April 29, 2025 • 43 mins
In honor of Earth Month, this episode of Grown-Up Stuff celebrates all things recycling with guest Kara Napolitano, the Education and Outreach Manager at Circular Services. Hosts Lea Palmieri and Matt Stillo learn about all the ways (and items) we can reduce, reuse, and recycle in our everyday lives, and the impact it has on our local and global communities. For more information you can check out CircularServices.com and follow on Facebook and Instagram @BalconesBK, and check your local municipalities to learn more about recycling in your area.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby. Hi, I'm Leah Palmery and I'm Matt Stillo and welcome, Welcome,
Welcome to another episode of Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yes, welcome to another episode of our podcast, Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Lea, that's sorry, that's my line.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh no, I know.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I just took what you said and I recycled it.
Because today's episode is all about recycling.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Okay, I see what you did there, and I would
actually request that you reduce how much you reuse. What
I say.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh, I see what you did there, and I love
it because we are also going to learn about reducing
and reusing.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Ah, that's right. Our guest today is Karen Napolitano, education
and outreach manager at Circular Services, who I met in
real life during a tour of her facility and was
so impressed that I just needed to learn more.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, it turns out when it comes to recycling, we
all need to learn more, and luckily Kara can help
with exactly that. We're going to learn what containers go where,
what happens to them on their journey, and the small
adjustments we can make every day to make our local
and global communities a better place. Imagine that I do
imagine that I would love to imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I would actually love to live in that world.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
A world. What a world? And now here's Kara.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Before we dive in car. I gotta say, this is
the first time, for the think of the history of
this podcast, we've all been in the same place. So
you're in the studio. We just built this new studio.
It's one of the first recordings that we've done in
this new studio. And we're excited to have you here
because I met you in real life. I are l
which is crazy. So basically, my wife Elena is the
best human on the planet and we very very much
(01:42):
so care about recycling, reducing, and reusing. We hoard all
of our plastic bags to take to the groceries, and we're
talking about that. We do the same with our batteries,
with our electronics. We go to the New York sanitation
events that.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
They have, Yeah, the safe events, disposal events, excellent, good
for you.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You go to Sephora to do the drop off compos
and so she just wanted to know more. Yeah, And
so what she did is she signed us up to
take a tour of the MIURF, the Sunset Park Materials
Recovery Facility or MURF and you gave such an amazing overview.
I couldn't shut up. I was asking you all these questions.
I'm sure everyone's like, this fucking guy. It's perfect. And
(02:18):
I told you, I just have to have you on
the show because it's something that I think is so
so important and is so overlooked and just vital to
building a better future for all of us. And so
I would actually love to hear you and your own
words tell us like what you do there and kind
of an overview of your role there. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
So I am the education director at the Sunset Park
Materials Recovery Facility or MURF for short, which is a
fun acronym. So AMURF is basically a sorting facility for recyclables.
So when we are instructed to recycle, we're generally instructed
to mix different materials together into a bin. So then
those materials are going to travel to a MIURF THEMURF
(02:56):
then sorts them out through a series of technologies or
human power. So that's what we do in Brooklyn. My
job there, I get to be the educator, which I'm
very honored to be. So we have the facility sorting
the recyclables and then selling the recyclables. It's also very important.
But we also have the Recycling Education Center, which is
like an interactive recycling museum where folks get to have
(03:18):
these hands on experiences that really mirror how we operate
at the facility, how we sort all of these materials,
and really how materials.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Work in general.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
You know, we have a station that shows where materials
come from and how they're made, and we have a
station that shows what they can become after they get recycled.
So visitors can come and experience the Recycling Education Center
and I can answer all of their recycling questions and
explain to them what goes in which bin and why.
And then they get to go upstairs and see this
massive facility.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean you saw it. It's a mountain, a full mountain, yeah,
of recyclable.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Few hundred tons of recyclables, yeah, and then a huge
room of two and a half miles of conveyor belts
and again a series of technologies and some humans doing
it as well. That's sorting it all out and preparing
it to become new things.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And just a quick question, how many Merphs actually have
an education department?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yeah, in this country, there are I think somewhere around
like three hundred and fifty morphs, but I don't know
how many have education centers yet. It's not the norm,
but it is becoming a bit of a trend.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think it should be mandatory, and here's why. And
it sounds maybe silly, but I did have a profound
experience because our experience in this country of recycling is well,
hope this gets where it's supposed to go. Yeah, yeah,
And to go there and see how much you guys
were recovering and we're going to get into all this
because we have so many questions about like myths about
recycling and stuff like that that we're excited for you
(04:39):
to answer for our audience. But to see it all
with my own eyes and to go through the museum
into hear you speech was just like really, I felt
empowered because sometimes you're just like again, you have a
hope of hope again, I see you never ye hope,
and I assume you're going to be made into a
chair or something and you just don't know. So to
see it in action was awesome. Yeah, that's the point
of the ED center.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
You're pulling back the curtain and showing people something they
don't normally get to see that. Hopefully everyone is interacting
with and participating. We want people to participate.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's already made me a better recyclers so much that
I learned from you that I'm excited to share people today.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's going to be true of all of us.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think you're just going to kick us off though
with our first question.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, Kara, we're going to start with the basics. So, really,
when we talk about recycling, what is that?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Where does it fall.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
In the conversation where we talk about sustainability, like how
does it apply exactly? And most importantly, why should grown
ups and young people care about it?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
So I will give you a very basic general definition
of recycling, but we there are many ways one can
describe it. Basically, recycling is taking materials that have already
been probably manufactured and used, and using those materials to
then be broken down and make new useful materials. Right,
there are a lot of other finer definitions kind of
(05:59):
within that. There's upcycling and downcycling. Technically, upcycling is when
something is made into something considered of a higher use,
or downcycling is when something is made into something considered
a lower, lesser use. But these are all forms of recycling,
So how does that fit into the environmental equation and
sort of environmental sustainability. So something that I try to
(06:21):
tell everyone that comes on my tours. I usually say
it at the end, but I'll just kick off rabit today.
Recycling is good and recycling is helpful. But recycling doesn't
save the planet. That's not a thing. Reducing and reusing
is more so it's going to save the planet. So
recycling is a part of this reduce reuse and as
(06:42):
a last.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Resort recycle practice.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
So saving materials by recycling is beneficial and has its place.
I think some of us have this idea of like
perceived abundance where we just have so much stuff and
we can just buy it and use it and throw
it away to our heart's content. And that's not necessarily
the case. We don't have an unlimited supply of everything,
and that's sort of where reducing and reusing and recycling
(07:08):
can help us to conserve our precious resources and also
generating a lot of waste is expensive. It is financially expensive.
New York City spent something like over four hundred million
dollars a year to send trash, not recycling, but to
send trash to its final destination outside of the five burrows,
and then generating waste is also environmentally expensive and impactful.
(07:33):
You know, landfills where we send most of our trash
in this country are a leading cause of methane emissions.
Methane is a real bad grainhouse cast. Then we need
to cut our methane emissions like yesterday. But all that's
to say, reducing, reusing and recycling are to preserve precious
resources and protect our ability to safely and healthily exist
(07:55):
on this planet. And I have to say that thing
of it in the long term, like that is really
hard for people to conceptualize, Like thinking about how my
actions now of throwing this milk jug in the recycling
bin is going to protect the future generations having more resources,
Like that's a difficult argument to People are thinking about
how they're going to buy groceries today. They're not thinking
(08:18):
about how we're gonna mind petroleum in one hundred years off.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
We're still well doing. To put it succinctly, recycling is
the bare minimum that you can.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Do this, And I think a way to get people
to participate and care about recycling is not necessarily to
get them to care about future generations. I want them to,
but I think that's a tougher argument. I think the
way to make it work is making it as easy
and convenient as possible for people to do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, a perfect example this morning, I finished my green
juice from Trader Joe's, and then I popped that bad
boy bottle right in my recycling compartment. Yeah, so then
what happens, I say, buy green juice, thank you so
much for filling me up and keeping me healthy. Where's
that bottle off to? Where's he going? What's happening in
his next life?
Speaker 4 (09:04):
It was a plastic bottle, Yes, all right, great, So
if you recycled it at home, if you put it
in your blue bin with the blue bin and the
grain bin in New York City, the grain is for
paper and cardboard, blue for metal, glass, plastic and cartons.
So that blue bin material is then going to travel
to one of the facilities operated by Circular Services, that's
the company I work for. So then at the MURF
(09:26):
we're going to sort all those materials out. So probably
your green juice was a type of plastic called number
one plastic or PET or polyethylene to ref the late.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I hope I put the right emphastist on the right
level there.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
But we're going to sort it out into a bale
like a cube, like if you've seen the movie Wally right,
the little robot making the bales. We make bales of
a whole bunch of pet of number one plastic with
your bottle, and then the mirf will sell that to
what's called a plastic reclaimer. Okay, so the plastic reclaimer,
they are breaking down that plastic, They wash it, they
(09:59):
melt it, turn it into these little pellets that they will.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Then sell to a manufacturer.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
The manufacturer is going to make it back into whatever
is going to be sold back to you. It'll be
made into you know, maybe another bottle, maybe for soap,
or it might be made into clothing or carpeting. Right
because pet that's the same material as polyester. Oh, so
it could actually become a fabric and then once made
into that next thing, it's sold back to you.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Wow. So I have a two part question here. Basically,
like if all of our glass and plastic and everything
goes into the blue bins right at the murf, you
guys use different kinds of technology to sort it, which
is really cool to see. So I'd love for you
to talk a little bit about how you separate those
things and how they each get kind of individually recycled,
and then more broadly, like how this might change city
(10:47):
to city to state to state around the United States,
and what these merphs look like elsewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Sure, So generally, any MIRFH is probably going to have
a magnet that's going to pull out all the ferris
or all the magnet metal. That's going to be pretty standard.
And then some merphs also have something called an eddy
current which actually ejects non ferrous metal, so it gives
it an electromagnetic charge, and then there's a rotor at
(11:11):
the end that's working against that charge and like be
like flying in animate objects shooting the non ferrous metal
onto another conveyor belt. And that's becoming a bit more common,
but not all merphs are necessarily going to have that.
Some of that might be done by hand. And then
we also have these optical sorders. So the optical sorders
use near infrared light to scan items and they can
(11:34):
actually see what those items are chemically made of. We
can program them to look for a variety of products,
like different types of plastic or cartons or paper. We're
really not supposed to receive paper. It's supposed to go
in the green bin paper, and the blue binds always
still end up having to sort it. But then the
near infrared it identifies the material it's looking for, and
then it uses an air jet to shoot it like
(11:56):
more flying and animate objects to shoot it onto another
conveyor belt. And those have become pretty common. Like most
merphs will have one or two of those, larger murphs
might have six or seven. But then some of that
work might be done by hand as well, depending on
the size of the facility, kind of like.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The last resort, right, Yeah, for things that don't get
scooped u by everything else. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So you'll hear people say recyclables just end up in
landfill anyway?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Is that for real?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Not really, And I think that that comes from someone
will read a media story and it'll say something like
such and such city was sending such type of recyclables
to a landfill for this period of time, like they
were having trouble selling this type of plastic, so they
were sending it to landfill for a period of time.
And I think people read something like that and they
(12:45):
think it applies to everywhere all the time, when no,
it's just that one city for that one period of
time with that one material, and really what will happen
is they'll struggle to sell it for a time and
then they'll figure it out. But if your municipality or
your town or city is asking you to put specific
items into a bin, they're not trying to trick you.
(13:08):
Those are the items that they know they can sort
and sell from their local materials recovery facility. And if
something happens and they all of a sudden have to
long term start sending those items to trash, they're just
going to cancel their recycling program. Like it's expensive to
send a separate truck out to collect a separate stream
of materials that no one's trying to throw money away
(13:28):
like that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, it is funny thinking about the oh this is
just an elaborate facade. Yeah, all of the workers and
the trucks and the infrastructure is just to make you
feel it's happening. It costs money, Yeah, No, it's a business.
It was great to hear you, because this is like
my number one thing, which is why I was excited
to go, is because I feel like I've read those
stories in the area. And not to say that the
(13:50):
situation on the planet Earth in general isn't dire, It
absolutely is. But when I read these piece has been
like what like nine percent or ten percent of the
things that we Oh.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
No, now I have to explain that to you.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
How you do, and I want you to explain it
very well. But like we hear things like nine percent
of everything we recycle actually gets recycled. And you just.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Played a really intense game of telephone in your own brain.
You know that game where you like pass the thing
down the line and it gets distorted and that's wrong.
So yes, there is the statistic floating around. It actually
pertains to plastics. So there's the statistic that nine percent
of plastic gets recycled.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So this was.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Determined by the EPA. They put out a study the
Sustainable Materials Management back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So what they.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Did is they measured all plastics that had been manufactured
in one year. And I mean, you just have to
let that sink in for a moment. All plastics that
had been manufactured in this country. I believe in a year,
it's a lot of stuff like you know, tables, chairs, shoes,
some are bottles, some are recyclable, some are not, some
(14:58):
are durable and meant to be reused us. So they
found that out of all plastic manufactured in a year,
United States residents like you and I put nine percent
of that into recycling bins. So what I think people
interpret from that statistic is they think, oh, of all
the plastic I diligently put in my bin, only nine
percent of it is getting recycled, When that's not what
(15:20):
was being measured. It's actually the percentage that people are
putting into their bins. And if you put more of
the correct stuff into your bins, that percentage will actually
go up.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And then of the things that we put into the bin,
like something close to like one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, so once you put it into the bin, it
goes on a journey, right And at the Mirph stage
where I work, we're a pretty good mirf. We might
lose like five percent of valuables, and you know, murphs
throughout the country might lose five to I think like
thirteen percent of valuables depending on how well they're operating,
and then in manufacturing there's going to be some percentage
of loss somewhere along the line, but it's nowhere near
(15:57):
ninety one percent. Yes, a ninety one percent loss would
make zero sense.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, Well, it's great to hear, because when you hear
these things, you feel disheartened about recycling, and so to
hear from you they're like, no, it's closer to actually
like the reverse of that. Yeah, it's actually being recycled
from the things that you're putting in the bin. So
really really important to hear, and thank you for clearing
that up. So we're going to play now a fun,
fun game and it's called it is e Recycle Level,
(16:25):
And we've got a fun fund list here, and so
we'll talk about like maybe in general in the United
States with that asterik of definitely look it up for
your city. So Leah, kick it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Off all plastics with a triangle symbol on it all.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
No, Okay, it has to have a specific number. It
depends on where you live, Okay. So different municipalities will
explain it differently, they will express what they accept in
different ways. In New York City, we say send us
all rigid plastic, any hard plastic. But some municipalities will
say we only want plastics number one and two. It
all depends on what their local mirph can sell.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Okay, and I think it's important to say just because
a lot of times the number is in that triangle thing, right,
and everyone goes, oh, this is recyclable. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And if you're looking at a piece of plastic that
little recycling symbol with the number inside it, it's not
telling you, hey, I'm recyclable. It's telling you, hey, this
is what type of plastic I am. Some are recyclable
and some aren't. Some municipalities don't even use the numbers.
They just say send us all the bottles and all
the jugs, or send us all the containers. So you
just have to look up what they're saying and do that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Amazing. And one other thing that was kind of confusing
is like those cartons, right, because they're like kind of
plastic key, kind of papery. What's the deal with those.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Cartons are recyclable in most recycling programs in the US? Okay,
pizza boxes? Most places do accept pizza boxes.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, important to know. And what about if they're like
just covered in like all remnants of pizza.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
I mean, don't leave any pizza in the box. Yes,
but definitely in New York City we'll take the greasiest
of pizza.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Boxes we have pizzas. I guess it works wonderful.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Definitely something to look up, though some places only want
clean pizza boxus.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Fair enough. Let's go to plastic bags, and I'm thinking
like the shopping bag plastics.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Like the single use stopping bags exactly. Those are pretty
much not recyclable anywhere in this country, as far as
in your home bin or like in a recycling right.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And why is that? Yeah? Two reasons.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So, first of all, it's really hard for us to
sort them at the MURFH. A plastic bag is what
we call a tangler because it tangles in the sorting equipment,
so it's a big pain for us. And then even
if we do manage to sort them, nobody wants to
buy them. Something is recyclable if it has a market,
(18:40):
if there's a company out there that wants to buy it.
Plastic bags, they're pretty flimsy. It's not really a strong material.
You don't get much from it. Can we recycle clothes
not in the same way you can recycle metal glass, plastic. Okay,
you can donate clothes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's about it. That's yeah, yeah, and they might get
one more life and they might not. They might not
h H and M. As a program for a closed
recycling and so we'll typically take stuff there. Good life
pro tip. What about shredded paper in.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Some places that's a maybe if you have a recycling
program where everything goes in one bin, metal glass, plastic, paper,
and cardboard. Usually you can't recycle shredded paper because it's
so hard to sort the little bits out from everything else.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How about bottle caps and do they have to be
on the bottle?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
So the rule for caps is always leave caps on. Okay,
that's it. This is the biggest thing that I learned
about your tour because like, I never do this. I'm like, what,
it's in the bin, right, But you explained that the
reason why we put them on the bottle.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Is because it's very difficult to capture small plastics we'll
fall through.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, we can.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Actually if you put a metal bottle cap in there,
we can capture that. We can sort that with magnets
and the eddy current, the cool reverse magnet easy, but
small plastics are really hard to sort. They sort of
fall through the cracks and get lost. But leave it
attached to the big bottle. It'll make it through.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And now my caps are on the bottle.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Great influence.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What U batteries?
Speaker 4 (20:06):
You should never put any battery in your recycling bin ever, Okay,
it goes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
In the trash.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
So regular old like single use, double A, triple A batteries.
In New York State, it is legal to put those
in the trash. It depends on the battery, right, Any
lithium ion or rechargeable battery. Do we know what those
can do?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Free charge, be reused, yes, which is great.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
And then at the end of their life they can
cause dangerous and devastating fires. Oh so we actually see
one to three battery fires a day.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It's just terrifying.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
So please no rechargeable batteries and no electronics. They often
contain batteries.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I think.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Actually Staples will now take back any battery for recycling,
which is great, but often the place where you purchase
the battery electronic wonderful. Yeah, you have to take it
back for safe disposal.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I love that. So at home depot you can actually
do battery and light bulbs. Oh, which that's why can
you not recycling?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, some light bulbs are hazardous waste, so you can't.
The regular old Edison bulbs you can throw in the trash,
but some of the newer bulbs you have to take
them back.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
And how about toothpaste or cosmetic containers.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
The simple answer is no. Okay.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
A lot of those cosmetic containers are small plastics, so
they're really hard for us to capture. And that's actually
something that Circular Services is working on. So one division
they're working on recovering small plastics. It's going to be
a bit of a road and a bit of a journey,
but right now they're just real hard to capture.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And what about receipt paper, most places, it's a no.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
I think there's a little bit of toxicity in that paper,
and so some recycling.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Programs don't want them. Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Paper towels, Can I recycle those?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Well, if you used a paper towel as a napkin, yeah,
then you can compose it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Really like oh yeah, paper towels like your good old bounties.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, napkins, towels, paper plates, if it's
covered in food. If it's food soiled, you can put
it in your organic spin. Okay, you know, you want
to look at what's accepted in your organics program. But
usually if you have an organics program that accepts food waste,
they're also going to accept food soiled paper. But if
you're using a paper towel like with cleaning chemicals, and
(22:27):
then you're cleaning up grit that goes in the trash.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Okay, really good to know. And then this one's always
confuses me. The little paper envelopes with the little plastic windows.
Oh yeah, those are fine. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Listen, So paper mills where all this paper is going,
you have to imagine they are no stranger to a
little envelopes with plastic windows or like staples or tape. Right,
these are things that they have to be set up
to deal with. So if you want to take it off, great,
it's gonna have to be removed anyway, but don't freak
out about it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
You can put that little envelope in the paper and
you'd maybe throw that away, right because it's very flimsy,
like you're not going to recycle that.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Oh yeah, that's soft plastic, that little plastic window is
trash trash?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay? Cool? And that's is it recyclable? Lang? And ask
Kara's said.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Check your local municipalities page for trash and recycling to
learn what's accepted.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And guess what, when we recycle, we all win.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah. I love that. Yes, thank you. Everyone's a winner here.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Break and we're back with more grown up stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
How do I.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Don't so when I'm doing my paper recyclables and cardboard,
do I have to break down the cardboard completely because
I have some pizza boxes and stuff and I just
want to fling them in. But do I need to
like be there and you know, making it into a
real flats?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
I mean, you know we talked about Suburbia with the
nice recycling carts. If you're just putting it in the
cart you just wanted to fit in your cart, those
are like the big plastic WHEELI pins right with the
lids that open and close the fancy. If it fits, great,
But if you need to fold it for it to fit,
should fold it?
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah? I have to imagine it's not required. But like
you'd probably been making everyone's life a whole lot easier
if you did like they would just.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Be like, oh my god, thank you so much for
this nice person for breaking this down, instead.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Of like I've heard of collection workers that if you
don't set it out right, they don't pick it up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yes, so that is fair. Yeah, so this is another
big myth. I feel like there are plenty of single
use plastics and other recyclable materials that were like using
with other things and they get like messy. How important
is rinsing fly rinsing? Does it have to be for
it to be recycled?
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah, it's good practice to clean your recyclables, like give
them a little rinse. But if you can't get every
bit of peanut butter off the pano butter jar, it's okay.
If this stuff isn't perfectly clean, we can still take it,
but just.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Like try to be nice.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, in general, give it that rinse, Give it to
your dog. That's so true.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Does it matter if non recyclables end up in recycling?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
That is certainly not ideal. Okay.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Yeah, So when a piece of trash or garbage, right,
a non recyclable is placed into a recycling bin, it's
probably gonna go to the recycling facility with all the
other recyclables. It's going to go through the whole all
those fancy technologies I was explaining at the Materials Recovery facility,
it's gonna waste energy and time along the way, and
then it's still gonna.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
End up in a landfill. I feel like that people
who are putting something that doesn't belong there that are
being like hopeful, like maybe there's no word for that.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
It's called wish cycling. We don't love wish cycling. And
then there was this saying, when in doubt, throw it out,
which I also don't love because then you could be
throwing away valuables. I like to say, when in doubt,
find out. Yeah, you have the internet. It's pretty friendly
and user friendly.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, okay, great, so do your research in the throat way.
If it takes a minute, just look it up.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
What is your advice for setting up effective recycling systems
at home?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:14):
What I recommend is in your home. Of course, you
want to bin in a central location where it fits. Ideally,
wherever you have one bin, you have all the bins. Ideally,
wherever you have a trash bin, you also have a
bin for metal, glass, plastic, and cartons, and a bin
for paper and cardboard. If you don't have all the
bins available, people are going to put stuff in the
(26:35):
wrong bin, you know. And I also really recommend putting
a sign on your bins. I know people don't read signs,
but I say give people the opportunity to do the
right thing. Let's try to help and educate and guide
each other. The one trick there is in the bathroom,
and I just want to remind everyone that your shampoo
bottle is recyclable, the little toilet paper tube is recyclable
(26:59):
with paper. I know you might not put a recycling
bin in your bathroom, but please just walk those twenty
extra or whatever feet to the recycling bin and recycle
that stuff. But convenient location, have all bins available, and
if you are able to separate out your food waste,
if you have a spot for it on the counter, great,
but a great place to keep it is in your
freezer or fridge if you don't have space, and then
(27:21):
bring it out to your bin for collection the night
before it gets collected.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is huge because a lot of people are like,
I don't want to compost because it's males gross, and
I'm like, you have your freezer and if you put
in the freezer, this is no longer a problem.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah, it works great, and then your actual trash doesn't
stink anymore and you barely have to take it out.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And that's the whole thing behind the reason why we
want to start composting is because essentially, if all of
your organic materials are in your trash or they're going
to landfill. You had mentioned earlier about those are some
of the largest polluters of methane.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
And that's why it's the organic waste. Organic waste breaking
down in landfills. It breaks down with no light and
no air. That is an anaerobic process, big fancy words,
but that's what gets the methane. This is why landfills
again leading cause of methane emissions in this country.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And you're also just like emitting less trash too, because
if like half of your crash is organic waste.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yes, in New York City, we know that about a
third of our waste could go in the recycling bin metal, glass,
plastic or paper and cardboard, and another one third to
sometimes one half of our waste could go in that
organic spin. That is a huge POTENTI if we could
do that, if we could recycle most of our recyclables
and compost most of our organic waste. We could beat
(28:36):
Seattle or San Francisco, whoa absolutely wild they're winning and rec.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
And like, you know, it's funny, like a lot of
like composting, it's this new thing. What is this thing?
But like most of the world that is in the
United States composts me too. It's the most simple, basic thing.
Like my wife is it's just fine. She doesn't listen
to the show I talk about it all the time.
She's Ukrainian and like she's like from Ukraine, and I've
been to her parents' house and they have these gigantic
(29:00):
composting dens. They don't even like call it. That's just
how they throw away most of the stuff because they
have a garden and then they just take it and
they use it to garden. And so like, if you
could get rid of half of your trash doing something
that most of the world does de facto by composting,
like that alone could make such a huge difference.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Just normalizing it, yeah, right, teaching folks to do it
from the start, from when they're very young, making it
part of the routine.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, there's a book that I recommend to people all
the time. And I'm sure maybe if you guys have
heard of it's called Atomic Habits by James Blair, and
he really talks about how so much of what we
do is because we're beholden to our own environments. And
so if you set up your life to make it
obvious and easy to do, you will do it more.
And so like even for me, I had to kind
of train myself for like I don't throw my avocado
(29:48):
shells in the trash. I go to my freezer and
I put them there, and I've gotten that into my
muscle memory. It's all just about these little systems. If
you make it obvious and easy, it's much much easier
to recycle trying.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Okay, So so let's say we are absolute recycling pros. Now,
we do everything right, we put everything in the bin
that it's supposed to be in la world. Yes, it's
going great. However, there are two other elements that we
need to think about. So what are some of the
things that we can do in our homes to reduce
and reuse?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Thank you for asking. Reducing is essentially using less stuff. Right,
If you buy less stuff, you'll generate less waste.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
We brought the example of a soda stream, right, I
think are something that I do a ton of leasure
aton of Seltzer, and I was using plastic bottles and
aluminum cans. And if you get a soda stream, you've
got a reusable bottle you're reusing, You've got a reusable
source of carbonation through the soda stream canisters that you
can take back to the store and use again. So
one great example of.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah, and when you reuse things, you have to reuse
them over and over. But reusing things also will help
you reduce what you are throwing away. So really getting
those practices into our bones, buying less and buying to last,
and that's tough for people.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I've read that when it comes to you should buy
things that you believe you'll wear at least thirty times,
So just to like put a number on that when
you're going through your closet and stuff and you're like, oh,
I've only worn this twenty six So I guess I
need to get more and more uses out of this.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
I mean, also, I've been a part of a wonderful
clothing swap community for years.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
That's why I don't buy clothes anymore.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, you know, get some folks together that when they're
done with something, they're going to pass it on.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And that can be done with a lot of things.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Giving things away for free, getting things for free at
these kind of swap mentalities or like swapping communities for stuff.
I see people throwing valuable things out on the streets
so often, and the great thing about the city is
that then someone will often come along and pick it
up and make it there's and reuse it. But if
they don't, something of extreme value is just going to
get thrown away. So getting out of this mindset of
(31:47):
disposability and getting into the mindset of reuse.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I'll shout out a few things here. So there's a
great Facebook community called buy Nothing. Yes, And it's not
only great to get something that you maybe need that
you don't have to buy, but it's also a great
way to get rid of things. And I was shout
out my wife again. She does all the time, and
I'm amazed at her patients. And it's been an education
for me because it's such an American mindset that we
just throw things away. But anything books, whatever that I'm
(32:11):
trying to get rid of. She's like I'm going to
put it on buy nothing, don't throw it away, She'll
take it to good Will. Another great thing to do.
There is a subreddit community called buy It for Life
where they talk about products that will last you a lifetime,
be it clothing or home appliances or something, because it's
very true that things are being made more cheaply these
days because companies want you to buy it and again
(32:31):
and again and again, like our phones and our laptops.
So buy It for Life as a great subreddit. And
there's two other examples that might come to me, But
I feel like you were going to say something, but.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
The Facebook buy nothing group. A friend of mine too
was like, there's people that have like really nice stuff
that they can involve in with and I just want
to get rid of So you.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Now know, Yeah, and that's something that's so difficult about it,
Like we want people to not just throw things away,
but yeah, to go on to buy nothing, to post it,
to wait for you to never reply.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
It does take work.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
It does take time, and we're very much a single
use culture of convenience here, so it's a big ask.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And I do think that, like I'm also Salvation Army
and good will they do pickups too? So, like I
think another thing is like it's just like big and heavy,
but that can be something really really easy to like
call them schedule time, have them come pick up something
big and they can actually have someone else make use
of it. Nice.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I know, Department of Sanitation also has a donation program.
I think NYC dot gov slash donate and they accept
a wide variety of materials as well for donation.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And that kind of leads into you know, so beyond
the environmental benefits, kind of what economic advantages does recycling
provide to community?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yes, so that's something that we need to build, so
circular services, right, this is the company I work for. Again,
our goal as a company is basically to create this
thing called a circular economy. Then I'll describe what that
is first by saying we are not currently operating in
a circular economy. We are operating in a near economy
(34:01):
where when we want to make stuff, resources are extracted,
we make stuff, and when we're done with the stuff,
we throw it away. So this is not a sustainable
model because we are extracting resources, some of which are finite, right,
we don't have an unlimited supply and then we end
up with all this waste to manage at the end
of it. But that system is how our economy works
(34:23):
or dug very deep again into being this single use
culture of convenience. So what circular Services is looking at
doing is, well, how do we restructure an economy to
make it circular? So there are still jobs, right, and yeah,
people are still buying stuff, but not in such a
wasteful way. Products are still being manufactured, but not in
a wasteful way. How are we utilizing reuse and recycling
(34:47):
to the best of our ability in a circular economy.
Once a resource is extracted, it remains in use, preferably
through reuse or through some form of recycling. So what
does all that look like in the real day to
day world. Well, to make the economics of recycling work
will Recycling does cost money, and there's a potential to
(35:09):
make some of your money back as well.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But the value of.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
These materials it's constantly changing, so you're not necessarily going
to get all your money back and cover all your
operations by selling the recyclables. So there's a piece of
legislation called EPR Extended Producer Responsibility, So extended producer responsibility
extends the responsibility of the producer. You made that thing, Okay,
(35:37):
You're also going to help local municipalities pay to manage
it once it becomes waste, because right now it's just
the municipalities that pay, and it's expensive. And I'll tell
you this is already happening in Europe and Canada. They've
been doing extended producer responsibility I think for decades, so it's.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Not you know, the big companies. They're already doing it
in other countries where they have to exactly. So this
is where.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Legislation becomes important, just to give a little push because companies,
they'll make promises, they'll do things on their own to
a point, but at some point they also are going
to need a little push. So actually, five states in
the US have passed extended producer responsibility legislation. New York
State is trying to pass it as well. We do
have two bills currently in the works and we're hoping
(36:21):
for one to pass. You know, good EPR is EPR
that funds recycling. You know, it at least helps to
fund recycling and encourages producers ideally to do better. You know,
can you make products that are actually recyclable or even reusable,
so that can help with the economics of recycling certainly.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And this dovetails nicely back into our voting episode, which
is if you want to see this stuff for the
world people, Yeah, make it happen. Yeah, let's go, Kathy.
That's for the New Yorkers. Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
But also we've talked about the landfills and what those
kind of contribute negatively. But what affect does recycling have
on climate change and carbon emissions good and or bad?
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Yeah, so you have to know recycling isn't emission free.
There are trucks that collect you're recycling, there are facilities,
there are a manufacturing facies. It's a form of manufacturing.
But the benefit of recycling is that when you look
at overall environmental impacts of products made with all virgin
materials and you compare it to products made with recycled materials,
(37:28):
you're going to have lower impacts pretty much always it's
going to depend on the type of material, but pretty
much always lower impacts when you're using recycled content. So
that's the real environmental benefit that we see, and that
came from a study also back in twenty eighteen done
by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. They showed us again,
products made with recycled content will have a lower environmental impact.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Nice, Okay, to kind of put a succinct point on it,
I would actually love to hear if you've got a
message for people who are recycling skeptics. If someone came
up to you and said, like, well, I don't know,
I don't think it makes a big of a difference,
what would you say to them.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
I try to get it, like the specific thing that
they're doubtful about, so I'd maybe engage in some questions
with them. But I guess I go back to you know, look,
if your city is sending a truck out to get
a specific list of things, it's because those things are valuable.
So you can either give those things a new life,
or you can throw money and resources in the trash
(38:26):
and you can force speed money and resources back into
the earth, which is what we do with our trash,
most of it in this country. We bury it in
landfills where it's not doing anybody any good.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And then maybe another responsible like someone who's not necessarily
skeptic about the process of recycling, but just like skeptical
about any of this in general.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Yeah, I mean I would tell them to come to
Brooklyn and come on a tour, because often people when
they see it, when they see the process, that shifts
something in them. I see that happen a lot on
the tours, and I know that's not always possible. But
I do also have YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yes, and we will include a link to that in
the episode description, so check that out.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
What do you see for the future, So, I know
that we talked about like lasers and air jets and
claws and all these cools I wrote, Yeah, so many
are there other advancements and technologies that you are already
saying they might transform recycling and waste management in the
next decade and years to come.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Yeah, in this country, getting extended producer responsibility will help
worlds because that will help fund the recycling facilities so
they can have all the up to date technologies so
that they can sort the metal from the glass, from
the plastic from the cartons and recover more materials. They
need funding if they're going to get the technology to
do good work. But that's just one part in the
recycling process, and it is a process. There are many
(39:46):
players in many steps. So also seeing products designed for
reuse and recyclability, and that makes it a lot easier
for us as the consumer or resident. If everything that's
disposable is recycling, we don't have to think about what
goes in the bin or not. It's just well, this
package is a package, and so it's recyclable or preferred,
(40:07):
it's reusable, and it's very easy to go somewhere and
refill it or reuse it.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And then on the.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Side of the resident or consumer, we all need to
have access to recycling. There are some places in the
country that don't even have recycling access, so making it
available and convenient for as many people as possible is
going to be huge, and that's another thing that Circular
Services is working on, is sort of spreading out access
throughout the country. And then markets, recyclables need to be purchased,
(40:37):
materials need to be made with recycled content, and that's
something that you know, extended producer responsibility can help with. Also,
California and I think New Jersey and Washington have passed
legislation requiring that certain containers be made with a certain
amount of recycled content. So sort of pushing that envelope
of things then being made with recycled content, which then
(40:59):
sort of brings us back back to the beginning of design, right,
so design and then you know, residents putting things on
the right bin, and then facilities having the technology to
be able to sort it and reprocess it, and then
markets companies actually buying the stuff and using it to
make more recyclable or reusable stuff. Those are kind of
the necessary advancements in each of the key steps in
(41:19):
the process, and they are happening. I'm watching them happen.
But that's the direction we need to keep moving in.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Then will come full circle.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, yeah, love it. Is there any other way that like,
people can find out about you or the work that
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Yeah, circular services dot com, Okay, you can find us
and there should be a page for the Brooklyn facility
on there and you can book a tour.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
And hopefully other places around the country will also have
similar tours that people can go and check out and
learn and see.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Awesome. Well, Carrot, we can't thank you enough for coming
out and hanging out and teaching us about recycling today.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
Thank you so much, pleasure, thanks for having me reduce reuse.
And as a last resort recycled right words to lift.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Fine our Thanks to Kara for all of that great information.
I know that you and I have already implemented in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Absolutely, I am now putting all caps on bottles, oh,
no matter how big how small the caps go on
the bottles. And actually seeing this in real time at
the MIRF was the coolest thing. And so if you
are able to check out your local MIRPH to see
how some of these systems work in real life, I
highly recommend it. And if you can't, check out the
link in our description to see some of the YouTube
videos that Kara was talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I've seen some of them, but now I'm going to
go watch all of them because did you even know
that I think of you and Kara every single time
I deposit something in my recycling container.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I love that, and I hope that everyone thinks of
me and Kara when they deposit something in their recycling
bad they will.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Now you should, and of course, Matt, make sure that
you check your local municipalities website for all the latest
information on recycling in your area. So until next time,
good luck being a grownup.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is a production of Ruby's Studio for Myheartmedia. Our
executive producers are Lea pel.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Mary and matt'st This episode was edited and engineered by
Sierra Spreen
Speaker 1 (43:03):
And we also want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio,
including Sarah You, Ethan Vixell, racheus Wan Krasnoff, Lydia Kim
Amber Smith, Harper, Wayne Debragherrett, and Andy Kelly
Ruby. Hi, I'm Leah Palmery and I'm Matt Stillo and welcome, Welcome,
Welcome to another episode of Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yes, welcome to another episode of our podcast, Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Lea, that's sorry, that's my line.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh no, I know.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I just took what you said and I recycled it.
Because today's episode is all about recycling.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Okay, I see what you did there, and I would
actually request that you reduce how much you reuse. What
I say.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Oh, I see what you did there, and I love
it because we are also going to learn about reducing
and reusing.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Ah, that's right. Our guest today is Karen Napolitano, education
and outreach manager at Circular Services, who I met in
real life during a tour of her facility and was
so impressed that I just needed to learn more.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, it turns out when it comes to recycling, we
all need to learn more, and luckily Kara can help
with exactly that. We're going to learn what containers go where,
what happens to them on their journey, and the small
adjustments we can make every day to make our local
and global communities a better place. Imagine that I do
imagine that I would love to imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I would actually love to live in that world.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
A world. What a world? And now here's Kara.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Before we dive in car. I gotta say, this is
the first time, for the think of the history of
this podcast, we've all been in the same place. So
you're in the studio. We just built this new studio.
It's one of the first recordings that we've done in
this new studio. And we're excited to have you here
because I met you in real life. I are l
which is crazy. So basically, my wife Elena is the
best human on the planet and we very very much
(01:42):
so care about recycling, reducing, and reusing. We hoard all
of our plastic bags to take to the groceries, and we're
talking about that. We do the same with our batteries,
with our electronics. We go to the New York sanitation
events that.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
They have, Yeah, the safe events, disposal events, excellent, good
for you.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You go to Sephora to do the drop off compos
and so she just wanted to know more. Yeah, And
so what she did is she signed us up to
take a tour of the MIURF, the Sunset Park Materials
Recovery Facility or MURF and you gave such an amazing overview.
I couldn't shut up. I was asking you all these questions.
I'm sure everyone's like, this fucking guy. It's perfect. And
(02:18):
I told you, I just have to have you on
the show because it's something that I think is so
so important and is so overlooked and just vital to
building a better future for all of us. And so
I would actually love to hear you and your own
words tell us like what you do there and kind
of an overview of your role there. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
So I am the education director at the Sunset Park
Materials Recovery Facility or MURF for short, which is a
fun acronym. So AMURF is basically a sorting facility for recyclables.
So when we are instructed to recycle, we're generally instructed
to mix different materials together into a bin. So then
those materials are going to travel to a MIURF THEMURF
(02:56):
then sorts them out through a series of technologies or
human power. So that's what we do in Brooklyn. My
job there, I get to be the educator, which I'm
very honored to be. So we have the facility sorting
the recyclables and then selling the recyclables. It's also very important.
But we also have the Recycling Education Center, which is
like an interactive recycling museum where folks get to have
(03:18):
these hands on experiences that really mirror how we operate
at the facility, how we sort all of these materials,
and really how materials.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Work in general.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
You know, we have a station that shows where materials
come from and how they're made, and we have a
station that shows what they can become after they get recycled.
So visitors can come and experience the Recycling Education Center
and I can answer all of their recycling questions and
explain to them what goes in which bin and why.
And then they get to go upstairs and see this
massive facility.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I mean you saw it. It's a mountain, a full mountain, yeah,
of recyclable.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Few hundred tons of recyclables, yeah, and then a huge
room of two and a half miles of conveyor belts
and again a series of technologies and some humans doing
it as well. That's sorting it all out and preparing
it to become new things.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And just a quick question, how many Merphs actually have
an education department?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Yeah, in this country, there are I think somewhere around
like three hundred and fifty morphs, but I don't know
how many have education centers yet. It's not the norm,
but it is becoming a bit of a trend.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I think it should be mandatory, and here's why. And
it sounds maybe silly, but I did have a profound
experience because our experience in this country of recycling is well,
hope this gets where it's supposed to go. Yeah, yeah,
And to go there and see how much you guys
were recovering and we're going to get into all this
because we have so many questions about like myths about
recycling and stuff like that that we're excited for you
(04:39):
to answer for our audience. But to see it all
with my own eyes and to go through the museum
into hear you speech was just like really, I felt
empowered because sometimes you're just like again, you have a
hope of hope again, I see you never ye hope,
and I assume you're going to be made into a
chair or something and you just don't know. So to
see it in action was awesome. Yeah, that's the point
of the ED center.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
You're pulling back the curtain and showing people something they
don't normally get to see that. Hopefully everyone is interacting
with and participating. We want people to participate.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
It's already made me a better recyclers so much that
I learned from you that I'm excited to share people today.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's going to be true of all of us.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think you're just going to kick us off though
with our first question.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, Kara, we're going to start with the basics. So, really,
when we talk about recycling, what is that?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Where does it fall.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
In the conversation where we talk about sustainability, like how
does it apply exactly? And most importantly, why should grown
ups and young people care about it?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
So I will give you a very basic general definition
of recycling, but we there are many ways one can
describe it. Basically, recycling is taking materials that have already
been probably manufactured and used, and using those materials to
then be broken down and make new useful materials. Right,
there are a lot of other finer definitions kind of
(05:59):
within that. There's upcycling and downcycling. Technically, upcycling is when
something is made into something considered of a higher use,
or downcycling is when something is made into something considered
a lower, lesser use. But these are all forms of recycling,
So how does that fit into the environmental equation and
sort of environmental sustainability. So something that I try to
(06:21):
tell everyone that comes on my tours. I usually say
it at the end, but I'll just kick off rabit today.
Recycling is good and recycling is helpful. But recycling doesn't
save the planet. That's not a thing. Reducing and reusing
is more so it's going to save the planet. So
recycling is a part of this reduce reuse and as
(06:42):
a last.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Resort recycle practice.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
So saving materials by recycling is beneficial and has its place.
I think some of us have this idea of like
perceived abundance where we just have so much stuff and
we can just buy it and use it and throw
it away to our heart's content. And that's not necessarily
the case. We don't have an unlimited supply of everything,
and that's sort of where reducing and reusing and recycling
(07:08):
can help us to conserve our precious resources and also
generating a lot of waste is expensive. It is financially expensive.
New York City spent something like over four hundred million
dollars a year to send trash, not recycling, but to
send trash to its final destination outside of the five burrows,
and then generating waste is also environmentally expensive and impactful.
(07:33):
You know, landfills where we send most of our trash
in this country are a leading cause of methane emissions.
Methane is a real bad grainhouse cast. Then we need
to cut our methane emissions like yesterday. But all that's
to say, reducing, reusing and recycling are to preserve precious
resources and protect our ability to safely and healthily exist
(07:55):
on this planet. And I have to say that thing
of it in the long term, like that is really
hard for people to conceptualize, Like thinking about how my
actions now of throwing this milk jug in the recycling
bin is going to protect the future generations having more resources,
Like that's a difficult argument to People are thinking about
how they're going to buy groceries today. They're not thinking
(08:18):
about how we're gonna mind petroleum in one hundred years off.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
We're still well doing. To put it succinctly, recycling is
the bare minimum that you can.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Do this, And I think a way to get people
to participate and care about recycling is not necessarily to
get them to care about future generations. I want them to,
but I think that's a tougher argument. I think the
way to make it work is making it as easy
and convenient as possible for people to do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, a perfect example this morning, I finished my green
juice from Trader Joe's, and then I popped that bad
boy bottle right in my recycling compartment. Yeah, so then
what happens, I say, buy green juice, thank you so
much for filling me up and keeping me healthy. Where's
that bottle off to? Where's he going? What's happening in
his next life?
Speaker 4 (09:04):
It was a plastic bottle, Yes, all right, great, So
if you recycled it at home, if you put it
in your blue bin with the blue bin and the
grain bin in New York City, the grain is for
paper and cardboard, blue for metal, glass, plastic and cartons.
So that blue bin material is then going to travel
to one of the facilities operated by Circular Services, that's
the company I work for. So then at the MURF
(09:26):
we're going to sort all those materials out. So probably
your green juice was a type of plastic called number
one plastic or PET or polyethylene to ref the late.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
I hope I put the right emphastist on the right
level there.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
But we're going to sort it out into a bale
like a cube, like if you've seen the movie Wally right,
the little robot making the bales. We make bales of
a whole bunch of pet of number one plastic with
your bottle, and then the mirf will sell that to
what's called a plastic reclaimer. Okay, so the plastic reclaimer,
they are breaking down that plastic, They wash it, they
(09:59):
melt it, turn it into these little pellets that they will.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Then sell to a manufacturer.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
The manufacturer is going to make it back into whatever
is going to be sold back to you. It'll be
made into you know, maybe another bottle, maybe for soap,
or it might be made into clothing or carpeting. Right
because pet that's the same material as polyester. Oh, so
it could actually become a fabric and then once made
into that next thing, it's sold back to you.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Wow. So I have a two part question here. Basically,
like if all of our glass and plastic and everything
goes into the blue bins right at the murf, you
guys use different kinds of technology to sort it, which
is really cool to see. So I'd love for you
to talk a little bit about how you separate those
things and how they each get kind of individually recycled,
and then more broadly, like how this might change city
(10:47):
to city to state to state around the United States,
and what these merphs look like elsewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Sure, So generally, any MIRFH is probably going to have
a magnet that's going to pull out all the ferris
or all the magnet metal. That's going to be pretty standard.
And then some merphs also have something called an eddy
current which actually ejects non ferrous metal, so it gives
it an electromagnetic charge, and then there's a rotor at
(11:11):
the end that's working against that charge and like be
like flying in animate objects shooting the non ferrous metal
onto another conveyor belt. And that's becoming a bit more common,
but not all merphs are necessarily going to have that.
Some of that might be done by hand. And then
we also have these optical sorders. So the optical sorders
use near infrared light to scan items and they can
(11:34):
actually see what those items are chemically made of. We
can program them to look for a variety of products,
like different types of plastic or cartons or paper. We're
really not supposed to receive paper. It's supposed to go
in the green bin paper, and the blue binds always
still end up having to sort it. But then the
near infrared it identifies the material it's looking for, and
then it uses an air jet to shoot it like
(11:56):
more flying and animate objects to shoot it onto another
conveyor belt. And those have become pretty common. Like most
merphs will have one or two of those, larger murphs
might have six or seven. But then some of that
work might be done by hand as well, depending on
the size of the facility, kind of like.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
The last resort, right, Yeah, for things that don't get
scooped u by everything else. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So you'll hear people say recyclables just end up in
landfill anyway?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Is that for real?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Not really, And I think that that comes from someone
will read a media story and it'll say something like
such and such city was sending such type of recyclables
to a landfill for this period of time, like they
were having trouble selling this type of plastic, so they
were sending it to landfill for a period of time.
And I think people read something like that and they
(12:45):
think it applies to everywhere all the time, when no,
it's just that one city for that one period of
time with that one material, and really what will happen
is they'll struggle to sell it for a time and
then they'll figure it out. But if your municipality or
your town or city is asking you to put specific
items into a bin, they're not trying to trick you.
(13:08):
Those are the items that they know they can sort
and sell from their local materials recovery facility. And if
something happens and they all of a sudden have to
long term start sending those items to trash, they're just
going to cancel their recycling program. Like it's expensive to
send a separate truck out to collect a separate stream
of materials that no one's trying to throw money away
(13:28):
like that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah, it is funny thinking about the oh this is
just an elaborate facade. Yeah, all of the workers and
the trucks and the infrastructure is just to make you
feel it's happening. It costs money, Yeah, No, it's a business.
It was great to hear you, because this is like
my number one thing, which is why I was excited
to go, is because I feel like I've read those
stories in the area. And not to say that the
(13:50):
situation on the planet Earth in general isn't dire, It
absolutely is. But when I read these piece has been
like what like nine percent or ten percent of the
things that we Oh.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
No, now I have to explain that to you.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
How you do, and I want you to explain it
very well. But like we hear things like nine percent
of everything we recycle actually gets recycled. And you just.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
Played a really intense game of telephone in your own brain.
You know that game where you like pass the thing
down the line and it gets distorted and that's wrong.
So yes, there is the statistic floating around. It actually
pertains to plastics. So there's the statistic that nine percent
of plastic gets recycled.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So this was.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Determined by the EPA. They put out a study the
Sustainable Materials Management back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
So what they.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Did is they measured all plastics that had been manufactured
in one year. And I mean, you just have to
let that sink in for a moment. All plastics that
had been manufactured in this country. I believe in a year,
it's a lot of stuff like you know, tables, chairs, shoes,
some are bottles, some are recyclable, some are not, some
(14:58):
are durable and meant to be reused us. So they
found that out of all plastic manufactured in a year,
United States residents like you and I put nine percent
of that into recycling bins. So what I think people
interpret from that statistic is they think, oh, of all
the plastic I diligently put in my bin, only nine
percent of it is getting recycled, When that's not what
(15:20):
was being measured. It's actually the percentage that people are
putting into their bins. And if you put more of
the correct stuff into your bins, that percentage will actually
go up.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
And then of the things that we put into the bin,
like something close to like one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, so once you put it into the bin, it
goes on a journey, right And at the Mirph stage
where I work, we're a pretty good mirf. We might
lose like five percent of valuables, and you know, murphs
throughout the country might lose five to I think like
thirteen percent of valuables depending on how well they're operating,
and then in manufacturing there's going to be some percentage
of loss somewhere along the line, but it's nowhere near
(15:57):
ninety one percent. Yes, a ninety one percent loss would
make zero sense.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, Well, it's great to hear, because when you hear
these things, you feel disheartened about recycling, and so to
hear from you they're like, no, it's closer to actually
like the reverse of that. Yeah, it's actually being recycled
from the things that you're putting in the bin. So
really really important to hear, and thank you for clearing
that up. So we're going to play now a fun,
fun game and it's called it is e Recycle Level,
(16:25):
And we've got a fun fund list here, and so
we'll talk about like maybe in general in the United
States with that asterik of definitely look it up for
your city. So Leah, kick it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Off all plastics with a triangle symbol on it all.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
No, Okay, it has to have a specific number. It
depends on where you live, Okay. So different municipalities will
explain it differently, they will express what they accept in
different ways. In New York City, we say send us
all rigid plastic, any hard plastic. But some municipalities will
say we only want plastics number one and two. It
all depends on what their local mirph can sell.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Okay, and I think it's important to say just because
a lot of times the number is in that triangle thing, right,
and everyone goes, oh, this is recyclable. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
And if you're looking at a piece of plastic that
little recycling symbol with the number inside it, it's not
telling you, hey, I'm recyclable. It's telling you, hey, this
is what type of plastic I am. Some are recyclable
and some aren't. Some municipalities don't even use the numbers.
They just say send us all the bottles and all
the jugs, or send us all the containers. So you
just have to look up what they're saying and do that.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Amazing. And one other thing that was kind of confusing
is like those cartons, right, because they're like kind of
plastic key, kind of papery. What's the deal with those.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Cartons are recyclable in most recycling programs in the US? Okay,
pizza boxes? Most places do accept pizza boxes.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, important to know. And what about if they're like
just covered in like all remnants of pizza.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
I mean, don't leave any pizza in the box. Yes,
but definitely in New York City we'll take the greasiest
of pizza.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Boxes we have pizzas. I guess it works wonderful.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Definitely something to look up, though some places only want
clean pizza boxus.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Fair enough. Let's go to plastic bags, and I'm thinking
like the shopping bag plastics.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Like the single use stopping bags exactly. Those are pretty
much not recyclable anywhere in this country, as far as
in your home bin or like in a recycling right.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And why is that? Yeah? Two reasons.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
So, first of all, it's really hard for us to
sort them at the MURFH. A plastic bag is what
we call a tangler because it tangles in the sorting equipment,
so it's a big pain for us. And then even
if we do manage to sort them, nobody wants to
buy them. Something is recyclable if it has a market,
(18:40):
if there's a company out there that wants to buy it.
Plastic bags, they're pretty flimsy. It's not really a strong material.
You don't get much from it. Can we recycle clothes
not in the same way you can recycle metal glass, plastic. Okay,
you can donate clothes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
That's about it. That's yeah, yeah, and they might get
one more life and they might not. They might not
h H and M. As a program for a closed
recycling and so we'll typically take stuff there. Good life
pro tip. What about shredded paper in.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Some places that's a maybe if you have a recycling
program where everything goes in one bin, metal glass, plastic, paper,
and cardboard. Usually you can't recycle shredded paper because it's
so hard to sort the little bits out from everything else.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How about bottle caps and do they have to be
on the bottle?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
So the rule for caps is always leave caps on. Okay,
that's it. This is the biggest thing that I learned
about your tour because like, I never do this. I'm like, what,
it's in the bin, right, But you explained that the
reason why we put them on the bottle.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Is because it's very difficult to capture small plastics we'll
fall through.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, we can.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Actually if you put a metal bottle cap in there,
we can capture that. We can sort that with magnets
and the eddy current, the cool reverse magnet easy, but
small plastics are really hard to sort. They sort of
fall through the cracks and get lost. But leave it
attached to the big bottle. It'll make it through.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
And now my caps are on the bottle.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Great influence.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
What U batteries?
Speaker 4 (20:06):
You should never put any battery in your recycling bin ever, Okay,
it goes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
In the trash.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
So regular old like single use, double A, triple A batteries.
In New York State, it is legal to put those
in the trash. It depends on the battery, right, Any
lithium ion or rechargeable battery. Do we know what those
can do?
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Free charge, be reused, yes, which is great.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
And then at the end of their life they can
cause dangerous and devastating fires. Oh so we actually see
one to three battery fires a day.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
It's just terrifying.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
So please no rechargeable batteries and no electronics. They often
contain batteries.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I think.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Actually Staples will now take back any battery for recycling,
which is great, but often the place where you purchase
the battery electronic wonderful. Yeah, you have to take it
back for safe disposal.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I love that. So at home depot you can actually
do battery and light bulbs. Oh, which that's why can
you not recycling?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, some light bulbs are hazardous waste, so you can't.
The regular old Edison bulbs you can throw in the trash,
but some of the newer bulbs you have to take
them back.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
And how about toothpaste or cosmetic containers.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
The simple answer is no. Okay.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
A lot of those cosmetic containers are small plastics, so
they're really hard for us to capture. And that's actually
something that Circular Services is working on. So one division
they're working on recovering small plastics. It's going to be
a bit of a road and a bit of a journey,
but right now they're just real hard to capture.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And what about receipt paper, most places, it's a no.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
I think there's a little bit of toxicity in that paper,
and so some recycling.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Programs don't want them. Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Paper towels, Can I recycle those?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Well, if you used a paper towel as a napkin, yeah,
then you can compose it.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Really like oh yeah, paper towels like your good old bounties.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, napkins, towels, paper plates, if it's
covered in food. If it's food soiled, you can put
it in your organic spin. Okay, you know, you want
to look at what's accepted in your organics program. But
usually if you have an organics program that accepts food waste,
they're also going to accept food soiled paper. But if
you're using a paper towel like with cleaning chemicals, and
(22:27):
then you're cleaning up grit that goes in the trash.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Okay, really good to know. And then this one's always
confuses me. The little paper envelopes with the little plastic windows.
Oh yeah, those are fine. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Listen, So paper mills where all this paper is going,
you have to imagine they are no stranger to a
little envelopes with plastic windows or like staples or tape. Right,
these are things that they have to be set up
to deal with. So if you want to take it off, great,
it's gonna have to be removed anyway, but don't freak
out about it.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
You can put that little envelope in the paper and
you'd maybe throw that away, right because it's very flimsy,
like you're not going to recycle that.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Oh yeah, that's soft plastic, that little plastic window is
trash trash?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Okay? Cool? And that's is it recyclable? Lang? And ask
Kara's said.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Check your local municipalities page for trash and recycling to
learn what's accepted.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And guess what, when we recycle, we all win.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah. I love that. Yes, thank you. Everyone's a winner here.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
We'll be right back after a quick.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Break and we're back with more grown up stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
How do I.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Don't so when I'm doing my paper recyclables and cardboard,
do I have to break down the cardboard completely because
I have some pizza boxes and stuff and I just
want to fling them in. But do I need to
like be there and you know, making it into a
real flats?
Speaker 4 (23:59):
I mean, you know we talked about Suburbia with the
nice recycling carts. If you're just putting it in the
cart you just wanted to fit in your cart, those
are like the big plastic WHEELI pins right with the
lids that open and close the fancy. If it fits, great,
But if you need to fold it for it to fit,
should fold it?
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah? I have to imagine it's not required. But like
you'd probably been making everyone's life a whole lot easier
if you did like they would just.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Be like, oh my god, thank you so much for
this nice person for breaking this down, instead.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Of like I've heard of collection workers that if you
don't set it out right, they don't pick it up.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yes, so that is fair. Yeah, so this is another
big myth. I feel like there are plenty of single
use plastics and other recyclable materials that were like using
with other things and they get like messy. How important
is rinsing fly rinsing? Does it have to be for
it to be recycled?
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah, it's good practice to clean your recyclables, like give
them a little rinse. But if you can't get every
bit of peanut butter off the pano butter jar, it's okay.
If this stuff isn't perfectly clean, we can still take it,
but just.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Like try to be nice.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, in general, give it that rinse, Give it to
your dog. That's so true.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Does it matter if non recyclables end up in recycling?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
That is certainly not ideal. Okay.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Yeah, So when a piece of trash or garbage, right,
a non recyclable is placed into a recycling bin, it's
probably gonna go to the recycling facility with all the
other recyclables. It's going to go through the whole all
those fancy technologies I was explaining at the Materials Recovery facility,
it's gonna waste energy and time along the way, and
then it's still gonna.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
End up in a landfill. I feel like that people
who are putting something that doesn't belong there that are
being like hopeful, like maybe there's no word for that.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
It's called wish cycling. We don't love wish cycling. And
then there was this saying, when in doubt, throw it out,
which I also don't love because then you could be
throwing away valuables. I like to say, when in doubt,
find out. Yeah, you have the internet. It's pretty friendly
and user friendly.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, okay, great, so do your research in the throat way.
If it takes a minute, just look it up.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
What is your advice for setting up effective recycling systems
at home?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:14):
What I recommend is in your home. Of course, you
want to bin in a central location where it fits. Ideally,
wherever you have one bin, you have all the bins. Ideally,
wherever you have a trash bin, you also have a
bin for metal, glass, plastic, and cartons, and a bin
for paper and cardboard. If you don't have all the
bins available, people are going to put stuff in the
(26:35):
wrong bin, you know. And I also really recommend putting
a sign on your bins. I know people don't read signs,
but I say give people the opportunity to do the
right thing. Let's try to help and educate and guide
each other. The one trick there is in the bathroom,
and I just want to remind everyone that your shampoo
bottle is recyclable, the little toilet paper tube is recyclable
(26:59):
with paper. I know you might not put a recycling
bin in your bathroom, but please just walk those twenty
extra or whatever feet to the recycling bin and recycle
that stuff. But convenient location, have all bins available, and
if you are able to separate out your food waste,
if you have a spot for it on the counter, great,
but a great place to keep it is in your
freezer or fridge if you don't have space, and then
(27:21):
bring it out to your bin for collection the night
before it gets collected.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
This is huge because a lot of people are like,
I don't want to compost because it's males gross, and
I'm like, you have your freezer and if you put
in the freezer, this is no longer a problem.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah, it works great, and then your actual trash doesn't
stink anymore and you barely have to take it out.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And that's the whole thing behind the reason why we
want to start composting is because essentially, if all of
your organic materials are in your trash or they're going
to landfill. You had mentioned earlier about those are some
of the largest polluters of methane.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
And that's why it's the organic waste. Organic waste breaking
down in landfills. It breaks down with no light and
no air. That is an anaerobic process, big fancy words,
but that's what gets the methane. This is why landfills
again leading cause of methane emissions in this country.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
And you're also just like emitting less trash too, because
if like half of your crash is organic waste.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Yes, in New York City, we know that about a
third of our waste could go in the recycling bin metal, glass,
plastic or paper and cardboard, and another one third to
sometimes one half of our waste could go in that
organic spin. That is a huge POTENTI if we could
do that, if we could recycle most of our recyclables
and compost most of our organic waste. We could beat
(28:36):
Seattle or San Francisco, whoa absolutely wild they're winning and rec.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
And like, you know, it's funny, like a lot of
like composting, it's this new thing. What is this thing?
But like most of the world that is in the
United States composts me too. It's the most simple, basic thing.
Like my wife is it's just fine. She doesn't listen
to the show I talk about it all the time.
She's Ukrainian and like she's like from Ukraine, and I've
been to her parents' house and they have these gigantic
(29:00):
composting dens. They don't even like call it. That's just
how they throw away most of the stuff because they
have a garden and then they just take it and
they use it to garden. And so like, if you
could get rid of half of your trash doing something
that most of the world does de facto by composting,
like that alone could make such a huge difference.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Just normalizing it, yeah, right, teaching folks to do it
from the start, from when they're very young, making it
part of the routine.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, there's a book that I recommend to people all
the time. And I'm sure maybe if you guys have
heard of it's called Atomic Habits by James Blair, and
he really talks about how so much of what we
do is because we're beholden to our own environments. And
so if you set up your life to make it
obvious and easy to do, you will do it more.
And so like even for me, I had to kind
of train myself for like I don't throw my avocado
(29:48):
shells in the trash. I go to my freezer and
I put them there, and I've gotten that into my
muscle memory. It's all just about these little systems. If
you make it obvious and easy, it's much much easier
to recycle trying.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Okay, So so let's say we are absolute recycling pros. Now,
we do everything right, we put everything in the bin
that it's supposed to be in la world. Yes, it's
going great. However, there are two other elements that we
need to think about. So what are some of the
things that we can do in our homes to reduce
and reuse?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Thank you for asking. Reducing is essentially using less stuff. Right,
If you buy less stuff, you'll generate less waste.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
We brought the example of a soda stream, right, I
think are something that I do a ton of leasure
aton of Seltzer, and I was using plastic bottles and
aluminum cans. And if you get a soda stream, you've
got a reusable bottle you're reusing, You've got a reusable
source of carbonation through the soda stream canisters that you
can take back to the store and use again. So
one great example of.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
Yeah, and when you reuse things, you have to reuse
them over and over. But reusing things also will help
you reduce what you are throwing away. So really getting
those practices into our bones, buying less and buying to last,
and that's tough for people.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
I've read that when it comes to you should buy
things that you believe you'll wear at least thirty times,
So just to like put a number on that when
you're going through your closet and stuff and you're like, oh,
I've only worn this twenty six So I guess I
need to get more and more uses out of this.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
I mean, also, I've been a part of a wonderful
clothing swap community for years.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
That's why I don't buy clothes anymore.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, you know, get some folks together that when they're
done with something, they're going to pass it on.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
And that can be done with a lot of things.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Giving things away for free, getting things for free at
these kind of swap mentalities or like swapping communities for stuff.
I see people throwing valuable things out on the streets
so often, and the great thing about the city is
that then someone will often come along and pick it
up and make it there's and reuse it. But if
they don't, something of extreme value is just going to
get thrown away. So getting out of this mindset of
(31:47):
disposability and getting into the mindset of reuse.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I'll shout out a few things here. So there's a
great Facebook community called buy Nothing. Yes, And it's not
only great to get something that you maybe need that
you don't have to buy, but it's also a great
way to get rid of things. And I was shout
out my wife again. She does all the time, and
I'm amazed at her patients. And it's been an education
for me because it's such an American mindset that we
just throw things away. But anything books, whatever that I'm
(32:11):
trying to get rid of. She's like I'm going to
put it on buy nothing, don't throw it away, She'll
take it to good Will. Another great thing to do.
There is a subreddit community called buy It for Life
where they talk about products that will last you a lifetime,
be it clothing or home appliances or something, because it's
very true that things are being made more cheaply these
days because companies want you to buy it and again
(32:31):
and again and again, like our phones and our laptops.
So buy It for Life as a great subreddit. And
there's two other examples that might come to me, But
I feel like you were going to say something, but.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
The Facebook buy nothing group. A friend of mine too
was like, there's people that have like really nice stuff
that they can involve in with and I just want
to get rid of So you.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Now know, Yeah, and that's something that's so difficult about it,
Like we want people to not just throw things away,
but yeah, to go on to buy nothing, to post it,
to wait for you to never reply.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
It does take work.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
It does take time, and we're very much a single
use culture of convenience here, so it's a big ask.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And I do think that, like I'm also Salvation Army
and good will they do pickups too? So, like I
think another thing is like it's just like big and heavy,
but that can be something really really easy to like
call them schedule time, have them come pick up something
big and they can actually have someone else make use
of it. Nice.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I know, Department of Sanitation also has a donation program.
I think NYC dot gov slash donate and they accept
a wide variety of materials as well for donation.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And that kind of leads into you know, so beyond
the environmental benefits, kind of what economic advantages does recycling
provide to community?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yes, so that's something that we need to build, so
circular services, right, this is the company I work for. Again,
our goal as a company is basically to create this
thing called a circular economy. Then I'll describe what that
is first by saying we are not currently operating in
a circular economy. We are operating in a near economy
(34:01):
where when we want to make stuff, resources are extracted,
we make stuff, and when we're done with the stuff,
we throw it away. So this is not a sustainable
model because we are extracting resources, some of which are finite, right,
we don't have an unlimited supply and then we end
up with all this waste to manage at the end
of it. But that system is how our economy works
(34:23):
or dug very deep again into being this single use
culture of convenience. So what circular Services is looking at
doing is, well, how do we restructure an economy to
make it circular? So there are still jobs, right, and yeah,
people are still buying stuff, but not in such a
wasteful way. Products are still being manufactured, but not in
a wasteful way. How are we utilizing reuse and recycling
(34:47):
to the best of our ability in a circular economy.
Once a resource is extracted, it remains in use, preferably
through reuse or through some form of recycling. So what
does all that look like in the real day to
day world. Well, to make the economics of recycling work
will Recycling does cost money, and there's a potential to
(35:09):
make some of your money back as well.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But the value of.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
These materials it's constantly changing, so you're not necessarily going
to get all your money back and cover all your
operations by selling the recyclables. So there's a piece of
legislation called EPR Extended Producer Responsibility, So extended producer responsibility
extends the responsibility of the producer. You made that thing, Okay,
(35:37):
You're also going to help local municipalities pay to manage
it once it becomes waste, because right now it's just
the municipalities that pay, and it's expensive. And I'll tell
you this is already happening in Europe and Canada. They've
been doing extended producer responsibility I think for decades, so it's.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Not you know, the big companies. They're already doing it
in other countries where they have to exactly. So this
is where.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Legislation becomes important, just to give a little push because companies,
they'll make promises, they'll do things on their own to
a point, but at some point they also are going
to need a little push. So actually, five states in
the US have passed extended producer responsibility legislation. New York
State is trying to pass it as well. We do
have two bills currently in the works and we're hoping
(36:21):
for one to pass. You know, good EPR is EPR
that funds recycling. You know, it at least helps to
fund recycling and encourages producers ideally to do better. You know,
can you make products that are actually recyclable or even reusable,
so that can help with the economics of recycling certainly.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And this dovetails nicely back into our voting episode, which
is if you want to see this stuff for the
world people, Yeah, make it happen. Yeah, let's go, Kathy.
That's for the New Yorkers. Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
But also we've talked about the landfills and what those
kind of contribute negatively. But what affect does recycling have
on climate change and carbon emissions good and or bad?
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Yeah, so you have to know recycling isn't emission free.
There are trucks that collect you're recycling, there are facilities,
there are a manufacturing facies. It's a form of manufacturing.
But the benefit of recycling is that when you look
at overall environmental impacts of products made with all virgin
materials and you compare it to products made with recycled materials,
(37:28):
you're going to have lower impacts pretty much always it's
going to depend on the type of material, but pretty
much always lower impacts when you're using recycled content. So
that's the real environmental benefit that we see, and that
came from a study also back in twenty eighteen done
by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. They showed us again,
products made with recycled content will have a lower environmental impact.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Nice, Okay, to kind of put a succinct point on it,
I would actually love to hear if you've got a
message for people who are recycling skeptics. If someone came
up to you and said, like, well, I don't know,
I don't think it makes a big of a difference,
what would you say to them.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
I try to get it, like the specific thing that
they're doubtful about, so I'd maybe engage in some questions
with them. But I guess I go back to you know, look,
if your city is sending a truck out to get
a specific list of things, it's because those things are valuable.
So you can either give those things a new life,
or you can throw money and resources in the trash
(38:26):
and you can force speed money and resources back into
the earth, which is what we do with our trash,
most of it in this country. We bury it in
landfills where it's not doing anybody any good.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
And then maybe another responsible like someone who's not necessarily
skeptic about the process of recycling, but just like skeptical
about any of this in general.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Yeah, I mean I would tell them to come to
Brooklyn and come on a tour, because often people when
they see it, when they see the process, that shifts
something in them. I see that happen a lot on
the tours, and I know that's not always possible. But
I do also have YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yes, and we will include a link to that in
the episode description, so check that out.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
What do you see for the future, So, I know
that we talked about like lasers and air jets and
claws and all these cools I wrote, Yeah, so many
are there other advancements and technologies that you are already
saying they might transform recycling and waste management in the
next decade and years to come.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Yeah, in this country, getting extended producer responsibility will help
worlds because that will help fund the recycling facilities so
they can have all the up to date technologies so
that they can sort the metal from the glass, from
the plastic from the cartons and recover more materials. They
need funding if they're going to get the technology to
do good work. But that's just one part in the
recycling process, and it is a process. There are many
(39:46):
players in many steps. So also seeing products designed for
reuse and recyclability, and that makes it a lot easier
for us as the consumer or resident. If everything that's
disposable is recycling, we don't have to think about what
goes in the bin or not. It's just well, this
package is a package, and so it's recyclable or preferred,
(40:07):
it's reusable, and it's very easy to go somewhere and
refill it or reuse it.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
And then on the.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
Side of the resident or consumer, we all need to
have access to recycling. There are some places in the
country that don't even have recycling access, so making it
available and convenient for as many people as possible is
going to be huge, and that's another thing that Circular
Services is working on, is sort of spreading out access
throughout the country. And then markets, recyclables need to be purchased,
(40:37):
materials need to be made with recycled content, and that's
something that you know, extended producer responsibility can help with. Also,
California and I think New Jersey and Washington have passed
legislation requiring that certain containers be made with a certain
amount of recycled content. So sort of pushing that envelope
of things then being made with recycled content, which then
(40:59):
sort of brings us back back to the beginning of design, right,
so design and then you know, residents putting things on
the right bin, and then facilities having the technology to
be able to sort it and reprocess it, and then
markets companies actually buying the stuff and using it to
make more recyclable or reusable stuff. Those are kind of
the necessary advancements in each of the key steps in
(41:19):
the process, and they are happening. I'm watching them happen.
But that's the direction we need to keep moving in.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Then will come full circle.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, yeah, love it. Is there any other way that like,
people can find out about you or the work that
you're doing.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Yeah, circular services dot com, Okay, you can find us
and there should be a page for the Brooklyn facility
on there and you can book a tour.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
And hopefully other places around the country will also have
similar tours that people can go and check out and
learn and see.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Awesome. Well, Carrot, we can't thank you enough for coming
out and hanging out and teaching us about recycling today.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
Thank you so much, pleasure, thanks for having me reduce reuse.
And as a last resort recycled right words to lift.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Fine our Thanks to Kara for all of that great information.
I know that you and I have already implemented in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Absolutely, I am now putting all caps on bottles, oh,
no matter how big how small the caps go on
the bottles. And actually seeing this in real time at
the MIRF was the coolest thing. And so if you
are able to check out your local MIRPH to see
how some of these systems work in real life, I
highly recommend it. And if you can't, check out the
link in our description to see some of the YouTube
videos that Kara was talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I've seen some of them, but now I'm going to
go watch all of them because did you even know
that I think of you and Kara every single time
I deposit something in my recycling container.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I love that, and I hope that everyone thinks of
me and Kara when they deposit something in their recycling
bad they will.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Now you should, and of course, Matt, make sure that
you check your local municipalities website for all the latest
information on recycling in your area. So until next time,
good luck being a grownup.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is a production of Ruby's Studio for Myheartmedia. Our
executive producers are Lea pel.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Mary and matt'st This episode was edited and engineered by
Sierra Spreen
Speaker 1 (43:03):
And we also want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio,
including Sarah You, Ethan Vixell, racheus Wan Krasnoff, Lydia Kim
Amber Smith, Harper, Wayne Debragherrett, and Andy Kelly
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com