America Recycles Day was Sunday, November 15th. Being a long-time recycler and a member of Keep Kingwood Green (KKG) since its founding, where else would I spend my time but the weekend recycling at the Kingwood Park and Ride lot?
A number of the KKG members spent time there educating about recycling, and even helping to keep some of the contamination out of the bins. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people put in those bins!
This weekend recycling is a service of the City of Houston. One would hope that recycling as a business would be economically profitable and pay for itself. Even if it is not profitable all the time, it does keep lots of valuable raw materials from going to the landfill. As the saying goes, “when you throw something away, it does not go away it just goes somewhere else”. The landfill is not usually the best place.
We talked to lots of nice people this afternoon. Most felt like they were doing their part to be environmentally friendly. The biggest challenge is getting people to read the signs on the bins and not contaminate the materials in the bins. We did tell lots of people that film plastic (plastic bags including trash bags) should never go into the plastic or any other bins. Many said they did not know that. There have been signs on the bins for months saying that!
Other people wanted to know if the stuff really gets recycled or is just taken to the dump. Yes, it is recycled. The City has a contract with FCC Environmental who built a multimillion-dollar sorting plant in Houston two years ago to separate all the stuff and send it off to be remanufactured. Based on how clean the material is, the City gets paid more. Every time FCC has to stop the workers and machines that are sorting the items, it costs money and reduces the City’s financial take. Plastic bags are some of the worst because they get wrapped up in the machinery resulting in shutdowns. Upwards of 20% of the things Houston residents try to recycle are not recyclable and do wind up at the landfill.
If you would like to see a video of how the recycling plant works, go to this site. It is not the Houston plant but is very similar. A very good video!
My three hours of volunteering went very fast. At the end of the day I felt like I had done something worth-while. I really felt good when I realized that had I stayed home and watched the Texans lose to the Browns I would have really felt like I had not accomplished a thing!