Sean Winn, Co-Founder and Board Member of the Plastic Reduction Project was our speaker on September 27th. Their mission is to reduce plastic production, consumption, and waste as much as possible by working with brand owners, retailers and consumers. The Plastic Reduction Project works with restaurants, schools and other facilities to reduce single use plastics. Sean showed us why that is important by taking us through a video of a materials recovery facility in Austin that sorts the items that we put in our blue bin. Those blue bins only cover a small percentage of trash, as 70% of trash comes from commercial facilities. The amount of actual recycled materials shrinks even further through the sorting process. Glass is broken and may be recycled into aggregate or fiberglass. Colored plastic containers are sorted from natural and clear, which are worth more. Only plastic containers No 1 and 2 and sometimes 5 are recycled, and they can only be recycled 2-3 times. Cardboard can be recycled 5-10 times, and aluminum cans be recycled infinite times. A product that says it is made of 100% recycled materials is pretty unusual. There are no recycling facilities in Austin; just the sorting facilities – the materials are sent elsewhere. A flaw in the Austin system is that they do not know which neighborhoods are better at not contaminating the recycling process, thus groups such as the Plastic Reduction Project do not have a way to focus outreach to those areas that need the most help. Sean gave us tips to help with the recycling process, as follows:
- Only buy products with one type of packaging; packages that mix materials such as plastic and metal don’t typically get recycled.
- Buy products with no “sleeve” lables or peel them off before recycling.
- Make sure that there is no food waste or paper or cardboard or compost it instead.
- Small plastics such as makeup containers do not get recycled
- Do not try to recycle plastics No 6 or 7.