Recycling and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

and welcome to the podcast. It's called Stuff you Should Know appropriately enough, I'm Josh Clark with me as always is who it's Chuck. That's right, Chuck. It's good to be back. I know it feels like it's been a well Christmas holidays, right. I know that listeners think, through the magic of iTunes, that we never leave the studio at all, but in fact we've been off for a

couple of weeks and now we're back. Yeah. Do you know we've actually gotten um offers to be rescued from a couple of our listeners because from Studio one A yeah. On our Facebook page, I think I said that we're not allowed to leave. I got a pretty good response. Nice. Yeah, okay, so you asked for pizza or cash, Oh it's coming, Yeah, I'm buttering them up. Or shrimp cocktail, your favorite cocktail? Exactly. I can finally get the shrimp cocktail. Um, Chuck. Yes,

do you remember back in the nineties? Maybe a haze for you. No, you don't remember the nineties. No, it's not a haze. I do, right, Oh, that was a weird response college I was studying and such. Okay, so so you do remember the nineties. Okay, So, Chuck, you are a child of the recycling generation. Do you remember when that thing just blew up? It came out of nowhere?

I do. My brother and I were talking about this the other day with the initial Yeah, we were with the Crying Indian in the seventies, which was just about littering, right when the good old days when you would just start trashing like an anchorman. They're walking through the parking but just so nuts. Do you ever see anybody in their car just throwing something out occasionally and it's just boil your blood and it's like, what are you doing? How can I be that unaware? You know? I hit

them with my car. Okay, so you're talking about the the Amerindian who is crying because of the trash, right. And then later on recycling became like newspapers kind of where I remember it starting. It did. As a matter of fact, the first curb side newspaper recycling program started in nineteen seventy three in University City, Missouri, I believe, or Missouri as my mom would say. But it took a little while for it to take off, from nineteen seventy three to the nineties. But in the nineties it

really gained traction and gain ground. And if you remember correctly, you used to have to have like all these different bins for you know, this colored glass, right, this kind of plastic or paper, you know, and then then all of a sudden it just went away. They're like, just throw it all in one bin. And because recycling seems so important, I know, I always wondered, like, is this

stuff really getting recycled. And then when when they went to this whole you know, just single bin hodgepodge of everything, I was like, well, that's it. I mean, they're not even trying to keep it that they're that they're not dumping this stuff, right, so UM, it turns out that they actually are that you can pretty much guarantee that almost all of what you are putting in your recycling

bin is getting recycled. And the thing that threw us off where all of a sudden, we're just throwing everything in one bin. It's called single stream recycling. That's a result of UM recycling technology, which is awesome because it made it a lot easier for people that maybe wouldn't be prone to recycle because they didn't want to separate everything. Yeah, so yeah, it was awesome. It was a pain, it was definite pain. And now you just throw it all

in one bin. They come and get it. And back in the day there there used to be a lot of human contact with your garbage that was being recycled. But these technological advances, so imagine that's okay. There's like a uh, this conveyor belt that your recyclables are dumped onto and they go through this weird gauntlet where there's like magnets that attract like tin cans and then drop them into into bins. Lasers lasers always you know, a

personal favorite of mine. They they're they're infrared lasers that are used to scan the wavelength that's emitted by um different types of plastic, and then they're appropriately taken off the conveyor belt. And then there's there's others that have puffs of air that can only get like, um, like cardboard, like a toilet, paper, paper towel roll, just puffs it off. All your stuff going through this is being assaulted. And you know the way it reacts to these assaults, they're

gonna end up in the right kind of bin. So you need very little human contact, or much less than you did before. So um that that should put the single stream fear to rest, right. Sure, I I've heard well I never really doubted it too much, but I do know people that think it's a liberal conspiracy and that nothing is being recycled. So well, actually, there's a there's an economist I can't remember his name, but he went to the trouble of proving that recycling is actually

more harmful than good. Yeah, um, as far as like an environmental cost benefit, it's actually more harmful because I think he took into account like all the gas that the trucks burn, that kind of thing, uh, and in the electricity used in the recycling plants, and he came to the conclusion that's actually more harmful than good. I I don't necessarily subscribe to that, right was I'm sure he was contradicted by more than one person. Yeah, but he was a respected economist. He wasn't just you know,

some crack potter Joe Schmoy economists. No, right, exactly. But he he may have very well been a conservative economist because, as you said, recycling is a big liberal conspiracy in some people's eyes. Exactly. Few, I would say, probably a lot of people on board now and in the two thousand's exactly. But I was having a conversation with my father the other day, and he is the herbal Elvis exactly. He was down, actually was he was kind of you know,

at the at the equilibrium point, which is good. So he's very lucid. Um. And he uh, he and I were talking. He said that the people at his recycling center, uh, they don't have curbside pickup where he lives out in the sticks. Um, they take their their stuff to the center, and that they were told by one of the employees that works there, um that there they don't recycling or

they just take all the stuff to the dump. Yes, and I told him that the man at the recycling center was a total idiot, and uh, basically Dad wanted to know why, as is his one um, and I told him that that's just an awful business model. So think about this. There's this thing called it tipping fee. And in two thousand eight, the tipping fee is what you pay to dump your stuff at a landfill, and it's usually per ton. In the US, in two thousand eight, it was about forty two bucks on average for per

ton of everything anything you wanted to come dump. They weigh it by ton and then you pay forty two bucks to Have you ever been to a landfill? Yeah? I know they actually have been to some that are kind of tranquil, quite nice. Yeah, they have like ponds and stuff, so you would never ever want to swim in. But there's like rolling hills filled with garbage, but it's grass over it. I've been to somewhere they're actually going

to the effort to make it look decent. But yeah, and then you turn around there's like some rest of refrigerator with like a corpse in it or something. So they can be depressing places. Okay, but there's there's that tipping fee. Right, So you drive up and there's a scale that's embedded into the ground. It weighs you, and you pay appropriately. Some states are are more than others.

I think ver Months tipping fee. The average tipping fee in the state's nineties six bucks a ton, and then I think Oklahoma is on the low end, it's like fourteen or seventeen bucks a ton. So clearly, the more you charge and tipping fees, the more people are going to recycle exactly. But the point is is that there because you have to pay too dump this stuff. Sure, and you're not charging anybody money to come drop off their recyclables. All you're doing is throwing your money out

the window. You might as well empty out your bank account into a dump truck and back it into a landfill. Did you explain this to your father? I did. Yeah, this is actually you don't know this, but you are trapped right in the middle of a recreation of this conversation we had, um. So that's number one. The other thing is that you you can actually get money from

recyclables their commodity. So what I mean, what happens when you take your recyclables to uh to a recycling center and they're they're diverted from the dump, thank god, to you know, a recycling plant. What happened? I mean, what do they get turned into? Well, they get turned eventually back into the original raw material, which is a commodity. It's worth money, like you said, so they have every

incentive to recycle. So like that mixed office paper is being turned into um cardboard maybe you're old newspapers Actually are really very commonly used for cardboards, stuff like that. UM. Or you know, plastic bottles are being turned into um like a fleece jacket. And actually there's a plastic bottle you want to avoid if you ever tip it upside down and you look, that's where you're gonna find your

recycling symbol, right and the number correct. Yes, So if you see a triangular recycling symbol with a three inside, you should actually do this while you're at the store. Look at the bottle and if you see a three, put it back and keep looking until you find, you know, the laundry to churchen or whatever you're you're looking for that doesn't have a three, and it has a one or a two or something like that. UM. And then all of a sudden that one with the three will

go away eventually like PC. And that's because it's is it impossible to recycle or it's not hard. It's very very The the ways you can recycle or the things you can recycle into a very very limited, like maybe a plastic park bench or something like that, because there's so many additives and plus it there. It's actually um. There's there's whole websites and organizations dedicated to getting rid of PVC. Wh There's number one, it's it's impossible recycle.

So just that does generally end up in the dump unless you take it to a specialty recycling plant. UM. And number two it contains thalamites, and thalamites are UM. It depends on the plastic. Thalamites are like a softener to to soften plastic. So like your vinyl shower curtain that has thalamites in it, when you put it in and it starts smelling weird, that's the thalamites. And they're actually really harmful that children's toys, like the kind of

mouthble ones that they chew on. Bad news. PVC thallamites not good stuff. So if you start doing this at the store, if you start, if you stop buying things that are made in or delivered in PBC containers. PVC is gonna go the way of the dinosaur pretty quick. Um. But okay, so you want to look what you want to look out for PVC? Right, Oh, I know what we're talking about, raw materials. Back to raw materials, back

to raw materials. So recyclables are commodity because they're broken back down into their original composition basically, right, okay, and then they're sold for for big dough. It can be big dough. Actually, I was reading an MPR article and um, the price per ton that wholesale purchasers of of recycled mixed office paper we're paying in this this past summer, it was like ninety bucks a ton, big money. And these are these are companies that are buying hundreds of

thousands of tons a month um. So it was big business to recycle. And by the fall it had dropped to nothing because even you know, recycling is subject to inflation and gas fuel prices. Well, not just that, but the economy. People stop buying goods, so less goods were manufactured. Um. But it's also because it's it's it's subject to economic whims. It's also subject to consumers. Right, So like if you if you only buy um products that are sold in

recyclable or recycled materials, that are made from recycled materials. Um, you the people who make these things are going to start buying more and more recycled stuff, okay, because that's what the consumers want. And if you stop buying stuff that's made with you know, virgin raw materials, all of a sudden, these trees are being saved or more plastic isn't being made. And it's so it's kind of cool

to know that you can have this each person. Yeah, you can also have an effect by making sure or doing your best to make sure that everything that you putting your recycling ben gets recycled. And one of the ways you can do that is by cleaning the stuff. I know that I know you referenced Minnesota in the article, and I believe it's the same here in Georgia. About pizza boxes, I've heard that pizza boxes they won't recycled because they have you know, cheese and grease and stuff

on it. Actually just throw mine away, now, do you. Yeah, Yeah, it's probably good idea, And um, I I do a real good job about cleaning out all my glass products just because it stinks and you don't want, you know, the barbecue sauce smelling after a few days. So that's the reason I do it. But it turns out it has a better chance of getting recycled. It does and if you kind of look at it, like your your

bottle of barbecue sauce. If you look at it, you will see that it's not just a bottle of barbecue sauce. There's several components to it, the lid, maybe that little ring that held the lid in place, to the safety seal um that's not just kind of dangling around the neck of the bottle of the label. If you break this thing down into its parts, you're increasing its chances of being recycled as well, because if you think about the labels paper, but the bottles glass and the cap

is plastic. So you separate it, you're making it easier for the people at the recycling plant, or I should say the magnets and lasers at the recycling plant. And it's it's going to be likelier to be recycled, right, it won't become a residual, which I believe that is what the refuse is called it. They cannot recycle correct, right, and they want to any any recycling company would want to cut down on residual, right because that's just lost money.

So they're gonna do a lot to kind of make it, UM get as much money as possible by recycling as much ASTU as possible. But you can definitely help, right, Yeah, that's great. I agree. So does that take us too?

Plastic and where that might end up? Yeah, you know, plastic is kind of a big problem, right, and not just PBC, but you know there's some play stick that's a lot easier to recycle than others, UM, but it doesn't always get recycled, and when it doesn't get recycled, it can end up in some really screwed up places, right, most specifically the ocean. Yes, a lot, a lot of this stuff ends up in the ocean. And I have a stat for you if you if you're into that,

you know, I'm into your stats. Uh. The the u N did a little study their environmental program and they said, in two thousand six, every square mild ocean has forty six thousand pieces of floating plastic in it. Not awful, forty six thousand pieces per square mile, And of the more than two hundred billion pounds of plastic that we produce each year all over the world is not United States, about ten percent of that ends up in the ocean, and a lot of that ends up on the floor

of the ocean. Well, not just a lot of it's seventy of it ends up on the floor of the ocean. So if every square mile has forty six thousand pieces floating, that's thirty of what's actually in the ocean. The rest is on the ocean floor, right, all right, So plastic is it's well, it's plastic, right, It's super wonderful material.

It's so useful. But yes, it doesn't biodegrade. It does break down, it photo degrades, but it doesn't break down molecularly into simpler compounds that can be absorbed by nature. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of the same thing, conveniently bite sized pieces, which is one of the big problems. What they're called mermaids tears or nerdles. Yeah, that's probably the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life. It is. It's almost as bad as the American Indian crying. Yeah,

some mermaids here. Uh so yeah, what happens is the stuff ends up in the ocean and filter feeders like our friend the whale, shark and catfish they take the stuff in because they think it's food. Uh, seagulls, albatross they eat the stuff and uh it ends up you know, killing a large chair. Yeah yeah, but wait, there's more aside from the choking hazard or you know, any problems

digestive problems that can occur. Um. These little mermaids tears actually have this added property of attracting toxins like a sponge. So like the anything, any toxin it comes in contact within the ocean, it can actually draw stuff to it. It soaks it up, absorbs it, hangs onto it, and then when it's eaten, little poison pills. Basically pretty much shooting and sinking any ocean. And this is all over the place, but there's actually there's this. There's a place

in the Pacific Ocean. This is startling to me. There's a place in the Pacific in between Japan and California, right, and it is called the North Pacific subtropic gyre okay um. And basically a gyre is just it's a circulating area of water. But this is this isn't like a funnel, it's it's much more wide than that. Actually, one of

these gyres is twice the size of Texas. This this subtropic gyre, the one in the North Pacific is actually there's two, and they're connected by a six thousand long subtropical convergent zone miles of basically trash and other things making its way from one to the other. This is where the garbage goes. This the the garbage that if you have a cigarette lighter and it goes out or it comes out of your pocket because you had it in your bathing suit when you jumped in it, it

will likely end up in this huge garbage patch. There is a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean that's twice the size of Texas, and it's just kind of slowly sitting there turning. There's actually there's there's two versions. There's a western in the eastern right, and just one of them is twice the exactly and that's they're connected by the little trash trail on the six thousand mile trash trail.

And this is having you could say, something of an impact on some of the Island, the island chains in the area right Hawaiian Islands, some of the wine islands, some of them are Some of them have beaches that feature um five to ten feet of trash ten ft deep and the plastic sand is what they call it. Yeah, bads tears that that turned into these really tiny tiny bits that you just can't do anything about. It comes and mixed in with the beach. So it's bad news.

The the there is one heartening thing to all this, to the great Pacific garbage pat It can be it can be reduced. And the reason it can be reduced is because I think eight percent of the trash and the ocean it starts on land. This isn't like ocean going vessels going out and dumping you know in this jy or anything like. It's it's pulled there and it's

usually from land. That was good to hear. I mean, it's sad in a way because it's coming from us, but it's good to know that, you know, something can change about that, right because it's everyday people who are doing this. It's not you know, some faceless corporation. It's not the people who are duping us into thinking that where our stuff is being recycled and they're actually taking it and dumping it in the Pacific. There's something you can do, Like you can not UM use plastic grocery

bags anymore. It's a great ice very popular. UM. You can recycle absolutely everything. UM. You can. You can if you have eco anxiety, which we've talked about, you can follow. You can walk up and down the street and pull the aquafina water bottles out of the trash and you can do theirself sure, or you could charter a helicopter and have them fly you out to the gyre and get to work. That's so that's just the tip of

the iceberg. On the on the on you know, recycling in the World's Biggest landfill, which is the Great Pacific garbage paths and it is UM and we've got a couple of articles on them. Coincidentally, this is a dual podcast. This is a bonus street It was Yeah, it's our

first time ever. We hope you liked it. UM. You can read both of these articles by going to our handy search bar and typing in world Biggest Landfill or recycling reality and you can do that at how stuff works dot com and Chuck we have a little listener mail we do my favorite part of the show, mail time. So today Josh, we have I'm gonna start off with some corrections. Actually I'm gonna start off end end with corrections.

I have a few. We had a recent podcast on body armor which was a special request from a soldier, Donald Anderson and Iraq. And um. First correction is Donald actually wrote us back because we didn't have his We found out his rank as a sergeant and it's a sergeant part of the fourth Squadron, third Armored Calvary Regiment, and he works on the Age sixty f D turbine engine, which I did a little googling, and that's in the Apache helicopter. He's got a very cool job. And he

thanked us for the for the podcast. And um, some people wrote in because we were talking about the spider silk being made from the goat and we couldn't conceive of how that would happen exactly. We thought of it coming out of its dairy air or right right, what was it? We said, let's listen, yealysis. Yeah, they've actually genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. That is, and

I take it maybe their hair grows like that. I have no idea because I don't know where the silk would come out of the poor goat, so we did not know. We put the call out to our our listeners, and because they're really smart and awesome, we had a bunch of people right in. And it turns out that the spider silk is actually created in their milk, the goats milk, and uh, it's very strong and apparently it's compatible with the human body, so it can also be

used for artificial limbs and stuff. Now, so I just have a few names just to give people their due. Uh. Nick McCracken of Waynesville, North Carolina. Kimberly Fletcher of Campbell, California. Jeff Buell of the Earth Wow, not see where he was from. II leaned forward whole stage from California. Michael

Barressitch h Matt Jensen of New York. Sean cash In who just wrote in like literally ten minutes before we went on the year, and one final person was unnamed and he's my favorite because or she because the email simply said the one so it may have been from God himself. Wow. Well, thank you God and all the rest of you for that. Correct and you've got some more. Well,

just one more small quick correction. We did have a viewer, I'm sorry listener mail on a recent podcast, and we butchered the name and ginger this person Costs cos said something like Bitch Tall of Wisconsin. And it's actually a female. I think we said Costs. Yeah, we're really sorry about that, Costs. I don't know why we just automatically assumed you were mad. And so it's actually, uh Coss Bates Stall and she's a girl and we're very happy for him, and where

we apologize. Yeah, thanks in a snow pop and uh. If you want to let us know how to pronounce your name and tell us your gender, talk about goat's milk, whatever, you can send us an email at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. H brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you