk fill station. So 26 million liters would go for $52,000.

What does this all mean? I don't know but, any way you look at it, there is a cost factor to in home recycling preparation.

I would like to follow up on this in the future.