Beverage Container Recycling
By Karina | May 18, 2009
I just got back from a 10-day vacation and as always, I’m full of observations about what we encountered on our trip. This time I was motorcycling down to Bike Week in Myrtle Beach SC, and just like last time, I had my eyes peeled for recycling opportunities. However, unlike last time, I failed miserably at finding and using a recycling center. Partly this was because we were on motorcycles – and there just wasn’t any room to carry the bottles and other containers to a recycling center. Partly I couldn’t find one! and y’all know I have an eagle eye for this kind of thing.
This has got me thinking a little – there are so many variations of bottle recycling policies! I’m used to living in the northeast, where you place a deposit on bottles and cans and they are all recycled. You get your nickel (or dime, if you’re in Michigan) back at the grocery store. Actually, New York has just expanded the bottle bill to include juice, iced tea, and water bottles in the deposit-required category.
Many people don’t think that the deposit works, but, well, I know I personally made a lot of cash in high school because no one else wanted to take the bottles down to the grocery store. Many people just chuck their bottles into curbside recycling, however, so it’s hard to measure the success of the bottle bill as compared to all recyclables. According to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, the bottle bill has accomplished the following since it went into effect in 1982:
- reduced roadside litter by 70 percent;
- recycled 90 billion containers, equal to 6 million tons of materials, at no cost to local governments;
- saved more than 52 million barrels of oil; and
- eliminated 200,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.
Plus the Container Recycling Institute says that
- Recycling rate for aluminum beverage cans in deposit states is 80 percent. (This conservative estimate includes cans recovered through the deposit system and through curbside recycling programs which serve 63 percent of the population in the deposit states.)
- The national recycling rate in 1998 was 55 percent and the number of aluminum beverage cans recycled was 56 billion.
I’m sold!
But there are still a lot of states that don’t have bottle deposits (according to wikipedia only 11 states have bottle bills) and in my experience curbside recycling is by municipality and isn’t as widespread as one would think. So, now I’m really curious! As I’ve traveled through the southeast, I’ve noticed that most of the communities there don’t have curbside recycling but usually have recycling centers set up in shopping areas. I am incredibly spoiled because of my location, and recycling has been ultra easy for me since I’ve been old enough to pay attention.
Is there curbside recycling in your community? How do you take care of your waste?
Topics: Waste | 10 Comments »
I know we have decent curbside recycling here in NYC, but I sure wish we had roadside foodscrap pickup, like they do in the Bay Area…
I have lived four places and all have had different ways of doing this but none where the ‘curb side’ deal. So first off in Western Canada in a small town we have a center where you can bring your bottles to get the money back (deposits on bottles and cans in Canada are everywhere). There is no where there to recycle paper, plastics or cans that don’t have a deposit. for a while they recycled paper but it was too expensive to collect it and drive it to a bigger place for bailing and then it is driven to a bigger place for recycling.
So then if you go to the bigger centers in W Can. then you will have again the place that you bring stuff for the deposit (there might only be one or two in town and accessablity by public transport is not a sure thing). Then you have the recycling centres for things like paper, plastic and tins usually in the parking lot of a bigger shopping centre.
Germany is kind of a weird mix. Bring your cans and bottles to the grocery for the deposit. All the rest will be at a recycling ‘centre’. These are scattered around in residential areas so you are never really too far from one.
Sweden is fairly similar to Germany but lately they will also recycle soft plastics which means that if you remove the organics from the waste.. there is really not much that you toss out. They also use a certian amount of the trash which is burnable to create electriciy and hot water in some areas.
North Carolina here, with curbside recycling every 2 weeks. Unless you’re married to my husband who forgot four of these in a row and thus must make trips to the recycling center.
new jersey here … specifically middlesex county where we have curbside every 2 weeks. LOVE IT! however, i learned from our town mailer that not everyone is complying and they are now implementing random garbage checks! seriously, how much easier must they make curbside? *sigh*
bozeman montana here- we don’t have curbside, but we do have a few centers where we can take our recyclables. it’s always an “ugh” but ends up taking about 15 minutes or less (i presort them into severa trash cans as I go so we don’t have to sort at the drop-off). we don’t have glass recycling at all– too expensive/far out, they say, so i am amassing quite the collection of “i know i can do something with this…” bottles and jars. help!
Corinth, Texas – SMALL town northwest of Dallas and Northeast of Ft. Worth. We have curbside every week same day as trash day. They take pretty much everything except plastic bags, aluminum foil and Styrofoam; no separation required. A couple of years ago they upgraded us from the small bin to the big rolling cart woohoo! We take the foil to our local health food store’s recycling center and the plastic bags to another store. of course no one takes the styrofoam, boo
About 8yrs ago, we got a survey in our water bill asking if we would pay an extra $5 for curbside recycling, we said YES!! and i guess a bunch of others said yes, too, because it wasn’t long at all after that they started the service.
I’m in Northern California and we have 2 spots to take items to be paid for recycling or just leave them. The locations are convenient but remember to bring all the bottles in seems to be the hard part…and I save EVERY ONE. If I see someone (usually hard on their luck or elderly) collecting bottles by sorthing through public trash bins I give them everything I have in my car that hasn’t made it to the garage to store…and sit. This definitely makes an impact on my kids, knowing how much more we recycle than throw away, how to help others, and how to get our own money back! Stores don’t pay us but they charge us! So a couple times a year I get a carload down the block. Now I’m looking at reuseable containers and filters so I won’t contribute the plastic bottle situation and my bottle storage will hopefully end ;-) Even our schools are into recycling….FINALLY!!!!
North suburban Houston here: no curbside recycling at all. Bins for paper recycling are in most school and church parking lots, but otherwise recycling is pretty sparse. Our county recycling center thankfully takes almost everything (including electronics), which means that our garage is usually full of stuff that needs to be hauled over there.
In rural Vermont, where my family has a house, the trash gets hauled away by a local guy once a week: you take your garbage down to the pick-up spot and pay him $2 a bag. Years and years ago the Lion’s Club set up a recycling center at the track pick-up spot, and they advertised it by pointing out that recycling means fewer garbage bags to pay for. The whole town has been recycling assiduously for at least 30 years.
[...] Beverage Container Recycling [...]
[...] Beverage Container Recycling [...]