Follow that bottle
Plastic beverage containers — usually made of polyethylene terephthalate, an inexpensive, shatter-resistant and recyclable resin — are ubiquitous. And these days, evolving green initiatives, new laws and changing consumer attitudes are feeding an expanding loop that converts our trash into products you can drink from, wear or even walk on.
Last year’s statewide ban on plastic bottles entering landfills means many formerly discarded items now have a chance of being reincarnated in a hot new body instead of getting a one-way ticket to a stinky graveyard (it takes an estimated 700 years for a plastic bottle to even begin to decompose).
This is good, insofar as it keeps them (at least temporarily) from ending up down in the dump. But considering the amount of trucking and processing involved in producing a “recycled” container that’s, at best, still 90 percent virgin material, there are serious questions about the effectiveness of all this.
An in-depth analysis by Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (tinyurl.com/26u8tgz) concluded that “The benefit of recycling [plastic water bottles] relative to disposal is so small that it cannot be considered significant. In contrast, drinking tap water in the ‘typical’ reusable bottle reduces these impacts anywhere from 72 to 96 percent, even if the reusable bottle is washed frequently in a highly inefficient dishwasher.”
Other uses, such as carpet, may be somewhat more viable. But in any case, tossing that plastic bottle in the recycling bin marks the start of a long, complex, often circular journey that might wind up (though perhaps in altered form) right back in Buncombe County. Here’s a typical route a container recycled in Buncombe County might take.
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2010/111710follow-that-bottle
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