Category: Environmental

From car parts to trash carts to pop bottles: Recycled plastics have a number of uses.

This story was originally published on the Detroit Free Press.

Essentially, everything you need to know about recycling a piece of household plastic you learned in elementary school.

“While it’s possible to find a new use for virtually all plastics, several factors can affect an individual type’s recyclability,” said Matt Flechter, recycling market development specialist with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).

Most important, he explains, is to recognize the item’s shape.

“Containers such as shampoo bottles, milk jugs and yogurt cups or similar food tubs are the easiest to recycle and are in highest demand by recycling centers and U.S. manufacturers,” Flechter said.

The bottom line for Michigan households, he said, is to follow the advice EGLE is stressing in its new “Know It Before You Throw It” recycling education campaign: “Ask your local recycling provider what kinds of plastics it accepts and make sure to put only those in your recycling container,” Flechter said.

The shape of things to come

But while shape and size primarily determine what ultimately happens to the item after it’s thrown in a recycling bin – and even whether people should put it there in the first place – basic numbers remain part of the story.

Many consumers believe the little digit surrounded by the recycling symbol found on each plastic container indicates that the bottle or container is recyclable.

“What many people don’t realize is that those numbers merely represent the type of resin the piece of plastic is made of,” Flechter said. “They were never intended to provide recycling direction, although that’s what people have come to believe over the years.”

In fact, guidance from many recycling services has promoted that misleading messaging, he said.

“What they’ll typically tell households is that they’ll accept some combination of Nos. 1 through 7 plastics in their curbside pickup,” he said. “It’s done with the best of intentions to make it easier for consumers to understand plastics recycling. But it’s really not the most precise advice, and providers increasingly are beginning to focus more on size and shape versus numbers.”

Leaving the digital age

In the meantime, however, the numbers can still serve as a rough rule of thumb to promote proper plastics recycling. In general, items labeled as Nos. 1 and 2 are in strongest demand, followed by No. 5, while other plastics are harder to recover and have weaker markets.

Typically, No. 1 plastics – including soft drink, juice and water bottles – are made from polyethylene terephthalate, or what is commonly referred to as PET. The containers are easily recycled back into bottles and are sometimes used to make carpet, luggage and polyester.

No. 2 plastics – typically high-density polyethylene, or HDPE – often include Items such as laundry and shampoo bottles. They commonly are returned to the same use, but can also find their way into new trash containers, buckets and floor tiles.

Additionally, there is demand for polypropylene (PP) plastic, commonly known as No. 5 plastic. It often is used in yogurt and margarine tubs that are remade into other food containers.

Recyclers should also know that their local recycling service has every incentive to find a company that will somehow reuse whatever it takes in, said Dave Smith, recycling coordinator for the Michigan State University Surplus Store and Recycling Center, which collects and sorts all recyclable material on the East Lansing campus.

“You hear people say, ‘Well, it’s just going in the landfill anyway,’” he said. “But if you think about it logically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a recycler to collect nonrecyclable items. Otherwise, we’re just paying the cost for it to go into landfills. So if there are communities taking the material, people should feel fairly confident that it’s actually getting recycled.”

Furthermore, some plastics that aren’t suitable for curbside collection – including plastic grocery bags and film overwraps – are sometimes accepted at drop-off locations, Flechter said.

International policies impact local recycling

Plastics that consumers recycle first go to a materials recovery facility (MRF) that separates them for marketing to manufacturers or processors that shred or grind them into pellets for use by the ultimate product makers.

Traditionally, nonbottle plastics have been less likely than PET and HDPE bottles and containers to enter the U.S. recycling stream because they’re relatively harder to recover and sort, said Darren McDunnough, owner, president and CEO of McDunnough Inc., a Fenton-based recycler and compounder of post-industrial plastic, which is typically waste produced during manufacturing processes.

“It’s easy for workers who are doing the sorting at a MRF to identify a PET water bottle or [HDPE] detergent bottle,” McDunnough explained. “But [other resins are] more difficult to sort and separate. They’re products that are not readily identifiable visually when sorting by hand, so you have to implement and employ technology to segregate those materials.”

And the technology to separate many different types of plastic can prove expensive and raise the cost of accepting a broad range of plastics. That’s why most unsorted and nonbottle plastics recycled by U.S. consumers for years were shipped to China, which relied on low-wage hand sorting to separate recyclables.

But in 2018 China banned almost all plastic imports – prompting U.S. municipalities and other recycling service providers to invest in equipment such as infrared sensors that better identify each type of plastic.

It also gave rise to EGLE’s “Know It Before You Throw It” campaign, which beyond educating consumers about what can and can’t be recycled also stresses the importance of placing only clean items in recycling containers.

“Our ultimate goal is to create more jobs and a cleaner environment by bolstering Michigan’s recycling industry and infrastructure,” Flechter said. “Michigan residents can help make the system more efficient by properly recycling.”

Michigan manufacturers stepping up

Beyond recycling properly to support Michigan’s recycling businesses and collection programs, using consumer purchasing power to buy products made with recycled plastics will also bolster the demand for plastics collected at the curb in the long run, Flechter said.

Cascade Engineering, based outside Grand Rapids, is one company responding to the market shift by striving to incorporate more recycled material into its products.

In January, it unveiled its EcoCart, a waste container made of 10% post-consumer HDPE plastic - specifically bulky, rigid items recycled by U.S. consumers, such as laundry baskets that are picked up at the curb but are often difficult to recycle, said JoAnne Perkins, Cascade’s vice president of environmental systems and services.

Typically – other than their wheels, which are made of recycled containers – Cascade’s carts are manufactured from virgin, never-before-used plastic.

But Perkins was inspired to change that after hearing Brent Bell, a Waste Management executive, challenge attendees at a sustainability conference in Arizona last year to help find new uses for recyclable material that used to get shipped to China.

“It was effectively a challenge to create the ‘demand’ side of the recycling equation,” Perkins said. “With [China’s policies], we have a responsibility to create a demand for these products. I thought I could do more on my end.”

She tasked Cascade engineers with figuring out how much recyclable material could go into a cart without compromising cost or performance.

While they initially settled on 10%, the ultimate goal is to get to 25% recycled content, Perkins said.

“We’ve come a long way in a year, and I’m very proud of our engineers,” she said. “We’re starting to shift the market a little bit.”

This story was originally published on the Detroit Free Press.

While the holidays are a time to spread joy and happiness among family and friends, they’re also an opportunity to show Mother Nature a little love.

Americans create 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day than any other time of year, according to statistics compiled by Stanford University.

The output includes boxes, packing materials, wrapping paper, electronics and disposable eating utensils. And although some of that holiday-related waste should go directly into the trash, much of it is recyclable.

But even among the hustle and bustle of holiday gatherings, it’s important to take the time to recycle the right way, said Matt Flechter, recycling market development specialist at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).

“We’re urging Michigan residents to be nice to the environment over the holidays by properly recycling whatever they can,” he said. “Sound recycling practices should never take a holiday.”

That’s a message that EGLE has been spreading since June, when it kicked off its statewide “Know It Before You Throw It” recycling education campaign featuring the Recycling Raccoon Squad.

Quality and quantity

EGLE’s primary goal is to improve the quality of materials people are putting into recycling containers by educating them about best recycling practices. At the same time, EGLE is aiming to boost the quantity of material recycled by doubling the state’s recycling rate to 30% by 2025 and ultimately reaching 45% annually.

“Achieving those goals would produce a gift that keeps on giving,” Flechter said, citing not only the statewide environmental benefits but also the potential $300 million annual economic impact that would result from meeting the 30% recycling rate benchmark.

Recycling specialists statewide are getting into the spirit and endorsing the “Know It Before You Throw It” campaign. They are also urging residents to take steps to limit the stream of waste produced during the holidays.

“Beyond ‘recycling,’ ‘reducing’ and ‘reusing’ are also important ‘R’s,’” said Natalie Jakub, executive director of Green Living Science, the educational arm of Recycle Here!, Detroit’s drop-off recycling center and neighborhood recycling program. “While the message of recycling is certainly important, cutting down on consumption whenever possible is another way to reduce the amount of material going into the landfill.”

As a holiday-related example, try placing gifts in reusable bags instead of wrapping them in paper, she suggested.

A recycling list to check twice

Recycling rules can vary by community or even from one recycling center to another, so Michigan residents are urged to check with their local provider about what is acceptable in their area to ensure they don’t end up on a list of naughty recyclers, Flechter said.

Here are some general guidelines for handling common holiday items:

• Cardboard and gift boxes. While it’s best to reuse boxes, they’re also almost universally accepted by curbside recycling services, Flechter said. “Just be sure to break them down before placing them in your recycling container,” he said. “That saves valuable space for both you and the hauler.”
• Disposable eating utensils, plates and cups. These should go in the trash because, among other reasons, they likely contain food residue – a contaminant that can ruin a whole recycling load. Even never-used paper plates are potentially problematic because they might have an outer layer of wax, Jakub said. Can’t stomach the thought of throwing them away? “Use your fine china and silverware instead,” she said.
• Paper towels and napkins. Put these in the trash or a compost bin, Flechter said, since they’re probably soiled by food. Aluminum foil that is free of food contamination, however, is recyclable.
• Wrapping paper. The answer here is “maybe.” Wrapping paper is recyclable, provided it isn’t adorned with glitter or metal. However, “that’s not always easy to determine,” Jakub said. “So the recycling center would probably typically tell you it doesn’t want it,” she said. Instead, try wrapping presents in newspaper or plain brown craft paper, which is always recyclable.
• Packing materials. The packing peanuts, clear plastic padding and Styrofoam that protect electronic devices are typically not recyclable curbside. However, many communities – including Detroit – have drop-off centers where Styrofoam blocks and packing peanuts are accepted, and many large retailers collect clear and other types of plastic bags.
• Plastic shopping bags. “With the exception of a couple of municipalities in Michigan, these are almost never acceptable for curbside recycling because they can clog a recycling center’s machinery,” Flechter said. However, large retailers such as Meijer, Walmart and Target will collect plastic bags for recycling.
• Holiday lights. Recycling centers don’t want holiday light strings because they can get tangled in machinery, so they shouldn’t go in curbside recycling containers. Places that sell lights, on the other hand, will often accept them for recycling. Jakub also advised to avoid putting lights in the trash because they might contain harmful chemicals.
• Batteries. Almost 40% of battery sales occur during the holiday season, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Home improvement stores such as Home Depot often offer collection bins for rechargeable batteries, or check for local hazardous waste collection events where all types of batteries are accepted. Visit michigan.gov/eglehhw to find local drop-off sites. Like holiday light strings, batteries should not go in the trash or curbside recycling.
• Electronics. Retailers such as Best Buy or local collection events will take your used tech.
• Disposable tablecloths. Discard both the plastic and paper varieties of these because chances are they contain at least some traces of food contamination.
• Greeting cards. Just like any type of paper, these are typically recyclable in your curbside container, Flechter said. Just make sure there is no glitter or metal on them.
• Receipts. All those glossy, thermal paper receipts you collected while buying awesome gifts are not recyclable because they are coated in plastic to make them durable.
• Tinsel, ornaments and artificial trees. All of those should go in the trash or be donated to someone else for use.

This story was originally published by FOX17 for "Morning Mix".

Morning Mix has partnered with the Michigan Department of Environment Great Lakes Energy to talk about recycling. However, this goes way beyond paper and plastics.

Comprenew is a non-profit certified electronic recycler. They are able to take apart things like cellphones, computers, televisions and beyond, refurbish what they can and properly dispose of what they can't. If a computer lands in their hands, they will make sure all of the data is removed, too. You can imagine this is particularly important when they are dealing with a corporate client.

Unfortunately, Michigan's recycling rate is about 15 percent, putting us at the lowest for the Great Lakes region. The goal is to increase that number to 30 percent by 2025. EGLE is doing this with their campaign lead by the Recycle Raccoon Squad.

Along with keeping harmful items out of the landfills, Comprenew helps remove employment barriers. An estimate 65 percent of their workforce has some type of barrier. If you would like to learn more about Comprenew, visit their website comprenew.org

This story was originally published by WOOD-TV for "eightWest".

For all the great natural resources we have in Michigan, it might surprise you to know, our state is among one of the lowest recycling states in the nation! Recycling has a wide range of environmental and economic benefits, plus there are so many materials that can be recycled like metal, paper, and plastic. Today, we’re going to focus on recycling plastic, how to do it and how some really useful products are being made locally from recycled plastic.

We all know recycling is good for the environment but many people don’t realize the number of local jobs that come from recycling, more than landfills.

For instance, Padnos has more than 700 team members at locations throughout the state and they offer extensive training and benefits like helping employees pay for a large portion of their college tuition.  And lots of products are made from recycled plastic — automotive parts, office chairs, recycling bins, that’s a real bonus too!

To learn more about Padnos, you can visit padnos.com.

This story was originally published by WOOD-TV for "eightWest".

When you think about it, we have a lot of paper surrounding us on a daily basis, the books we read, letters we receive in the mail and at work and school, we use a lot of paper! That’s why it’s so important that we recycle, it not only reduces landfills but recycling paper saves energy and trees. We wanted to learn more about recycling paper, how to do it properly and how it can be turned into useful products. So, we partnered up with Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, take a look!

We’ve partnered up with the Department of Energy, Great Lakes and Environment to talk about recycling many materials cardboard, plastic, metal and more. Even as a person who’s recycling for years, there’s so much to learn about how and what we should be recycling.

Click here to learn more about the PaperGator program.

This story was originally published by FOX17's Morning Mix for fox17online.com.

Maybe you’ve seen those cute commercials out right now with talking raccoons rummaging through the trash. While comical, the message is actually quite serious.

Did you know that Michigan has the lowest recycling rate in the Great Lakes? There's a new promotion out from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) that wants to double the number of people recycling in Michigan.

Beyond just recycling, there are ways that those who recycle already, can step up their game as well. Morning Mix went to Cascade Engineering to learn their role when it comes to recycling.

As mentioned above, this campaign is designed to double Michigan's recycling rate to 30 percent by 2025 and all Michiganders really can really contribute to this program. Be mindful when you are putting things out for recycling, as well. Make sure your food containers are cleaned!

To learn more about the new EGLE campaign along with tips and recycling information, visit www.recyclingraccoons.org