More than half the plastic ever made has been made since the year 2000.
This will not be overly popular here in Alaska. But it really needs to be heard, understood, felt and acted upon. The sooner the better. Read below about what we can and cannot recycle here in FNSB, and then watch a mind-blowing Ted Talk video about some startling facts about plastic.
Plastic is a fossil fuel
Even so, please – bring all of your #1 and #2 bottles and jugs (empty and with caps removed please) to the CRF. Unfortunately we are limited to accepting the types of plastic Westrock Recycling, our downstream processor will accept which, at this time, is Plastic #1 & #2 bottles and jugs. Everything we can keep out of the landfill is worth the effort.
Why do the lids have to be removed?
We aren’t going to refuse any materials which can be recycled – and overly dirty plastic cannot be recycled. There are 3 main reasons we ask you to remove lids from plastic bottles and jugs:
- Bottles and jugs without lids compress better in our balers – The CRF currently uses two, single piston vertical balers to process all of the cardboard, paper, aluminum and plastic we receive. One of the balers is dedicated almost exclusively to cardboard. Removing lids from the plastic bottles and jugs helps the process go quicker so we can move on to other materials. It also helps make sure the bales don’t come apart when being removed, and allows us to compress higher density bales than if the bottles had lids on them. Think about the difference between squeezing a water bottle in your hands with the lid on vs. with the the lid off – it works the same in our balers – less energy required for better compression results.
- Lids are not always the same type of plastic as the container from which they came – Our downstream recycler has specific guidelines for the materials they are willing to accept and ship in from Fairbanks. Since many (even most) bottle and jug lids are made from different plastic than the containers they came from, the lids often count against our “contaminant” quota (the amount of material other than the specific type of plastic expected).
- Open bottles and jugs are more likely to be empty – our CRF is currently operating in a retrofit of a UAF warehouse. There are no floor drains in the facility – not even under the balers. This means that there is much manual labor required to clean up any leakage from “leftover” contents coming from bottles and jugs which still had lids.
But what about the bottles that say the lid is recyclable?
While some lids may be made of recyclable material, they are still not necessarily the same material as the bottle from which they came. Additionally, figuring out which are and are not “recyclable” in the context of our downstream recycler’s requirements is not practical in our labor-intensive and fully manual sorting and baling operation. For this reason – for now at least – we ask you to remove the lids from the bottles. Again – we will not refuse bottles with lids on them – we would much rather have to deal with them ourselves than bury them in the landfill – a cost that is both environmental and financial.
Now prepare to have your mind blown::
Want to get involved? How about joining a committee or volunteering with us?