Demystifying the Magic of Recycling
Filed Under: Food and Drink
 In my mind, recycling goes like this: a truck comes to pick up the bags I leave on the curb, then takes them to a big factory with a giant door. The giant door opens, and a big shovel scoops up all the bags of recycled things and tosses them into the building, which is basically a giant oven, and all the plastics melt down into a big pool of liquid plastic that runs out the back of the factory, where people are reaching into the liquid plastic to make new plastic bottles, the end.
But actually, Slate walks us through it:
When loads of plastic are dumped on a recycling facility's floor, the
sorting fun begins. Workers often start by picking through the piles in
search of obviously discordant items—kiddie play sets, lawn furniture,
clothing mannequins. They also scan for plastic mounds that are
drenched in nonrecyclable trash, such as food slurries or medical
waste. While a little caked-on tomato sauce isn't going to ruin a batch
of PET bottles, a Dumpster's worth of nonrecyclable garbage will; if a
large apartment building was careless about separating its rubbish,
then hundreds of pounds of plastics may have to be sent to the
landfill. According to a 2005 Environmental Protection Agency study in
the Pacific Northwest, 24 percent of plastic bottles were rejected as
too contaminated for recycling.
OK maybe taken out of context that paragraph is boring, but the rest of the article--about what normal things can and can't be recycled (yogurt containers no, detergent bottles yes)--is really interesting. I've also been operating under the belief, given to me by my nieces after their 5th grade recycling seminar or whatever, that if a plastic has one drop of food stuff on it, that when it's recycled that they'll just throw it away, directly into the butt of a seal. But I guess that's not the case. Now I know. I recommend that article.
Also, here's a guide to what's recyclable in NYC. Lots of hot secrets.
| 
