By Trey Granger Earth911.com
What’s your impression of plastic? Is it better or worse than other forms of packaging (such as glass, metal and paper), and how did you form this opinion? There is a lot of information distributed throughout the green world about plastic, and not much of it is positive. Before you write this material out of your life, let’s evaluate a few of the common plastic statements to see how true they really are.
Full story
Check out the latest from the Twitter feed here.
Goldhawk Fights Back
Weekdays 11am-1pm. Dump Site 41 is a common topic, among other relevant issues.
Audio archives
If you have any questions or comments, email stopdumpsite41@gmail.com
To be added to our email update list, email mrcinc@interlog.com
Website maintained (NEWS, UPDATES, INFORMATION) by the StopDumpSite41 team. They can be reached at stopdumpsite41@gmail.com. Web site development, design, & illustrations courtesy of Whitney Dewel.
As a former manufacturer of packaging products and somewhat of a recycling pioneer, the answer to plastics is two fold. In reality packaging will never be replaced. Taking our milk jugs to the milk seller as in bygone days is just, bygone days.
The article talks about different resins which are incompatible with each other. That is true but only for the current products being manufactured. What we need to develope are new useful products that could be made from a host of different plastics.
Back in 1974 I was with a company called Campbell Films here in Orillia. We had a visit from a Japanese company who had developed shipping skids made from an assortment of different plastics. While they were heavier than the wooden skids we were using on a one time basis our trials showed them to have excellent durability. Back then we were paying $2.00 per skid, never to be seen again. But unfortunately the powers above me didn’t think that the cost justified their use. Mind you the mind set was not longterm use vs one time use. There was also no thought put into the recycleability of them after their life.
I have never seen where wide use ever became popular and I suppose the Japanese went home and most likely have been using the product themselves. You see back in the 70’s we were still using wood harvested from 50 miles away for skids and even construction so it was cheap.
That is just one item that could have saved millions of tons of plastics from being dumped over the last 35 years. You see their secret was an additive which allowed different plastics to actually bind together. We looked into the feasability of actually manufacturing these skids under license here in Orillia but costs and the fact there was no collection system in play for the large amounts needed was another reason for quashing the idea.
But that was then and now is now. We need to restart our brains in this country and get back to basics. We need to sort as much as possible and put the materials to the highest use possible. But the stuff which goes to the dump we must develpe products that would make use of these materials over and over again. When there is a use the garbage becomes a commodity and commodity has value which increases with demand.
Road construction is an example that these diverse plastics could be used for without any alteration. Why aren’t we doing it? Same reason we didn’t proceed with the plastic skids. The alternative is cheaper and the fact a road with plastic content is superior and will actually last longer gets trumped because in the last 35 years we really haven’t grown any smarter.
We could be mining hundreds of millions of tons of plastics every year. We could be diverting hundreds of million of tons from ever going to landfills in the first place. But it seems there is very little will as long as we look at only today and not the future. Like we did back in 1974.
By the way it was in 1974 that I sold my shares in Campbell Films bought out the recyling equipment they were no longer enthused with and got a contract from them to turn all their scrap into usable resin. You see it seems it was easier for them to have it done off site. Good for me as I prospered while they went into receivership 3 or 4 years later. While I sold my shares in this small but very profitable busineess for $600 per share which was my capital to setup the recycling business my former co-owners got $1 for all their shares in receivership. Who says recycling didn’t or doesn’t pay. But one must have vision and act on it. Now would be a good time for some vision and some action.
jim tolnai
the oil /plastic industry is not in the least interested in people or buinesses recycling or reusing plastic.
they want to sell us new plastic.
and any thing we reuse or recycle is a loss of sales to them
on the brightside,
all that plastic buried in land fills since the 60’s will be waiting for us to reuse, once society remembers we are more than just consumers.
the amount of stuff we are forced to throw away would outrage our grandparents