Is recycling a complete scam? (PART 2)

All right, folks, this is part two of our show on recycling. So if you haven't heard part one yet, stop what you're doing and click in to part one then come back here. Okay, all right, on with the show.

I'm Anny, I'm Noah.

This is Devin and this is no such thing, the show where you settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research previously on No such thing is recycling a scam. We heard from Davis Allen from the Center for Climate Integrity, who walked us through the history of plastic recycling and told us why research shows recycling just isn't worth the investment when you look at the environmental costs involved and the low percentage of plastic that actually gets recycled.

The recycling thing is a distraction. It's not anything to do with the actual problem.

Time jump. It's now a few weeks later. We were pretty shocked by what Davis told us, but us here at nsd h Q thought we had to hear from the pro recycling side. So Devin and I went to a recycling center here in Brooklyn to see what's happening to my coke bottles.

There's no no such things, No such thank.

Such, thank.

Touch, thank.

Touch, thank.

So.

Devon and I went on a field trip to investigate recycling.

Further, I was jealous of this one. I wish I could have joined.

Well, now it'll be like you joined us.

My name is Karen Napolitano.

I am the education director for Circular Services out at the Sunset Park Materials Recovery Facility. We receive all the metal, glass, plastic, and curtain recycling for all of the homes and all of the public schools and almost all of New York City right here. And it's our job at this facility to sort through those materials. Then we compress them into bales like that little robot Lollie from that movie. And then we sell the bails to companies that use the products.

Basically, we went through like what the little kids get on the tour first, which was actually very helpful. Yeah, and then we saw the real thing.

So we are a mirf. We're a materials recovery facility, which is a sorting facility for recyclables.

We're a pretty fancymurf.

We are considered state of the art.

Just a quick note here. This MIRF is in Brooklyn, so we're following New York rules and processes. As far as recycling goes, This stuff varies county by county across the country, So for specifics, you should look up your own area to find out how recycling is happening, because it will and all likely it would be at least a little bit different than here in New York. Materials arrive from all across a city on a barge or a truck. This center handles metal, plastic, glass, and cartons.

Wow.

Once it knows which one it is, then different air beams shoot them in the right direction. It's an incredibly complex system. It's amazing. Yeah. So all of this is basically happening big pile. Then they put into these shoots that then these different sorting things happen. So there's like grinders that are breaking up the glass, so that gets it out of there. Then the magnets take the metal away.

Yeah.

And the idea is that the grinder is only gonna break glass because of the way glass.

Yeah, it's not doing it, so it breaks into small pieces of that gets rid of that. Okay, it's a filtering exactly. So it's filtering step by step for different types.

Yeah.

Then these laser beams are going okay, that's that's the number three. We're gonna send the air to shoot it over this direction. Okay, it's kind of it's amazing. Yeah, and we're gonna put video of this on our newsletter. So a lot of this is automated.

Human interaction is fairly light at our facility. It's just at the end of the process, whereas some smaller facilities might use humans more so in the.

Process, care even said they have some AI robotics in use, and then there's a few people you can see in the different parts of the facility to kind of check up on stuff. So once everything's sorted, then they bail it up.

Then we have our WALLI moment, we make our bails. So you see all this sort of recyclables they dump into a bunker. When the bunker is full, it feeds into the bailer. The bailer compresses the recyclables from all sides and they pop out in the nice bail that's held together with steel cabling. And that is what we sell SOMRPHS Material recovery facilities.

They sort and they bail.

And sell the bails and sell it to whoever's looking for said material to reuse. It's not like directly to like a Coca Cola or Nestle. It's like a intermediary company I see who kind of gets in there and deals with that, okay.

And the company will break the material down further so.

That it's yeah, because right now they're just getting a big bail and it's just like you just took all this stuff and compare cartes. Yeah, exactly, so just piles and piles of that. Something I didn't know is that soft plastics like plastic bags cannot be recycled.

Soft plastics like plastic like a grocery bag.

Grocery bag, you're just like, you know, shrink wrap on a on a thing, like, don't don't put that in your.

I guess is that why like New York could band yeah.

Plastical, which makes sense of course when I hear it like this, but I just assumed, yeah, I don't need this bat like I just thought, I don't know, and we could see on the thing like it would get basically because like so many these things are rollers or whatever, the soft plastic would just then wrap around the beam.

So is the only reason that plastic can't be recycled because their machine would get sucked up, they can't have it.

I think that's one piece, but I don't think it's the main reason. I think it's mainly like it's so soft that it's like you can't really break it down, and.

Plastic only the grades the more you recycle it. Once you get to that point.

One more quick note on the plastic bag soft plastic thing. Again, this varies based on where you are but here in New York, while bags shouldn't be put in household recycling, you can recycle plastic bags and other film plastics bring them to large stores or certain chain stores in the city. So check out what's going on in your area to find out what to do with those things. In particular, Devin, what were you What were your biggest takeaways from seeing the process?

I was shocked by how high tech it was.

Yeah, it sounds thet the lasers and the magnets, really.

The air blowing at specific items to push them in specific directions on the conveytion. This it looked like some ship out of like futurema. Yeah.

Well also just and the scale of it described this pile. It was massive, It was huge.

I mean this is buildings, you know stories. We're in like a huge warehouse, essentially warehouse. A barge is coming in. Barges aren't small, No, you have seen a barge.

I've seen are pretty large and they're carrying a lot of stuff on there charge not small.

Either, big big boat.

Yeah, and they look tiny compared to this pile.

Yep.

It's bringing in recycled things that people thought you could recycle.

Yes, and this is the thing that She emphasized too, is that please only put recycling in a recycling bin, because when they get garbage, then they got to sort that out and then send it to get thrown on the garbage. So it's just making the garbage take a longer route. It's more money to pay for it. Yeah, yeah, to end up in a place where it should have

It changes every day. It's like you know the market, you know the markets.

You know the market.

Of course, of course you wake up every day you check the plastic right now.

But it was Yeah, it was pretty incredible to see that. Okay, me putting the stuff into my little plastic bin at home does actually make it somewhere where they are shorting it and then sending it out for reuse elsewhere.

So when I'm at home separating my recyclables, yep, I separate paper and cardboard away from that's good plastic.

That's that's good because they don't do they don't do paper here, that's what they do.

Collect it.

Yeah, that goes to a different thing. Just take three routed to that's recycling, but not here.

So it is actually helpful that I'm not putting everything I think I can recycle into one bag. No, yeah, so you can put these thing so you can put metal plastic, yes, and uh I guess class yes in here in one one thing and as long as you're you're you're super will allow it. Yeah, yeah, I got that's a separate I'm just sending him this episode.

But that can all be in one paper should be separate.

Paper and cardboard needs to be separated.

Yeah, because it's it might go here, but they're gonna have to descend it out. You're wasting money, tax payer dollars.

You know, talking about apartment bill. It draws me crazy. Now I'll go downstairs. They just got recycling bins and that people putting everything in there.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Is plastic, there's metal, there's glass, all on the same bin. So now I'm thinking about, my god, this is ending up at that place. It's just half of this is probably just going in the trash.

That's really crazy. You got to have a bin downstairs at your apartment.

That's here's the and.

This is if you go and you walk around, look around, you see people there. There are people doing this right.

So in New York City we have our two og recycling bins. We have what we call the Blue bin, where you can recycle four materials anything that is mostly metal from a tiny bottle cap to a large refrigerator and everything in between, but not batteries and electronics, then glass, bottles and jars. Only if it's glass, it must be called bottle or jar. Otherwise it is not recyclable.

Unfortunately.

Then cartons is the third material. Cartons go in the blue I know it's a cardboard box, it's coated.

In plastic, so we don't want it in the paper bin. Cartons go in the blue bin.

And then rigid plastic. So in New York City, put all rigid, all hard plastic in the blue bin. No soft plastic, bags, pouches, or wrappers. All hard plastic of all shapes and sizes. Then in what we call the green bin. That's for paper and cardboard. All paper, any paper, if.

You can rip it, you can recycle it.

And all cardboard, including greasy pizza boxes. You may absolutely put greasy pizza boxes in the recycling bin with the paper cardboard.

Just don't leave any peace in the box.

So when you put out your materials, materials, and you got your the guys who are taking it and putting into the truck, there's sections, okay, So the paper and plastic they have a section for that, and the metals, glass and materials they have a section for that.

So they're pulling out the bags from my blue bin. But they're taking a quick look at it because the bag is transparent, This is going over here, this is going over there.

Yeah, now that we have the you're supposed to have standardized trash bins and recycling bins. That's supposed to make that process easier. So they know, okay, this screen, yeah exactly, But as long as it's in a clear bag, I think that's fine.

They should be able to figure that out. Time for a quick break. When we're back, we hear from Kara about why those recycling rate numbers from part one are so low.

All right, fellas, I need you to help me with a problem that I got. You know, usually we're the ones helping other people with their problems. But I'm about to go abroad and I'm want to watch Met games. Noah, how can I watch them?

That's a tough one. Maybe get a really large telescope.

I don't think that's the best way to do it. Manny, do you have any solutions on how I can watch Mets games? You broad?

I think I've got a slightly more practical solution for you, Devin. If you use Nord VPN, you'll be able to change the location of your laptop's IP address and watch the content with no problem.

What about my privacy online. I'm worried someone's watching me. First of all, no one is watching you, Noah.

But in case someone was watching you, NordVPN provides you with privacy online leaving no digital footprint by hiding your IP address. It's like wearing an invisibility cloak while you're surfing the web.

Sounds comfy, So, Manny, I've heard about these VPNs and how they're super slipt. How do I make sure my internet is not throttling?

If you want to use a VPN without slowing down your internet, Devin, You're gonna want to use NordVPN because whenever I use it, I don't see any buffering or lagging while I'm streaming my favorite content.

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Nst Cara brought up the nine percent recycling rate issue, which is kind of the big thing we were talking about with Davis, where only nine percent things got recycled. Okay, and she brought this up before I even got there.

Yeah.

I was saving up for the end because I was like, this is gonna get this to get nasty.

And if you want me to explain the nine percent of plastic, I would be happy to do. So, yes, if you've heard that, yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, So there's the statistic that everyone loves to like run at me with their hands flailing in the air.

Only nine percent of plastic gets recycled.

So I just want to explain that statistic because it's a bit misunderstood. So I think people hear this stat and they think, oh my gosh, of all the plastic I'm putting in my recycling, then only nine percent of it is actually getting recycled, And know that is not what that number is describing. If of all the plastic we were getting, if we could only recycle nine percent of it, that would be a ninety one percent loss for us, and that costs money.

Anything that we send to the.

Trash we pay for So we would probably say Hey, guys, stop sending us plastic because ninety one percent of it we have to pay to send it to a landfill.

Right, It just makes no sense. So what that number is describing.

Is describing the percentage of all plastics manufactured in a year that you United States residents actually put into recycling bins. That's usually what those numbers are describing is how much we as residents are actually putting in to the bin. Once it gets in the bin and comes to a sorting facility, sorting facilities are going to recover eighty seven to ninety five percent of the good stuff.

Let's make a really rudimentary example here, where the United States only produces ten water bottles a year. She's saying consumers are only recycling one out of the ten water bottles produced by the United States.

And that's nothing to say of what becomes of that water bottle, just that we're only putting one.

In the bin, and that one, once it gets to the murph is getting recycled eighty five. Yeah, so eighty five percent of that one bottle.

Just like say, statistic that we originally thought was an indictment of the recycling industry is She's arguing is actually an indictment of human beings all since consumers.

Well yeah, which is kind of the whole crux of this, because that's also what to be fair to Davis, He's saying, we're taking the guilt on for Yeah, who's making the plastic, you know, But it is what I'm learning is everyone's involved in this. But if you put all the all the plastic in your house, in your apartment, yeah, your home, but yeah, into microplastics the recycling bin, it would get to the center and most of that, or eighty seven

Yeah, we need to get to the bottom of this because it's a cycle. It's like, which way Western Man, this episode could end when where I'm with me not recycling anymore or killing even.

Yeah, like I might have to confront my landlord. Bins.

I'll say this, I'm probably gonna have to have three bins now, Yeah, I have two.

I was thinking about this.

I have a garbage bin yep and a recycling bin ye. And for a while I was putting all my recyclables, including paper, in the same in the one bin. No one, no one sorting downstairs. I'm putting. I'm doing my best. I'm putting this stuff here. And then my trash, my real trash in the trash bin. That's not gonna that's not gonna fly anymore. I gotta have Listen, you're gonna have four things composts.

I got trash, I'm gonna have to have my metals, my glass, my plastics, and then I'm gonna have to have another one from a car.

I'm gonna have to buy a storage.

You're going to use one of your rooms, Yeah, your bedrooms to get a bedroom apartment, one of the rooms.

Recycling you were saying earlier New York. It takes all rigid plastics, but there are some places that do not. Does that nine percent number also account for those places who are just like, we're not going to sort this.

No, that nine percent is its own thing that is never attached to recycling centers.

It's not, it's really not.

Yeah, it was a study done by the EPA in twenty eighteen where they looked at all materials, looked at how much was manufactured in a year, and then they looked at how much of what was manufactured people put into recycling.

Thin That's what it is describing. It's the whole country. It's not localized.

You can look sometimes cities like New York City, you can look at our recycling rates. The city puts out a really great report every five years, the Waste Characterization Study, and you can see what percentage of each type of material New York are putting into the right bin. You know, you look at like a milk jug or a water jug. New Yorkers are putting like over fifty percent I think maybe sixty percent of these into the recycling bin.

So we're doing a great job with these.

But then you look at something like a soda can and I think is only like thirty percent.

Which is crazy. That's like the poster Child are recyclable.

But people are putting thirty percent of their soda cans in the recycling bin and the rest they're putting in the trash. It makes me want to pass out. Aluminum is so recyclable, and it's so taxing to mine the raw materials and then manufacture aluminum for raw materials. It's very environmentally taxing.

If say ninety percent of plastic was put into recycling bins and made it to facilities like this, I'm sure there'd be some loss obviously, but most of that would be recycled and then sold.

So the one other thing you have to consider is what of that is recyclable or not. Now, most of the things that just regular everyday folks, most plastics that we buy that are rigid, most of its plastic packaging, the more like large, substantial stuff.

And most of that is recyclable.

But then you get into like little stuff and like cosmetics and toys and like the multi material stuff.

Right, so you kind of.

Have to look at the percentages of well, how much of it is recyclable, and then yeah, of the good stuff, if you put it in the right bin, we're going to recover it it's going to get recycled.

Did you guys happen to ask her about what happens if there's food stuck on the thing, Like I remember, we were okay, wow, Yeah, it's gonna save me about ten minutes work recycling.

Yeah, because like obviously don't like you know, but they're not throwing out plastic because there's like food residue on you know, like our yogurt or something. Yeah, I would say that's more so so it just doesn't stick up your house.

Yeah, yeah, do for yourself.

I missed recycling last night. Actually fucked up on that one. Wow, it only comes mondays, it's kind of inconvenient.

Garfield hates that. What do you see as the solution to get that number higher? So you don't need to argue about it anymore.

Yeah.

The funny thing about the nine percent of plastic statistic is if people put more recyclable plastic in the recycling bin, that percentage would go up, and then more plastic.

Would be recycled. But I think what ends up happening.

Is people hear that statistic, they kind of misunderstand it, they lose faith and hope, and they put less in the bin.

And that's going to just lead to that number going down.

So look, I'm a recycling educator, so I will tell you to recycle.

I will tell you recycling is.

Good, but I will stress also, you know, recycling saves materials, which is great and essential, but if you want to save the planet, we need to reduce and reuse first. That's obvious, like no one is trying to skirt around that. But still recycling has its place. So there are some materials that aren't made for re use unfortunately, but can definitely be recycled. So just put them in the recycling then get the recycling numbers up.

It's not hurting anything.

I like that. I like that what she just said. Recycling saves material If you want to save the planet, we got to reduce and reuse and reverse. Okay that on a shirt.

We're all familiar with the reuse sentiment there. But reduce meaning just like, stop using as many plastic, stop.

Buying plastics instead of buying a plastic. What about it when you go to the store, Hey, have you ever her reusable?

Have you seen Martin Ellis?

It's glass, but you're still producing that material. I know every time you go and then you throw it out.

I know, I'm saying I got to crush an apple and get the juice.

Out of it. You put it into your glass, put you can reuse that. Yeah, okay, So yeah, so I asked about I asked about basically the argument that we're putting the onus on the individuals, not corporation. The powers would be yes. So this is what kerasaid.

I absolutely hear that as well.

And yeah, I manufacturing is all single use culture of convenience, Like we're dug very deeply into that, and I do, you know, want to kind of put a spotlight on that.

And I think that manufacturing actually absolutely could change.

We could figure out more ways to integrate reuse less single use packaging. Yes, but the responsibility is everyone's you know, yeah they're making it, but who's buying it?

You know, someone's buying it as well.

So I really look at the responsibility as everyone's look in the mirror.

We need to fix ourselves. If we weren't buying all these plastics, they would make it.

They wouldn't be making them. It's true, but we're such an on the go culture. I can imagine myself, you know, getting like a subscription leader bag of like Coca cola or whatever and then pouring it into my not a flag obvious. I'm trying to figure out how I would how I would satisfy my Coca Cola craving.

No, that's not an option, not happening.

But I would say it's everyone's responsibility. Buy less, single use stuff, commit to reuse, and.

Be an example in that, you know, let others see how possible it is, and others will follow, you know. And yeah, we want to do things to push the needle. We want to push manufacturers to to do better, in the big companies to do better. One thing we're trying to pass in New York State now is something called extended Producer Responsibility. It puts more responsibility on producers, right, Okay, you made that. You're also going to help us pay to recycle it and manage it once it becomes waste.

That's a fair take I think as far as everyone could be doing better, Yes, recycle it to your best ability. And also obviously point of the big companies to produce it to maybe do less or do more.

Yeah, and you know they're they're doing stuff.

So our company, Circular Services, we're a part of Closed Loop Partners, and there's some of those big companies that are investors. You know, they know, they're responsible, they know, and they're they're coming to the table. But yeah, how can we all push that push circularity forward?

All right, we are going to take a quick break and when we return, we weigh in with our final takeaways about everything we've learned during this wild ride into the world of recycle. What are you guys thoughts as far as should we be recycling?

I think initially I felt a little bit sort of like this is all waste of time. I still feel a bit that way, because I think recycling is just a way for the oil companies to be like, hey, we're doing our good deed. But I think now I feel a bit like, well, I'm just going to put the stuff in a recycling bent and then whatever y'all

That's that's generally how I feel like.

Especially after you know, talking to Kara, I think we had a lot of assumptions that you got to rinse the thing out and yeah, these things can't be together and blah blah blah, And after seeing how it's shorted and stuff, it's like, oh, just literally just put it in the bin and it will probably be recycled. Yeah, So it feels like the bar is much lower to just like do the right thing, do your small pot, And I don't think that's going to solve the problem.

Yeah, after hearing from Kara, I'm I'm much more interested in the reduce.

Out of that.

You know, the catchphrase of reduce, reuse, recycle, reducing and reusing I think is going to make much more of an impact than me kind of like fumbling over what goes and what beata every Monday night. But it is good to know that like most, if not all, of what I put in into the bags on Monday night will end up getting recycled. I did think beforehand, like you know, God bless whatever happens to this stuff is

Well, that's gonna be tough because they don't have caps, just like at home.

At home as a glass.

Hey, I'm taking not not necessarily coke bottles, but like, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of ship I bought and immediately.

To get rid of it. It's funny because I feel like our parents were reusing a lot of stuff. You know, people's houses, they have jugs. Yeah, refilling drugs would be plastic. There'd be plastic like butter containers that would turn into like, all right, now this is a container for food. Yep. Right before it was so easy to go on Amazon and be like I need a container for this thing, or I need a thing for this thing.

There was a lot more looking at the container store. Yeah, I wonder who owns that big oil yep.

But yeah, I think there is a way that like we should Well it's also just like the stuff that we choose to buy.

Yes, right, Well, you know people make fun of you know, the millennial Mason jar thing. Yeah, they had the right idea exactly.

It just this also makes me a little bit like it's really obsessed me. Now when I go downstairs, and I see that things are not separated correctly in my building. Mmm, because I'm like, guys, you can't put the cardboard in with the plastic and the glass, you know. Like now I'm kind of a tyrant for that.

I'm going to set up a new bin in my home after this.

I think I'm.

For the papers and cardboards.

I love my landlord about a lot of things. I'm adding this to the list. I'm like, you gotta label.

They can't wait till you move.

Really, you got a label two of these Ben's cardboard board.

It's getting the initial setup. I think whatever the you know, crowd psychology of getting people to actually adopt something, it's you know, people study this and it's very difficult to do, and it's going to take a lot. I mean, we're we're only just now learning we don't need to clean out our plastic that we're recycling. Yeah, thoroughly. How long has that rumor been going around, you know, you know, updating the the popular knowledge of these things. Yes, a

We might make a bunch of tiktoks and tweets about it.

Yeah, I don't even know where that came from.

The cleaning thing.

Yeah, your asshole friend who thinks they know.

Yeah, I mean there was probably some article like twenty years ago. You read it once, you go oh, and then like I'm not going to check it on updates on it. They need from there, ye, pain messaging. They need some I don't know, celebrities to do something this.

Get some influencers instead of going to Coachella. Y'all need to tell us recycle correct.

Think how much recycling is or isn't happening at Coachella. It's disgusting hearing these explanations back to back. Is it just interesting as kind of a Worshock test of depending on who you're talking to or the rest of the conversation, you can hear the same thing and just kind of take a totally different takeaway in some ways. But at the same time they are kind of saying, hey, we're using way too many plastics. Yeah, single quote unquote single

As as He's a thing.

No Such Thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our executive producers are Kate Osbourne and Mangesha to Cadur. The show is created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman and Devin Joseph Theman credit song by Manny, mixing by Steve Bone. Thank you to our guest Karen Apolatano from Circular Services. You can visit No Such Thing dot show to subscribe to our newsletter for links to research and more, including some video of what we saw at the recycling facility.

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