Lids Off for Landfills

[Opsa]

A while back we had a fellow from the local landfill come and speak at our community meeting. One thing he mentioned really surprised me. He said that one thing that makes landfill management difficult is simply that so many bottles come in with their caps on. When this happens, air is trapped inside and the bottles do not collapse, causing greater volume, plus they tend to rise up to the surface instead of being crushed down.

He said that it would help a great deal if people took the caps off both their plastic to be recycled as well as the glass bottles and containers that cannot be recycled.

I had never heard of this before. Now I try to make sure all our bottles and jars are lidless in the recycling bin.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I knew that they preferred it that way, but I thought it was because it was easier to recycle. Good to know.

[Griffin NoName]

Hmmm. I tend to screw caps on to prevent soggy rubbish if they aren't quite drained (having drained them thoroughly perhpas this is just obsessive.compulsive). I don't like soggy rubbish.......

The thing that puzzles me about landfill is how we have land for any more.

[Aggie]

We have lots of land on this side of the pond, unfortunately.

Does the entire US not recycle glass bottles?  I had trouble this summer trying to find bins for recycling beer bottles.  I got some very blank looks when asking about them.  We return them for deposit, but mostly I didn't want to throw them in the trash.

The dirty secret up here is that much of the glass collected for 'recycling' is crushed and sent to landfill anyways.   The community I grew up in used to have a glass plant, but they got bought up by some American multinational glass corp and mothballed.  Now all the glass collected locally goes into a hole in the ground.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

One of the saddest things I know, is that glass is >not< recycled properly.

The process of making glass automatically de-contaminates the majority of stuff that would make it unsutable, but we just don't do it.

Glass from raw materials, with roughly 10-20% post-consumer make-up, is too cheap to make, so there is little or no incentive to make a 100% recycled product.

Even though there is no limit on how many times you could remelt and reuse old glass-- the process literally does not degrade the materials in any way.

Contrast this with plastics-- these are not very recyclable, and two or three around the block  and you get a highly degraded product that is unsuitable for much of anything.  And you cannot re-use plastic into food containers, because the plastic molecules can absorb nasties (unlike glass) and trap them-- releasing them later if the container is heated above room temps.

Metals?  They've been recycling metals since forever-- it's much, much cheaper to remelt metal, than to make it from scratch.  Especially aluminum, but also copper, steel, iron, etc.

Alas, poor glass-- would that your raw materials were harder to get....

[Aggie]

Well, the good news is that it's virtually harmless to dispose of, or even to litter with (minus potential for cuts).   Sand to sand, dust to dust.

I wish we were better at re-using standard size bottles (beer, etc), which does happen to some degree.

[Swatopluk]

But that would totally destroy branding by bottle form. Do we want to become like commie Eastern Europe?
And the rich will need a lot of broken glass as part of the outer defenses of their gated communities.
Iirc brown glass is the last step before recycling becomes uneconomic (white->green->brown). A single green bottle can spoil a whole container of white.
In some places there are strict regulations against blue glass bottles btw.

There is an idea to turn used glass into glass foam that can be used as a durable building material. That would be a glass house where throwing rocks is not suitable for a proverb Given the energy needed for a brick kiln compared to the relatively low melting point of common glass that could actually save a lot of fuel.

[Opsa]

We have lots of land on this side of the pond, unfortunately.

Does the entire US not recycle glass bottles?  I had trouble this summer trying to find bins for recycling beer bottles.  I got some very blank looks when asking about them.  We return them for deposit, but mostly I didn't want to throw them in the trash.

The dirty secret up here is that much of the glass collected for 'recycling' is crushed and sent to landfill anyways.   The community I grew up in used to have a glass plant, but they got bought up by some American multinational glass corp and mothballed.  Now all the glass collected locally goes into a hole in the ground.

It's up to the community, here in the States. In our community we do have recycling bins for various colors of glass (blue goes with green), plastics, paper and cardboard. We also have clothing recycling, in which I think old clothes are sorted and some go to vintage clothing people, some to charities that provide clothing (like women's shelters) and the rest is ground up for stuffing mattresses.

The landfill guy said that some recycling is just too expensive to do, and so the stuff goes into the landfill. So we could be throwing the plastics into the regular compacter, but it makes us feel good to put it in the recycling bin. Or maybe we just hope that they can make the recycling work, so we stay in the habit of putting the plastics in the bins.

Another great annoyance is that tires (or tyres) are no longer accepted at landfills without a fee charged, because they're so expensive to deal with. As a result, people are leaving old tires along country lanes and creating a real eyesore. It's a crummy situation.

[Aggie]

The landfill guy said that some recycling is just too expensive to do, and so the stuff goes into the landfill. So we could be throwing the plastics into the regular compacter, but it makes us feel good to put it in the recycling bin. Or maybe we just hope that they can make the recycling work, so we stay in the habit of putting the plastics in the bins.

That's my take on it as well; it's an expensive way to deal with what's going to ultimately be rubbish, but it can be looked at as a training process for the future.  With proper management on the disposal end, there's also the prospect that storing various waste streams in separate cells could allow recovery at a future date.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Swato:  re--foamed glass.  I vaguely remember reading about that.... it's way cool, and as I recall, the insulation properties are very good as well.   

Another possible use for old glass, is ground up into marble-sized chunks, and used as filler for concrete.  Concrete is basically sand, portland cement and some sort of gravel.  The glass could easily be used for either the sand or the gravel or even both-- you'd need to tumble it some, to keep it from being too sharp-edged.  But glass has excellent crush-strength, which is what you'd want here.  As an added bonus?  After it's set, if you grind-off, then polish roughly 1/3 of an inch or so?  This reveals the glass particles, and makes an excellent pseudo-terrazzo floor, for much cheaper than a real one.

Opsa:  re--old tires.  That is a serious hazard, even though a significant fraction of them are ground up, the steel magnetically removed, the non-rubber fibers removed via air-density sorters and the rubber particles re-introduced into tire making stream.  The recycled rubber helps stabilize the raw rubber material.

Another use for old tires that was proposed, but never adopted because of concrete lobby, was using used tires as a roadside barrier.  The project was done many years ago by some university or other--I forget which.  Anyhow, you stack the tires in an interlaced pattern (akin to the classic running-bond pattern for bricks) lengthwise.  The cross-section is triangular, with a single row of tires at the top of the stack.   As you lay each row down, you pack it with ordinary dirt, using common road-making machinery.  The combination of dirt, some gravel, and the tires makes for a very sturdy barrier--if a tad unsightly.   But here's where the genius comes in:  you deliberately plant kudzu vines in the exposed dirt, between the layers of tires, and along the very top.  Within a year, the whole thing is covered in vines-- a green barrier, literally blending into the landscape.  And you get pretty blue tiny flowers in the spring.  In most locales, it'll stay green year-round, if there's sufficient rainfall.   But the vines help keep the dirt in place.

In tests, it performed better than concrete, but does need repair after a major impact.   But unlike the concrete barrier?  The crashing vehicle suffers considerably lower damage.   Tires and dirt absorb most of the impact energy, it would seem.

But that's just too... out-of-the box I'd guess.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There are houses made of bottles and it seems those insulate quite well. Perhaps something to think for Aggie's project?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_wall

[Aggie]

Why do you think they call them mason jars?