July 11, 2023 • 45 mins
Is recycling paper and cardboard worth it, even if you can only recycle it a handful of times? Kat and Tiffany were skeptical, but it seems like it is! Learn why in this week's look at our second horseman of the recycle-pocalypse, paper recycling. Listen to Tiffany be terrible at acronyms in this lively episode of your favorite green living podcast.
Sources
- Citizen Sustainable on paper
- Citizen Sustainable on cardboard
- Science Focus
- Treehugger
- EPA
- Reuters on paper mill run by billionaire Robert Kraft
- landfill methane
- NIH: toxic surfactants used during recycling
- Calrecycle.com: “totally chlorine free” (TFC) recycling process
- UNICEF on reducing paper use
- GreenMatters on reducing cardboard use
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
So paper can only be recycledfive to seven times. Really?
Yes. Why? Because every timeit's recycled, it breaks down a
little bit. It's like at acertain point, the fibers are
just too brittle and it doesn'tturn into just a big pile of
mush, I guess. Okay, so thatkind of sucks.
(00:29):
Hi. Hi, Tiffany. How are you? Iam doing pretty well. Just the
same as I was three minutes ago.
Just to inform our audiencehere. We've recorded two
episodes a night usually so youmay be hearing the same
background noise as you did in aprevious episode. You're not
hallucinating. Same dog. I stillhave the same frog in my throat
(00:52):
that I'm going to be hacking upnow. Yeah, same dog issues. My
dog is in the kitchen currently.
Yeah. He wants to come inthough. My dog is locked
upstairs. Yeah, she's she's gota family to deal with. So yeah,
well, my dog needs to be lockedupstairs because she is a
whiner. I don't know if anybodyelse has a whiny dog. But it is
(01:14):
the bane of my existence.
Especially if your recordings ofmy dog's a farter. Which you
can't you don't get it over theairwaves. But he has he has a
room clearer for sure. Silentbut deadly. Yes. Well, they're
not silent anymore. either. He'sgetting Oh,
yeah. It's a common occurrencein my house to hear somebody say
(01:34):
him it. Oh.
Ready. It's cute. I missed thisfar. It's when I'm gone.
All right. Oh, I have a reallyquick update about White Paper,
cardboard and Yes.
Talk about a learning process.
(01:56):
So all right, everything wasgoing great for weeks and weeks
and weeks. And then I decided tobuy some petunias. Oh, no. Okay,
even unic de Ahmed.
Who net petunias? Oh, no.
All right, so you know wherethis is going. Basically created
(02:18):
like a trough for the deer.
They're like, Hey, this isjust throw some nasturtiums in
there and there'll be like, thelizard was, well, they're gone.
Gone, gone. So we don't have toworry about the petunias
anymore. or so. Really, though.
There really are. Yes, but sonot only are the petunias gone,
(02:42):
but the deer decided to eat thehell out of my black eyed
Susans, which I also planted andspent a lot of money on. And my
Aster to both things I look upand they're like, Oh, definitely
your food resistant.
resistant. Oh, flies. Yeah.
Well, my mother in law wassaying that a lot of people have
(03:03):
been telling her that the deerare eating things that they
don't normally eat this year.
And like, what are these? Yeah,these freaking robot like for
one welcome. I know you'reoverloaded. Oh, my God, I'm so
mad. Okay, so that happened. Andthen I'm a moron. And I looked
(03:24):
up things, things that you don'twant to trust online are things
like deers, DIY deer spray. Oh,Lord. How many children did you
kill?
sacrificed a couple. Theirblood? No.
So I'm a dingus, and I justdidn't think it through but I
was paying panic mode, likegotta get the deer gonna get the
(03:45):
deer.
So one DIY recipe, use essentialoils, actually, which is funny,
but it was vinegar, straight upvinegar, and peppermint with
essential oil, did it. Charliehelped me out there spray spray
spray spray spray. And the nextday, they were like,
(04:07):
the plants are like, guess whodoesn't like vinegar? Plants.
In hindsight, I just didn't,we'd have
caustic and you shouldn'tprobably use it directly on your
skin. Or I think that was yourpoint or your plan. Got it. It
was just one of those like, Igotta fix this and I didn't want
(04:29):
to go I don't have time to go tothe store. So let's just throw
some shit in a bottle and sprayit and it just didn't work out
at all. And I'm sorry. Well, no,some of them might still survive
like the ASTER is fine. It'spretty hardy, the Black Eyed
Susans just unhappy so I'mprobably gonna suck it up and
just get new ones but anyway,I'm hopefully gonna get some
(04:51):
flowers for these damn. I'mtrying to support could you do
cinnamon or like chili powder?
Well, I ended up just sucking Ijust ordered
are digital direct? Oh, yeah. SoI'm, I don't care. I'm using an
extra bottle. I ordered it fromAmazon. I don't care.
(05:11):
So I'm saving these plantsbecause I've been babying them.
I've been going out there andwatering them and taking care of
him making sure talk to them. Italked to them.
Like yeahthey're all very well versed in
Grimms fairy tales. They loveYeah, they love Hansel and
Gretel.
So anyway, that's, that's myupdate. It's, it's been an
(05:34):
adventure. But you know, I haveheard the best gardener is the
one who kills the most plants.
Because you have to experimentyou have to live and learn. And
yeah, because bakers don't wantto throw away the most cookies.
So exactly. And you could nevertrust a skinny cook.
I've heard all of the proverbs.
Yes. Yeah. So that's my update.
(05:54):
Wow. It's gonna bounce back andit's gonna be great. One day. I
can't wait for actual photos.
God. Yeah. Now they'd be reallyugly. They were already seeing
them. Just everything's liketripled. But yeah. Oh, yeah.
We'll get there.
Next year. Yeah. Nothing else.
Well, on that note, what are weactually supposed to be talking
(06:17):
about tonight?
Good question.
Did you forget? No, no, no, Iremember. Okay. I was just
trying to mute myself. It waslike, I needed to clear my
throat out.
clear my throat and hopingyou'll edit it out.
It's fair, just trying to mutemyself. But it's like, minimize
(06:41):
to where I can't tell which iswhich? We're talking about paper
recycling today? I do remember?
And I do. No, excellent. It'sgreat. I can't wait. I'm really
interested to learn about this.
Yeah, I was really interestedbecause of like, all the Amazon
boxes that everybody gets thesedays, not just Amazon, but
anywhere. I mean, yeah. I mean,it's not like it slowed down
(07:03):
after the pandemic. It's like,we're all still getting stuff
delivered all the time.
Absolutely. So buckle up.
So about my a little bit aboutmy sources, so I use citizen
sustainable.com I think you usethem for aluminum, but they know
(07:23):
I think there's a lot of like,yeah, citizen green Saturday,
right? Oh, that might have beenit. Yeah. People love their
citizen plus eco friendly term.
Yes. Yeah. I'm on recyclingpaper and recycling cardboard,
two different articles, andscience focused.com, which is a
BBC thing. They they had anarticle is recycling paper bad
(07:44):
for the environment.
And tree hug tree. hugger.comalso had an article basically
the same topic. It was prettyinteresting. Reuters, there's
just a quick story I'm tellingyou about a billionaire named
Robert Kraft and his paper mill,ooh, little neighborhood paper
(08:06):
mill in the pollution of theyear.
Green america.org talks aboutlandfill methane, and methane
produced by paper being in thelandfill.
The NIH talks about toxicsurfactants used during
recycling. Cal recycle.com.
Talks about totally chlorinefree recycling processes.
(08:35):
UNICEF, I looked at I found anarticle by UNICEF about how to
reduce your paper use and theyhad some kind of cool ideas. And
then green matters. They talkabout reducing your cardboard
use. So we're gonna get into allof that.
A little bit about paper tostart. I was telling cat before
(08:56):
the episodes. Then I went alittle light on the research on
this one because I was like, Iusually get too heavy, too
heavy, too much. And I literallywrote paper hyphen, thin
paperboard, hyphen, a bitthicker so that's called
cardboard.
This is really deep.
(09:16):
This is some lowest commondenominator shit you're doing
here.
What is paper? Idon't know if you've heard of
it.
Probably like in 10 years you'dbe like What are they talking
about? Maybe actually, and thenI also follow it up with paper
cardboard thick you know what itis?
(09:36):
Well done, man. Well done. Well,the in depth research it grating
up my act. I did great researchon it.
Okay, but okay, the interestingthing is, well, first off the
way it's made, it's I don't havelike, all the details but it's
funny because aluminum is madewith such an intense process
(09:59):
process you need likeElectricity. I mean, you need
electricity for obviouslyeverything. Yeah, everything but
paper is made by like, mashingup. Yeah. Would like some trees
into a bulb and then flatteningit out and turning into paper.
Have you seen? Yeah wallplateYeah. Have you ever made your
own paper?
Maybe maybe in like school?
Yeah, we did for like Earth Dayone time and like, took some
(10:22):
newspaper, put it in a blenderwith a water and then laid it
out flat to dry. put flowers onit like the paper. Yes. It's so
easy. It is. Did you actuallyuse it?
I don't think so. I thinkbumpy that you're
happy birthday, grandma. Let mewrite over this. Over this
(10:43):
violet.
This favorite? Yeah. But yeah,it's true. It's like it's not a
very complicated process. Butthe interesting thing the EPA
said in 2018, which was also theEPA needs to get up on its
stats. I think they weredecimated. Ah, last few years. I
(11:03):
don't think there is makingsense
to kind of don't exist as muchas they used to. Yeah, I had fun
times. Oh, hey, yeah, anyway, itwould be nice if we had more
recent stats, but in 2018, paperand paperboard which they refer
to as cardboard, other places,that's called paperboard like
(11:24):
they differentiate between Yeah,more like a cereal box. Like
yeah, Chip cardboard issometimes what paper cardboard
is referred to to. Oh, I don'tknow. Why have you heard that?
I'll look it up while you keepyou keep talking to let me throw
my phone on the earth.
You're firing on all cylinders?
Tonight. Siren. fibrin flung myslipper across the room.
(11:48):
On free I go. All right. I'mgonna look up cheap cardboard
while you keep going. Okay, sopaper basically, paper materials
comprise the largest componentof municipal solid waste. Oh,
wow. Isn't it crazy? So likemost waste in a landfill is
cardboard or paper, even thoughthey're recyclable, even though
(12:13):
so? But but there's that butthere's actually less of it
heading to the landfill eachyear currently than from like,
1960. Oh, well, that's good toknow. Well, it's been
interesting even though thepresentation has increased in
it. Okay. Yeah, we chipboard isa packaging product made from
wood pulp. It's thicker andsturdier than a sheet of paper.
(12:33):
Doesn't have the corrugatedchannels inside the most
cardboard does. So okay, okay,board that's shipboard. That's
what your cereal boxes andthings are made from. Okay. They
called it paperboard. But itdoes it's probably the same
thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
cardboards usually corrugatedwhich we all know what that is.
So a bit about recycling paper.
So not all paper is recyclable.
(13:06):
When you think about it, it'skind of obvious. Like I looked
at my county, and our recyclingcenter does not accept windowed
envelopes. So because theplastic Yeah, I wonder if you
could just take the plant, youprobably would just take the
plastic you do. That's smart. Ithink I throw it all in. And
then it just I have in the past.
And then somebody told me thatit was like boom, boom. Yeah, if
you separate it out anyway.
(13:29):
Yeah. So and some of them don'thave the little window. They are
just they don't have theplastic. It's just a window and
I'm like, that one's fine. Whydo we need a wind? Why do we
need plastic anyway? Moving on.
So your check doesn't fall out?
I don't know. Yeah.
Wax paper, at least in mycounty, you can't paper towels,
(13:49):
napkins, paper plates, laminatedpaper and paper that can't be
easily torn. None of these arerecyclable in my area. Okay.
Which is helpful to know becauseI think I've put all of these
things into my recyclingdefinitely finished a wine and
cheese party and everybody hasput their paper plate into the
recycling. And I'm like,Yeah, especially if it's dirty.
(14:10):
It's not gonna get recycled, butI mean, so that's the thing. You
need to look up your county. Soeach county has a website, and
it should tell you as long asyou have a recycling, you know,
what the Austin obviously does,we're way ahead of the times.
Right, right. Yeah, so but youcan look it up. So it's that is
(14:33):
actually kind of important to dobecause otherwise it's just
gonna get I don't know it justclogs up the system and you
don't just throw in the trash ifit isn't recyclable.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, that too. It alsomust be clean and dry. And that
one interesting thing I found isif it gets wet, you can dry it
(14:55):
out wet with like water oil isdifferent but you can dry
ate out before you recycle itand it's recyclable. I was
always I always wondered that.
But yeah, that's totally anoption. So just sit in the sun
for a minute. Oh, yeah. So papercan only be recycled five to
seven times. Really? Yes. Why?
(15:20):
Because every time it'srecycled, it breaks down a
little bit. So at the end of itslife, it's made into things like
a egg cartons or newspapers,okay, and those in, okay, you
can actually recycle anewspaper, but, but then it's
like, at a certain point, thefibers are just too brittle, and
it doesn't turn into just a bigpile of mush, I guess. Okay, so
(15:43):
that kind of sucks. It's notinfinite, like aluminum.
Yeah, well, aluminum issuperior.
Although the amazing thing is,recycling rates are better. So
these are the 2018 EPA recyclingrates. They're better than
aluminum because aluminum waslike 50%, right? Yeah. And so
(16:04):
paper and paperboard is 68%.
Newspapers are 65%. But then youOh, incorrect. corrugated boxes
are the king and 97%. Wow. Whichis like, pretty good. That is a
go Amazon, I guess. Yeah. AndAmazon actually has an option
that I'll get into a little bitlater that can help you reduce
(16:24):
your Amazon impact. Okay. Butthen pay pay per containers and
packaging that not includingcorrugated boxes to only 21%. So
like your box of your box thatcomes in your everything comes
in a box? I don't know. Likeyour makeup container comes in a
box. That kind of stuff doesn'tget recycled. Interesting. I
(16:47):
mean, I make a point of it. Eventhough I have to walk from my
bathroom to the kitchen, youknow?
Yeah, maybe like maybe that'swhy, because it's just easier to
throw it in the trash. Yeah.
Interesting. Well, I alsothought, and maybe you'll get
into this, but I thoughtchipboard or paperboard wasn't
recyclable. But it just dependson what county you are in or
(17:11):
think so. Yes. It's not always.
So yeah, it really depends onwhere you live.
So let's start with Okay, sothose are the recycling rates.
They're pretty good for paper,but like I said, huge. Yeah, but
it's only five to seven times.
Interesting. So why not recycle?
(17:31):
I'm doing the exact same thingyou did, man. Full disclosure. I
looked at yours first and sawhow you outline. Okay, I was
like mine. I was like, did wejust do that accidentally?
That's so amazing. Oh, yeah.
Total mind meld. Yeah, we're Ohyeah. simpatico I love it.
Okay, so why not recycle paper?
So there are toxic surfactantsas I mentioned, that they do ink
(17:55):
the paper during recycling? Ofcourse. Yeah. Because you have
to get the ink off and thegraphics and whatever. And then
paper pulp pulp is also bleachedto add brightness. So, you know,
they use bleach andmanufacturing setting bleach is
(18:17):
not great. Yeah, we know thatfrom our bleach episode. Yes.
We're just like, we keep mutingand coughing, muting and taking
turns coughing, sad. We're sickagain. It's dying. It's fine.
Um, but the use of chlorine hasdecreased over the years. And
(18:40):
it's been replaced by what Calrecycle.com calls totally
chlorine free processes. Sothey're still bleaching it, but
now with chlorine bleach, Iguess so. Yeah, I didn't
OxiClean UV maybe? No, I don'tknow any bleaching methods that
we've discussed on the show Sunbleaching, lemons. Lemons. Yeah,
(19:01):
I'm not sure exactly what theyare using these days, but
apparently it's not chlorine. Sookay, good. Another thing about
recycling paper, it produces asludge that ends up in
landfills.
So that's not delicious. Butyeah, so there's always going to
(19:22):
be some kind of byproduct right?
Also papers easily contaminated.
So it's like get any kind of oilon it get any kind of run food
on it. And it's like you're notabsorbed. Yeah, for Yeah, it's
not you can you can't rinse itlike aluminum foil. Yes. Another
really interesting thing is thatBBC science focus says modern
(19:42):
paper mills normally generatetheir energy from burning waste
wood, so wood that wouldotherwise be thrown away. So
that's like a paper millproducing new paper, whereas
recycling plants often rely onelectricity from fossil fuels.
So we'll burn wood is a fossilfuel, but it's not like us it's
(20:04):
not oil or gas. Interesting. SoI wonder if it's half a dozen
one six of the other? Becauseyou don't I mean burning wood?
Cause right burning woods notgreat either, I guess. But it's
different than burning, I guess.
I don't know. Yeah. But I foundthat kind of interesting. But I
mean, at the end of the day, itdoesn't really matter, because
(20:26):
I'm gonna go into why recycle.
And there's a lot of reasons whywe want to recycle paper. Okay.
So it uses about 50% less waterand 60% less energy than
creating new paper products. Sono matter how the energy's
(20:49):
being, you know, where theenergy is coming from, there's a
60% less of it, to recycle.
Okay. And treehugger says thepulp and paper industry uses
more water to produce a ton ofproduct than any other industry.
So the water usage is reallybad, which makes sense because
you got to turn it into a pulp.
(21:10):
Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, Isit here looking at my bullet
journal. guiltily.
Right. I'm also a paper planner,kind of you and I are, we're
both Journalers and I mean,we're writers. There's something
about my pin stash here. I know.
(21:33):
Oh, it's pretty. Thank you. Andbooks too. Okay. No books. Okay.
Yeah, it's I'm not I'm not aKindler. For the most part, I
have a very old one for me. Ihave went yeah, for traveling.
Sometimes. It's nice. Especiallyyou're gonna be gone for a long
time. And you don't want tocarry a bunch of books with you.
(21:53):
But I prefer paper books forYes, me too. I'm gonna old
school. Romantic. Well, so Ihave good news for you there
later. Oh, goody.
Which you already know, butit's, you know, making
connecting the dots here. But soscience focus says that there's
74% less air pollution createdwhen recycling paper than making
(22:17):
new paper. Oh, and this is wherethat billionaire comes in. It's
kind of an interesting story.
This is just an example of anew, like, paper manufacturer.
So not a recycling plant. Andfirst off the EPA identifies
methanol, all of these hazardousair pollutants like
(22:40):
formaldehyde. Oh, yikes. S satdown that hide
acetyl aldehyde or whatever?
Yeah. Oh, you know how to sayit. I just ended up okay.
So they were in. So paper plantsemit large quantities of all of
these things. And there arelimits like that, like, there
are limits to how much they'resupposed to be able to put into
(23:03):
the air. But in 2021, which wasvery recent, billionaire Robert
Kraft, probably from I don'tknow if he's from crap like
a craft. He was sued for a largerelease of hydrogen sulfide, a
(23:23):
gas that smells like rotteneggs. Let me make sure I cite
this source. Oh, this is aReuters article. smells like
rotten eggs and causes headachesand even death in concentrated
doses like God. So he had thispaper No, that I think this
article said that it was likethe biggest polluter in the
country. Wow. And just for fun,just for funsies. Well, so he
(23:47):
bought this paper mill and Ithink it got way worse because I
don't know he changed some stuffand made it worse. And so there
have been like federal and stateorders to reduce its emissions
button. The article says quote,and however no regulatory action
has been taken against the millfor really releasing sit or
small particulates at levelsexceeding Mills run by larger
(24:10):
rivals and by the country'slargest oil refineries. Oh, my
God, oil refineries. Dude,you're making paper? Yes. Isn't
that crazy? That's insane. Somaking new paper is not great.
Definitely something we need tochill out with our usage.
(24:32):
And so I mentioned thatrecycling paper also uses
chemicals. But despite thatrecycled paper has a lower
chemical impact than producingpaper from virgin materials.
Okay. So why else recycle? Sothis was really interesting.
paper in a landfill because ofthe way there's no oxygen
(24:55):
getting into it, because it'sjust shoved down under you know,
tons of stuff.
Hmm, it's going to be brokendown by organisms that produce
methane, of course. And if itwasn't going to be broken down
in that way, there would be nomethane produced. And the EPA
(25:17):
identifies paper as one of thelargest sources of landfill
methane. Oh, isn't that crazy? Inever thought about that.
Because we think paper isbiodegradable. Right? One of our
favorite words, becauseeverything's biodegradable.
Let's be honest. Yeah. Well,isn't that crazy? And then
treehugger says, one tonne ofpaper in a landfill will turn
into 1.38 tonnes of co2equivalents. Well, because it's
(25:40):
multiplying. Yeah, almostdoubling or then the original.
Yeah. Wow. Okay, isn't thatcrazy? And then in 2018, paper
and paperboard made up 11,almost 12% of the municipal
solid waste in US landfills.
Cheesy cheesy, just paper andyeah, right out there. Wow.
Okay. So recycling is? Well,I'll get into that in a minute.
(26:06):
I'm gonna talk about compostreal quick.
So, tree huggers says, if youwere okay, you can compost your
(26:26):
paper. Okay, in like a homepaper facility or if your city
or county runs as compostingprogram.
I compost Just Between Uschickens. My paper towels that
don't have you know, too muchoil on them and or Windex and
(26:46):
other paper products that can'tbe recycled. Like I thought
chipboard couldn't be it lookslike an Austin it can be but
okay. I couldn't I would compostmy chipboard. Okay. Yeah. So
what treehugger is saying isthat composting only cuts down
on landfill emissions, which isnot a bad thing. But it doesn't
offset the Virgin paperproduction. Yeah. So it's not
(27:09):
being put back into the systemto be reused, right. But they
have advice if you do compost,use paper and other sort of like
composting in general, but putpaper with the other brown
materials, like leaves in a 5050ratio with the green materials
like scraps, and then thatshould maximize the performance.
(27:30):
So you can compost it. It's notYeah, it's not a bad thing. It's
just not being recycled to beused again. Right? Lonely five,
seven times. So yeah, let's behonest, at the end of its life,
I mean napkins and things thatcan't be recycled. When Yeah, or
newspapers toward the end of itslife egg cartons as those are
(27:50):
probably I don't even know ifthere's recyclable those paper
egg cartons. Yeah, I wonder doesI probably compost. Put them
with your eggs? Yeah, youprobably could. That's not a bad
bad use. Oh, I did read a lot ofcardboard. People always say
like, oh, just put it in yourgarden bottle. A lot of it
actually has a lot of chemicalsin it. So keep that in mind.
(28:11):
Yeah. Somebody was gonna beseeping into groundwater. When
you make sure you take all thetape off, like, yes. Yeah,
stick. And we'll get into how torecycle paper and cardboard
best. Okay. Okay, what aboutcardboard? So I didn't look a
ton into cardboard. Becauseagain, I was feeling a little
(28:32):
lazy. Maybe I don't know what itwas. I'm just busy. Okay.
But I did want to know, like Isaid, I was curious about the
Amazon boxes. So 80% of productsbought in the EU in the US are
covered in cardboard. First off,okay. E percent. And if your
(28:52):
cardboard has food residue, likewe said, you it's going to end
up in the landfill. Yeah, you'rejust you're not you're not going
to do anything with it. So thinktwice about that. Takeout pizza.
Is that and so that would betrue of like coffee cups to then
oh, like paper coffee cups?
Yeah, I would think so.
Because most of them or plasticline to I wonder if they're
(29:14):
looking. Yeah, so that is kindof tricky. And I think it
depends on the area. But what Iwrote was if your cardboard has
food residue, oils, lots oftape, which we'll get into foam
peanuts or plastic deliverylabels like from I don't know
what is it FedEx has those bigplastic labels. Then it's gonna
(29:35):
going in the landfill even Okay,cardboard, so Oh, and then I
wrote not all recycling centersexcept thin cardboard like
cereal boxes. Um, do I thinkmine does? I think it does
because it wasn't. I just saw usI just Googled Austin's and I
think it does. So I didn't lieto somebody told me I had to put
it in compost. I mean, that'sthe thing. It's so confusing
(29:56):
because there's no federal law.
It's like whatever.
or community can support is whatthey manage. But yeah,
yeah, it's frustrating. And thensome recycling centers can
actually process wax coveredcardboards. I mean, that's kind
of what you're wondering. Yeah.
And I was thinking like,we sometimes get milk in the wax
covered. CART, half gallons.
(30:19):
Yeah. And I was always, I wasalways confused. And I guess our
I should look it up actually,because I'm not 100% Yeah, I
wonder if my coconut milk jugcan get. Yeah. And then. Okay,
so cardboard is pretty easy torecycle. And it's actually it's
like very recyclable, recyclefriendly. And it will get
(30:44):
recycled into either paper bags,paper towels, tissues, regular
paper or more cardboard. Butagain, cardboard, you can only
recycle five to seven times.
Right? I thought that was onlypaper. I was like, No.
Garberville it's all paperproducts. I wonder how they tell
that it's been? I don't know.
(31:04):
Like all this is your thirdround buddy. Race to more on
you're going into the landfill.
Each little fiber has like atally on it. Yeah, you can see
it no money, microscope.
Tattoos.
Okay, on to should you recyclepaper and cardboard from four
perspectives? So let's look atthe greenhouse gas perspective.
(31:26):
Yes, because it emits less. Fromthe chemical pollution
perspective. Yes, because itproduces fewer, or uses fewer
chemicals.
From a water perspective, yes,but both do use a lot of water.
So recycling uses 12,000 gallonsper ton of water to recycle it.
(31:51):
And then to create it fromVirgin uses 24,000 gallons.
Okay, so it's half, it's half.
So that's significant, but it'sstill a lot. That's 12,000
gallons. And from adeforestation perspective, yes.
Because it doesn't contribute todeforestation. Okay. So overall,
yes, you should keep doing it.
America, you're already doingit. Just keep it up. Yeah. And
(32:14):
honestly, coming into this sortof four part recycling series, I
expected it all to be like,Don't bother. It's stupid. So I
feel like I because like I said,because I have read so many
articles about how the system isbroken. I just expected all of
it to be broken. But it's like,oh, no, actually papers really
important to recycle. However,done done. Well, it's actually
(32:38):
not not that bad. Okay. But I'mjust changing gears because
really, the issue is we have toremember reduce, reuse, recycle
in that order.
Hi, folks, I am having to hop onhere during editing because I
(32:58):
realized that I forgot toinclude a granola rating. And we
can't go another week withoutour dose of granola goodness. So
if you're new here, each episodewe rate products on a scale from
one to five granolas and thecrunchy or the better, because
obviously, so you know, one isbad one is soggy. And then five
(33:24):
is amazing. And it's a breakyour tooth off kind of granola.
So I ran this by cat for hertake and I decided to rate paper
recycling a 3.5 which is kind ofcheating. But so three is chewy,
(33:45):
which isn't great, but it's notbad. And then four is crunchy.
So cat rated aluminum recyclinga four because it's endlessly
recyclable. And I knew that Ijust couldn't rate paper the
same because you can onlyrecycle it like a handful of
times. So anyway, we're going3.5 So it's not bad. It's not
(34:09):
the best out there and it'salways better to reduce. Okay,
back to the regular show.
So, everywhere, all of thethings online said reduce the
(34:30):
amount of paper you use, and Iwas like, Okay, can you tell me
how Yeah, he's I'm already notprinting anything. Yeah, so I
googled it because I figuredeverybody else is gonna be like,
if I just sit here and say useless paper everybody they're
gonna be annoyed because I wouldbe. So I found some pretty cool
ideas. And one of them is areally easy and cheap way you do
(34:55):
have to pay for dollars butsupported by the FTC.
See The Federal TradeCommission?
FTC as a Federal TradeCommission, yeah.
That's what I said. Didn't youhear me? Yeah. So
(35:15):
they have a website, and it'sgoing to be in the show notes to
options, how to stop junk mail.
There's a link you can follow.
And you can sign up for gettingless mail from marketers. And
those magazines. Yes. Andstopping credit card and
insurance offers in the mail. Idefinitely have signed up for
that. Okay, so there's thatthose are the two options, then
(35:39):
less mail is $4. But it's $4 forlife, so it's permanent. Maybe
if you I don't know, if you moveactually that I think
I'll pay another $4. If I move,it's fine. You know, just don't
get that Starbucks cold brewthat one day. Yeah, exactly. So
we'll have that link becauseit's it. I think that's a really
cool service because I get likea stack of junk paper in the
(36:04):
mail every week. And it's reallyannoying. And that's seems like
an easy way. So all I can try toremember to keep everybody
updated on if it actually makesa difference. But
so another thing avoid papertowels when possible. Hey, we
have a show about that. We havea whole episode. Yeah, we
(36:25):
haven't. Um, paper towelsepisode, I think wasn't our
first one. Yeah, I think it wasepisode one. Yeah. So go back
and listen. Yes. So then aboutbooks, buy used books. Okay.
Right, a little bit of a data.
But it's sometimes you don'tthink about it, because I used
to work for a used bookstore.
And I feel like these stores arehidden gems, and they're
(36:49):
unfortunately hidden. It's like,I don't know why, but I never
thought about it before. Beforeof use bookstores. Yeah. I had
visited them. But I never reallythought about like getting most
of my books from these places.
Because it depends on thequality and the stores. Yeah,
sometimes aren't that great,right? And you'd like Pulp
Fiction or whatever. Like,you're not necessarily going to
(37:12):
find the latest Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, right? But but
you might I mean, if you getlucky, I always use it when I
was like a poor grad student, Iwould go to the US bookstore
down the street. And that's whatI got everyone for Christmas.
Yes, use books. That's what Idid when I was working there. So
yeah, all you have to do issearch us bookstore on Google.
(37:33):
And you'll most likely find likeseveral near us Half Price Books
here in Austin down south. Andyeah, there's a bunch of them. I
mean, okay. I'm gonna I'm goingto promote the best use
bookstore in the world. YourPublic Library people. They're
amazing. I don't even have it onhere. I go to the library all
(37:53):
the time. No, it's true, though.
That is, number one, for sure. Iwill also promote if you really
need to buy this book, or buy abook. Wonder book is the one
that I used to work at. They doonline shipping, and it's free.
So it's like everybody thinks,oh, Amazon, but there's still
(38:16):
bookstores. I mean, Amazon wasfun fact, specifically created
to try and put bookstores out ofbusiness. And yeah, she's pretty
evil with a premise. It is Ihear Barnes and Nobles bouncing
back. And that's actually like,I feel really good about that.
Even though Barnes and Noble.
It's almost also a conglomeratebookstore. Yeah. Yeah. I love
they're still local. But like,we have booked people here in
(38:38):
Austin. There's page one booksin Albuquerque. I know. Like,
these are great. And they sellus books, too. Usually, they
sell both. So yes. So butlibrary 100%. Absolutely. Yeah.
So if you you if you do useAmazon or other delivery
services, although it's good tocut down but we aren't perfect.
(39:01):
You can do a couple things. One,choose Amazon day for your
delivery day, and then they'llcompete. If they're fulfilled by
Amazon, you can check on thepage on the listing. If they're
all fulfilled by Amazon, theywill combine them in one package
if they're not if they're likeimages, or they're fulfilled by
amazon.com. That means it's likea third party vendor it's
probably gonna be shipped fromelsewhere.
(39:23):
Do weekend. Yeah. Green matterstalks about frustration free
packaging. Have you ever seenthis option on Amazon? I have
and I didn't know what it was.
And I assumed that it wasstupid, but it's actually kind
of cool because they basicallyship it to you. You know, you
usually get a box in a box in abox. Yeah, they ship it to you.
I think in the original box, orlike a smaller recycle
(39:47):
recyclable box without all thebubble wrap with all out all the
extra stuff. So they're savingmoney as a company and you have
less crap. Yeah, they just dothat naturally. I
I don't understand. I don'tknow. I think people I don't
know. It's like maybe maybe theyjust had the factories have like
(40:08):
certain size boxes and they onlylike no thought goes into it.
It's just put it in the box, putit in them, because I know that
Amazon workers have to put somany things and they pickers
have to do so much with it.
Right? Yes, I've alreadythoughtless kind of thing,
right? They just gotta getthrough it.
Yeah, I think it's a little bitmore work upfront for them. But
(40:28):
not everything offersfrustration free packaging, but
if you do see it, use it becauseit's, it's kind of a cool thing.
It's a win win. Yeah. UNICEF hadthis really random, really off
the wall. Recommendation. Usefont, the font, if you need to
(40:49):
print something off, useGaramond instead of Times New
Roman, because it's Lessing. Ithas the equipment. This is a
quote from UNICEF, it has theequivalent of a 10 point font
rendered on a 12 point linewhile still being legible. Okay,
yeah.
(41:09):
So I think it means it's justsmaller yet, but it looks
bigger. Yeah, it's still legibleat 10. The
font designers, so I'm assumingthat means if you have to print
off a shitload of pages, you'regoing to be printing less. Yeah,
it'll because it'll do it. So itlooks like a 12 point font, but
it's on a 10 point. It's a 10point font. Yes. So yeah, you'll
(41:33):
be you can fit more on the page.
Yeah. Okay, kids, if you'rewriting your college paper, I
don't think anybody printscollege papers anymore. If they
tell you to write five pages useTimes New Roman, no, Garamond
No, no, if you're just writingit and sending it over email, or
whatever, it'll beremember, because he used to do
the 2.25 spacing there, likeit's double spaced, and you're
(41:56):
like, that was always sostressful. You're like, Please
fit. Get to the place just befive pages. And you'd get to
four and three quarters and justbe like, Alright, 12.5 font 2.2
spacing, we got five. Turn itin. Although let's be honest,
kids are just using AI to writeeverything these days. Well,
they apparently all lit up.
(42:19):
Okay. tree huggers says when youmust buy paper look for 100%
postconsumer recycled paper tosupport the value of recycled
commodities. And that is mypaper recycling Epson. I love
it. Some out of the end uplonger than your aluminum one
with this. We talked, we talkedfor days and days about your
(42:42):
plants. Probably that's true. Wechat there. And then we had
several moments of clearing ourthroats on mute and laughing at
each other for it sounds true.
That's your that all good. Butoh, that was great. I and we, we
we spoke for the library. And Ithink anytime you can speak for
the library is a good time. No.
For real, though. They'reactually under attack. And it's
(43:02):
very upsetting. It's soupsetting. They're so important.
But yeah, if I didn't have thelibrary, I don't think I would
be a sane mother. To be honest.
No minor. So great. Yeah, justtake her there for two hours.
And it's like, oh, I can't goup. So what's happening next
week?
Next week, I believe we aretalking about glass recycling,
(43:25):
which would be our thirdhorsemen of the recycle
apocalypse. Yeah. And this we'rereally getting this is probably
famine or pestilence. We'rereally getting into I'm not I
don't know, we haven't I haven'tdone the research yet. Right.
Plastic is death as we're sayingplastic is death. 100%. But
yeah, I think glass recyclingbecause I know. That's a problem
(43:46):
for a lot of places. So I willreport back next week. The good
news is we're also going to havean episode a bit later in the
season, a mini episode about howto reuse jars. Yeah. Can we
easily I can I've beenexperimenting for years and
really good tricks and tips.
Okay, well, I need to learn thembecause my roommate has a stash.
(44:08):
And I'm like, why don't we justrecycle these.
A hoarder, I have a jar orthere's a lot of jars. And I
don't know where the lids arehalf the time. Oh, yeah. Well,
you can buy new ones, but Well,yeah, good to know. All right.
Well, thank you, Tiffany. Thankyou, Kat. And thank you to our
listeners. Oh, yes. By the way.
Follow us on Instagram. We aregreening up my act. You can find
(44:33):
us there we will have I don'tknow the apocalypse pony clip.
Possibly that's from last week.
But we'll see what we have upthere this week. But Tiffany
always has a wealth of wonderfulthings to post and we share a
lot of information about newsthat we find out and people that
we like following so follow uson Instagram. Yes, whatever cool
(44:54):
stuff I come across and I'mlike, oh sweet. You can grow
strawberries from slicing astrawberry and half
It makes more sense, but Ididn't think about it. Yeah,
that's 100% Yeah. Good stuff.
Good. Or whatever you'relistening to this Have a good
one. Whatever it is a good one.
(45:15):
Shoot.
This thing is all blocked.
So paper can only be recycledfive to seven times. Really?
Yes. Why? Because every timeit's recycled, it breaks down a
little bit. It's like at acertain point, the fibers are
just too brittle and it doesn'tturn into just a big pile of
mush, I guess. Okay, so thatkind of sucks.
(00:29):
Hi. Hi, Tiffany. How are you? Iam doing pretty well. Just the
same as I was three minutes ago.
Just to inform our audiencehere. We've recorded two
episodes a night usually so youmay be hearing the same
background noise as you did in aprevious episode. You're not
hallucinating. Same dog. I stillhave the same frog in my throat
(00:52):
that I'm going to be hacking upnow. Yeah, same dog issues. My
dog is in the kitchen currently.
Yeah. He wants to come inthough. My dog is locked
upstairs. Yeah, she's she's gota family to deal with. So yeah,
well, my dog needs to be lockedupstairs because she is a
whiner. I don't know if anybodyelse has a whiny dog. But it is
(01:14):
the bane of my existence.
Especially if your recordings ofmy dog's a farter. Which you
can't you don't get it over theairwaves. But he has he has a
room clearer for sure. Silentbut deadly. Yes. Well, they're
not silent anymore. either. He'sgetting Oh,
yeah. It's a common occurrencein my house to hear somebody say
(01:34):
him it. Oh.
Ready. It's cute. I missed thisfar. It's when I'm gone.
All right. Oh, I have a reallyquick update about White Paper,
cardboard and Yes.
Talk about a learning process.
(01:56):
So all right, everything wasgoing great for weeks and weeks
and weeks. And then I decided tobuy some petunias. Oh, no. Okay,
even unic de Ahmed.
Who net petunias? Oh, no.
All right, so you know wherethis is going. Basically created
(02:18):
like a trough for the deer.
They're like, Hey, this isjust throw some nasturtiums in
there and there'll be like, thelizard was, well, they're gone.
Gone, gone. So we don't have toworry about the petunias
anymore. or so. Really, though.
There really are. Yes, but sonot only are the petunias gone,
(02:42):
but the deer decided to eat thehell out of my black eyed
Susans, which I also planted andspent a lot of money on. And my
Aster to both things I look upand they're like, Oh, definitely
your food resistant.
resistant. Oh, flies. Yeah.
Well, my mother in law wassaying that a lot of people have
(03:03):
been telling her that the deerare eating things that they
don't normally eat this year.
And like, what are these? Yeah,these freaking robot like for
one welcome. I know you'reoverloaded. Oh, my God, I'm so
mad. Okay, so that happened. Andthen I'm a moron. And I looked
(03:24):
up things, things that you don'twant to trust online are things
like deers, DIY deer spray. Oh,Lord. How many children did you
kill?
sacrificed a couple. Theirblood? No.
So I'm a dingus, and I justdidn't think it through but I
was paying panic mode, likegotta get the deer gonna get the
(03:45):
deer.
So one DIY recipe, use essentialoils, actually, which is funny,
but it was vinegar, straight upvinegar, and peppermint with
essential oil, did it. Charliehelped me out there spray spray
spray spray spray. And the nextday, they were like,
(04:07):
the plants are like, guess whodoesn't like vinegar? Plants.
In hindsight, I just didn't,we'd have
caustic and you shouldn'tprobably use it directly on your
skin. Or I think that was yourpoint or your plan. Got it. It
was just one of those like, Igotta fix this and I didn't want
(04:29):
to go I don't have time to go tothe store. So let's just throw
some shit in a bottle and sprayit and it just didn't work out
at all. And I'm sorry. Well, no,some of them might still survive
like the ASTER is fine. It'spretty hardy, the Black Eyed
Susans just unhappy so I'mprobably gonna suck it up and
just get new ones but anyway,I'm hopefully gonna get some
(04:51):
flowers for these damn. I'mtrying to support could you do
cinnamon or like chili powder?
Well, I ended up just sucking Ijust ordered
are digital direct? Oh, yeah. SoI'm, I don't care. I'm using an
extra bottle. I ordered it fromAmazon. I don't care.
(05:11):
So I'm saving these plantsbecause I've been babying them.
I've been going out there andwatering them and taking care of
him making sure talk to them. Italked to them.
Like yeahthey're all very well versed in
Grimms fairy tales. They loveYeah, they love Hansel and
Gretel.
So anyway, that's, that's myupdate. It's, it's been an
(05:34):
adventure. But you know, I haveheard the best gardener is the
one who kills the most plants.
Because you have to experimentyou have to live and learn. And
yeah, because bakers don't wantto throw away the most cookies.
So exactly. And you could nevertrust a skinny cook.
I've heard all of the proverbs.
Yes. Yeah. So that's my update.
(05:54):
Wow. It's gonna bounce back andit's gonna be great. One day. I
can't wait for actual photos.
God. Yeah. Now they'd be reallyugly. They were already seeing
them. Just everything's liketripled. But yeah. Oh, yeah.
We'll get there.
Next year. Yeah. Nothing else.
Well, on that note, what are weactually supposed to be talking
(06:17):
about tonight?
Good question.
Did you forget? No, no, no, Iremember. Okay. I was just
trying to mute myself. It waslike, I needed to clear my
throat out.
clear my throat and hopingyou'll edit it out.
It's fair, just trying to mutemyself. But it's like, minimize
(06:41):
to where I can't tell which iswhich? We're talking about paper
recycling today? I do remember?
And I do. No, excellent. It'sgreat. I can't wait. I'm really
interested to learn about this.
Yeah, I was really interestedbecause of like, all the Amazon
boxes that everybody gets thesedays, not just Amazon, but
anywhere. I mean, yeah. I mean,it's not like it slowed down
(07:03):
after the pandemic. It's like,we're all still getting stuff
delivered all the time.
Absolutely. So buckle up.
So about my a little bit aboutmy sources, so I use citizen
sustainable.com I think you usethem for aluminum, but they know
(07:23):
I think there's a lot of like,yeah, citizen green Saturday,
right? Oh, that might have beenit. Yeah. People love their
citizen plus eco friendly term.
Yes. Yeah. I'm on recyclingpaper and recycling cardboard,
two different articles, andscience focused.com, which is a
BBC thing. They they had anarticle is recycling paper bad
(07:44):
for the environment.
And tree hug tree. hugger.comalso had an article basically
the same topic. It was prettyinteresting. Reuters, there's
just a quick story I'm tellingyou about a billionaire named
Robert Kraft and his paper mill,ooh, little neighborhood paper
(08:06):
mill in the pollution of theyear.
Green america.org talks aboutlandfill methane, and methane
produced by paper being in thelandfill.
The NIH talks about toxicsurfactants used during
recycling. Cal recycle.com.
Talks about totally chlorinefree recycling processes.
(08:35):
UNICEF, I looked at I found anarticle by UNICEF about how to
reduce your paper use and theyhad some kind of cool ideas. And
then green matters. They talkabout reducing your cardboard
use. So we're gonna get into allof that.
A little bit about paper tostart. I was telling cat before
(08:56):
the episodes. Then I went alittle light on the research on
this one because I was like, Iusually get too heavy, too
heavy, too much. And I literallywrote paper hyphen, thin
paperboard, hyphen, a bitthicker so that's called
cardboard.
This is really deep.
(09:16):
This is some lowest commondenominator shit you're doing
here.
What is paper? Idon't know if you've heard of
it.
Probably like in 10 years you'dbe like What are they talking
about? Maybe actually, and thenI also follow it up with paper
cardboard thick you know what itis?
(09:36):
Well done, man. Well done. Well,the in depth research it grating
up my act. I did great researchon it.
Okay, but okay, the interestingthing is, well, first off the
way it's made, it's I don't havelike, all the details but it's
funny because aluminum is madewith such an intense process
(09:59):
process you need likeElectricity. I mean, you need
electricity for obviouslyeverything. Yeah, everything but
paper is made by like, mashingup. Yeah. Would like some trees
into a bulb and then flatteningit out and turning into paper.
Have you seen? Yeah wallplateYeah. Have you ever made your
own paper?
Maybe maybe in like school?
Yeah, we did for like Earth Dayone time and like, took some
(10:22):
newspaper, put it in a blenderwith a water and then laid it
out flat to dry. put flowers onit like the paper. Yes. It's so
easy. It is. Did you actuallyuse it?
I don't think so. I thinkbumpy that you're
happy birthday, grandma. Let mewrite over this. Over this
(10:43):
violet.
This favorite? Yeah. But yeah,it's true. It's like it's not a
very complicated process. Butthe interesting thing the EPA
said in 2018, which was also theEPA needs to get up on its
stats. I think they weredecimated. Ah, last few years. I
(11:03):
don't think there is makingsense
to kind of don't exist as muchas they used to. Yeah, I had fun
times. Oh, hey, yeah, anyway, itwould be nice if we had more
recent stats, but in 2018, paperand paperboard which they refer
to as cardboard, other places,that's called paperboard like
(11:24):
they differentiate between Yeah,more like a cereal box. Like
yeah, Chip cardboard issometimes what paper cardboard
is referred to to. Oh, I don'tknow. Why have you heard that?
I'll look it up while you keepyou keep talking to let me throw
my phone on the earth.
You're firing on all cylinders?
Tonight. Siren. fibrin flung myslipper across the room.
(11:48):
On free I go. All right. I'mgonna look up cheap cardboard
while you keep going. Okay, sopaper basically, paper materials
comprise the largest componentof municipal solid waste. Oh,
wow. Isn't it crazy? So likemost waste in a landfill is
cardboard or paper, even thoughthey're recyclable, even though
(12:13):
so? But but there's that butthere's actually less of it
heading to the landfill eachyear currently than from like,
1960. Oh, well, that's good toknow. Well, it's been
interesting even though thepresentation has increased in
it. Okay. Yeah, we chipboard isa packaging product made from
wood pulp. It's thicker andsturdier than a sheet of paper.
(12:33):
Doesn't have the corrugatedchannels inside the most
cardboard does. So okay, okay,board that's shipboard. That's
what your cereal boxes andthings are made from. Okay. They
called it paperboard. But itdoes it's probably the same
thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
cardboards usually corrugatedwhich we all know what that is.
So a bit about recycling paper.
So not all paper is recyclable.
(13:06):
When you think about it, it'skind of obvious. Like I looked
at my county, and our recyclingcenter does not accept windowed
envelopes. So because theplastic Yeah, I wonder if you
could just take the plant, youprobably would just take the
plastic you do. That's smart. Ithink I throw it all in. And
then it just I have in the past.
And then somebody told me thatit was like boom, boom. Yeah, if
you separate it out anyway.
(13:29):
Yeah. So and some of them don'thave the little window. They are
just they don't have theplastic. It's just a window and
I'm like, that one's fine. Whydo we need a wind? Why do we
need plastic anyway? Moving on.
So your check doesn't fall out?
I don't know. Yeah.
Wax paper, at least in mycounty, you can't paper towels,
(13:49):
napkins, paper plates, laminatedpaper and paper that can't be
easily torn. None of these arerecyclable in my area. Okay.
Which is helpful to know becauseI think I've put all of these
things into my recyclingdefinitely finished a wine and
cheese party and everybody hasput their paper plate into the
recycling. And I'm like,Yeah, especially if it's dirty.
(14:10):
It's not gonna get recycled, butI mean, so that's the thing. You
need to look up your county. Soeach county has a website, and
it should tell you as long asyou have a recycling, you know,
what the Austin obviously does,we're way ahead of the times.
Right, right. Yeah, so but youcan look it up. So it's that is
(14:33):
actually kind of important to dobecause otherwise it's just
gonna get I don't know it justclogs up the system and you
don't just throw in the trash ifit isn't recyclable.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, that too. It alsomust be clean and dry. And that
one interesting thing I found isif it gets wet, you can dry it
(14:55):
out wet with like water oil isdifferent but you can dry
ate out before you recycle itand it's recyclable. I was
always I always wondered that.
But yeah, that's totally anoption. So just sit in the sun
for a minute. Oh, yeah. So papercan only be recycled five to
seven times. Really? Yes. Why?
(15:20):
Because every time it'srecycled, it breaks down a
little bit. So at the end of itslife, it's made into things like
a egg cartons or newspapers,okay, and those in, okay, you
can actually recycle anewspaper, but, but then it's
like, at a certain point, thefibers are just too brittle, and
it doesn't turn into just a bigpile of mush, I guess. Okay, so
(15:43):
that kind of sucks. It's notinfinite, like aluminum.
Yeah, well, aluminum issuperior.
Although the amazing thing is,recycling rates are better. So
these are the 2018 EPA recyclingrates. They're better than
aluminum because aluminum waslike 50%, right? Yeah. And so
(16:04):
paper and paperboard is 68%.
Newspapers are 65%. But then youOh, incorrect. corrugated boxes
are the king and 97%. Wow. Whichis like, pretty good. That is a
go Amazon, I guess. Yeah. AndAmazon actually has an option
that I'll get into a little bitlater that can help you reduce
(16:24):
your Amazon impact. Okay. Butthen pay pay per containers and
packaging that not includingcorrugated boxes to only 21%. So
like your box of your box thatcomes in your everything comes
in a box? I don't know. Likeyour makeup container comes in a
box. That kind of stuff doesn'tget recycled. Interesting. I
(16:47):
mean, I make a point of it. Eventhough I have to walk from my
bathroom to the kitchen, youknow?
Yeah, maybe like maybe that'swhy, because it's just easier to
throw it in the trash. Yeah.
Interesting. Well, I alsothought, and maybe you'll get
into this, but I thoughtchipboard or paperboard wasn't
recyclable. But it just dependson what county you are in or
(17:11):
think so. Yes. It's not always.
So yeah, it really depends onwhere you live.
So let's start with Okay, sothose are the recycling rates.
They're pretty good for paper,but like I said, huge. Yeah, but
it's only five to seven times.
Interesting. So why not recycle?
(17:31):
I'm doing the exact same thingyou did, man. Full disclosure. I
looked at yours first and sawhow you outline. Okay, I was
like mine. I was like, did wejust do that accidentally?
That's so amazing. Oh, yeah.
Total mind meld. Yeah, we're Ohyeah. simpatico I love it.
Okay, so why not recycle paper?
So there are toxic surfactantsas I mentioned, that they do ink
(17:55):
the paper during recycling? Ofcourse. Yeah. Because you have
to get the ink off and thegraphics and whatever. And then
paper pulp pulp is also bleachedto add brightness. So, you know,
they use bleach andmanufacturing setting bleach is
(18:17):
not great. Yeah, we know thatfrom our bleach episode. Yes.
We're just like, we keep mutingand coughing, muting and taking
turns coughing, sad. We're sickagain. It's dying. It's fine.
Um, but the use of chlorine hasdecreased over the years. And
(18:40):
it's been replaced by what Calrecycle.com calls totally
chlorine free processes. Sothey're still bleaching it, but
now with chlorine bleach, Iguess so. Yeah, I didn't
OxiClean UV maybe? No, I don'tknow any bleaching methods that
we've discussed on the show Sunbleaching, lemons. Lemons. Yeah,
(19:01):
I'm not sure exactly what theyare using these days, but
apparently it's not chlorine. Sookay, good. Another thing about
recycling paper, it produces asludge that ends up in
landfills.
So that's not delicious. Butyeah, so there's always going to
(19:22):
be some kind of byproduct right?
Also papers easily contaminated.
So it's like get any kind of oilon it get any kind of run food
on it. And it's like you're notabsorbed. Yeah, for Yeah, it's
not you can you can't rinse itlike aluminum foil. Yes. Another
really interesting thing is thatBBC science focus says modern
(19:42):
paper mills normally generatetheir energy from burning waste
wood, so wood that wouldotherwise be thrown away. So
that's like a paper millproducing new paper, whereas
recycling plants often rely onelectricity from fossil fuels.
So we'll burn wood is a fossilfuel, but it's not like us it's
(20:04):
not oil or gas. Interesting. SoI wonder if it's half a dozen
one six of the other? Becauseyou don't I mean burning wood?
Cause right burning woods notgreat either, I guess. But it's
different than burning, I guess.
I don't know. Yeah. But I foundthat kind of interesting. But I
mean, at the end of the day, itdoesn't really matter, because
(20:26):
I'm gonna go into why recycle.
And there's a lot of reasons whywe want to recycle paper. Okay.
So it uses about 50% less waterand 60% less energy than
creating new paper products. Sono matter how the energy's
(20:49):
being, you know, where theenergy is coming from, there's a
60% less of it, to recycle.
Okay. And treehugger says thepulp and paper industry uses
more water to produce a ton ofproduct than any other industry.
So the water usage is reallybad, which makes sense because
you got to turn it into a pulp.
(21:10):
Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, Isit here looking at my bullet
journal. guiltily.
Right. I'm also a paper planner,kind of you and I are, we're
both Journalers and I mean,we're writers. There's something
about my pin stash here. I know.
(21:33):
Oh, it's pretty. Thank you. Andbooks too. Okay. No books. Okay.
Yeah, it's I'm not I'm not aKindler. For the most part, I
have a very old one for me. Ihave went yeah, for traveling.
Sometimes. It's nice. Especiallyyou're gonna be gone for a long
time. And you don't want tocarry a bunch of books with you.
(21:53):
But I prefer paper books forYes, me too. I'm gonna old
school. Romantic. Well, so Ihave good news for you there
later. Oh, goody.
Which you already know, butit's, you know, making
connecting the dots here. But soscience focus says that there's
74% less air pollution createdwhen recycling paper than making
(22:17):
new paper. Oh, and this is wherethat billionaire comes in. It's
kind of an interesting story.
This is just an example of anew, like, paper manufacturer.
So not a recycling plant. Andfirst off the EPA identifies
methanol, all of these hazardousair pollutants like
(22:40):
formaldehyde. Oh, yikes. S satdown that hide
acetyl aldehyde or whatever?
Yeah. Oh, you know how to sayit. I just ended up okay.
So they were in. So paper plantsemit large quantities of all of
these things. And there arelimits like that, like, there
are limits to how much they'resupposed to be able to put into
(23:03):
the air. But in 2021, which wasvery recent, billionaire Robert
Kraft, probably from I don'tknow if he's from crap like
a craft. He was sued for a largerelease of hydrogen sulfide, a
(23:23):
gas that smells like rotteneggs. Let me make sure I cite
this source. Oh, this is aReuters article. smells like
rotten eggs and causes headachesand even death in concentrated
doses like God. So he had thispaper No, that I think this
article said that it was likethe biggest polluter in the
country. Wow. And just for fun,just for funsies. Well, so he
(23:47):
bought this paper mill and Ithink it got way worse because I
don't know he changed some stuffand made it worse. And so there
have been like federal and stateorders to reduce its emissions
button. The article says quote,and however no regulatory action
has been taken against the millfor really releasing sit or
small particulates at levelsexceeding Mills run by larger
(24:10):
rivals and by the country'slargest oil refineries. Oh, my
God, oil refineries. Dude,you're making paper? Yes. Isn't
that crazy? That's insane. Somaking new paper is not great.
Definitely something we need tochill out with our usage.
(24:32):
And so I mentioned thatrecycling paper also uses
chemicals. But despite thatrecycled paper has a lower
chemical impact than producingpaper from virgin materials.
Okay. So why else recycle? Sothis was really interesting.
paper in a landfill because ofthe way there's no oxygen
(24:55):
getting into it, because it'sjust shoved down under you know,
tons of stuff.
Hmm, it's going to be brokendown by organisms that produce
methane, of course. And if itwasn't going to be broken down
in that way, there would be nomethane produced. And the EPA
(25:17):
identifies paper as one of thelargest sources of landfill
methane. Oh, isn't that crazy? Inever thought about that.
Because we think paper isbiodegradable. Right? One of our
favorite words, becauseeverything's biodegradable.
Let's be honest. Yeah. Well,isn't that crazy? And then
treehugger says, one tonne ofpaper in a landfill will turn
into 1.38 tonnes of co2equivalents. Well, because it's
(25:40):
multiplying. Yeah, almostdoubling or then the original.
Yeah. Wow. Okay, isn't thatcrazy? And then in 2018, paper
and paperboard made up 11,almost 12% of the municipal
solid waste in US landfills.
Cheesy cheesy, just paper andyeah, right out there. Wow.
Okay. So recycling is? Well,I'll get into that in a minute.
(26:06):
I'm gonna talk about compostreal quick.
So, tree huggers says, if youwere okay, you can compost your
(26:26):
paper. Okay, in like a homepaper facility or if your city
or county runs as compostingprogram.
I compost Just Between Uschickens. My paper towels that
don't have you know, too muchoil on them and or Windex and
(26:46):
other paper products that can'tbe recycled. Like I thought
chipboard couldn't be it lookslike an Austin it can be but
okay. I couldn't I would compostmy chipboard. Okay. Yeah. So
what treehugger is saying isthat composting only cuts down
on landfill emissions, which isnot a bad thing. But it doesn't
offset the Virgin paperproduction. Yeah. So it's not
(27:09):
being put back into the systemto be reused, right. But they
have advice if you do compost,use paper and other sort of like
composting in general, but putpaper with the other brown
materials, like leaves in a 5050ratio with the green materials
like scraps, and then thatshould maximize the performance.
(27:30):
So you can compost it. It's notYeah, it's not a bad thing. It's
just not being recycled to beused again. Right? Lonely five,
seven times. So yeah, let's behonest, at the end of its life,
I mean napkins and things thatcan't be recycled. When Yeah, or
newspapers toward the end of itslife egg cartons as those are
(27:50):
probably I don't even know ifthere's recyclable those paper
egg cartons. Yeah, I wonder doesI probably compost. Put them
with your eggs? Yeah, youprobably could. That's not a bad
bad use. Oh, I did read a lot ofcardboard. People always say
like, oh, just put it in yourgarden bottle. A lot of it
actually has a lot of chemicalsin it. So keep that in mind.
(28:11):
Yeah. Somebody was gonna beseeping into groundwater. When
you make sure you take all thetape off, like, yes. Yeah,
stick. And we'll get into how torecycle paper and cardboard
best. Okay. Okay, what aboutcardboard? So I didn't look a
ton into cardboard. Becauseagain, I was feeling a little
(28:32):
lazy. Maybe I don't know what itwas. I'm just busy. Okay.
But I did want to know, like Isaid, I was curious about the
Amazon boxes. So 80% of productsbought in the EU in the US are
covered in cardboard. First off,okay. E percent. And if your
(28:52):
cardboard has food residue, likewe said, you it's going to end
up in the landfill. Yeah, you'rejust you're not you're not going
to do anything with it. So thinktwice about that. Takeout pizza.
Is that and so that would betrue of like coffee cups to then
oh, like paper coffee cups?
Yeah, I would think so.
Because most of them or plasticline to I wonder if they're
(29:14):
looking. Yeah, so that is kindof tricky. And I think it
depends on the area. But what Iwrote was if your cardboard has
food residue, oils, lots oftape, which we'll get into foam
peanuts or plastic deliverylabels like from I don't know
what is it FedEx has those bigplastic labels. Then it's gonna
(29:35):
going in the landfill even Okay,cardboard, so Oh, and then I
wrote not all recycling centersexcept thin cardboard like
cereal boxes. Um, do I thinkmine does? I think it does
because it wasn't. I just saw usI just Googled Austin's and I
think it does. So I didn't lieto somebody told me I had to put
it in compost. I mean, that'sthe thing. It's so confusing
(29:56):
because there's no federal law.
It's like whatever.
or community can support is whatthey manage. But yeah,
yeah, it's frustrating. And thensome recycling centers can
actually process wax coveredcardboards. I mean, that's kind
of what you're wondering. Yeah.
And I was thinking like,we sometimes get milk in the wax
covered. CART, half gallons.
(30:19):
Yeah. And I was always, I wasalways confused. And I guess our
I should look it up actually,because I'm not 100% Yeah, I
wonder if my coconut milk jugcan get. Yeah. And then. Okay,
so cardboard is pretty easy torecycle. And it's actually it's
like very recyclable, recyclefriendly. And it will get
(30:44):
recycled into either paper bags,paper towels, tissues, regular
paper or more cardboard. Butagain, cardboard, you can only
recycle five to seven times.
Right? I thought that was onlypaper. I was like, No.
Garberville it's all paperproducts. I wonder how they tell
that it's been? I don't know.
(31:04):
Like all this is your thirdround buddy. Race to more on
you're going into the landfill.
Each little fiber has like atally on it. Yeah, you can see
it no money, microscope.
Tattoos.
Okay, on to should you recyclepaper and cardboard from four
perspectives? So let's look atthe greenhouse gas perspective.
(31:26):
Yes, because it emits less. Fromthe chemical pollution
perspective. Yes, because itproduces fewer, or uses fewer
chemicals.
From a water perspective, yes,but both do use a lot of water.
So recycling uses 12,000 gallonsper ton of water to recycle it.
(31:51):
And then to create it fromVirgin uses 24,000 gallons.
Okay, so it's half, it's half.
So that's significant, but it'sstill a lot. That's 12,000
gallons. And from adeforestation perspective, yes.
Because it doesn't contribute todeforestation. Okay. So overall,
yes, you should keep doing it.
America, you're already doingit. Just keep it up. Yeah. And
(32:14):
honestly, coming into this sortof four part recycling series, I
expected it all to be like,Don't bother. It's stupid. So I
feel like I because like I said,because I have read so many
articles about how the system isbroken. I just expected all of
it to be broken. But it's like,oh, no, actually papers really
important to recycle. However,done done. Well, it's actually
(32:38):
not not that bad. Okay. But I'mjust changing gears because
really, the issue is we have toremember reduce, reuse, recycle
in that order.
Hi, folks, I am having to hop onhere during editing because I
(32:58):
realized that I forgot toinclude a granola rating. And we
can't go another week withoutour dose of granola goodness. So
if you're new here, each episodewe rate products on a scale from
one to five granolas and thecrunchy or the better, because
obviously, so you know, one isbad one is soggy. And then five
(33:24):
is amazing. And it's a breakyour tooth off kind of granola.
So I ran this by cat for hertake and I decided to rate paper
recycling a 3.5 which is kind ofcheating. But so three is chewy,
(33:45):
which isn't great, but it's notbad. And then four is crunchy.
So cat rated aluminum recyclinga four because it's endlessly
recyclable. And I knew that Ijust couldn't rate paper the
same because you can onlyrecycle it like a handful of
times. So anyway, we're going3.5 So it's not bad. It's not
(34:09):
the best out there and it'salways better to reduce. Okay,
back to the regular show.
So, everywhere, all of thethings online said reduce the
(34:30):
amount of paper you use, and Iwas like, Okay, can you tell me
how Yeah, he's I'm already notprinting anything. Yeah, so I
googled it because I figuredeverybody else is gonna be like,
if I just sit here and say useless paper everybody they're
gonna be annoyed because I wouldbe. So I found some pretty cool
ideas. And one of them is areally easy and cheap way you do
(34:55):
have to pay for dollars butsupported by the FTC.
See The Federal TradeCommission?
FTC as a Federal TradeCommission, yeah.
That's what I said. Didn't youhear me? Yeah. So
(35:15):
they have a website, and it'sgoing to be in the show notes to
options, how to stop junk mail.
There's a link you can follow.
And you can sign up for gettingless mail from marketers. And
those magazines. Yes. Andstopping credit card and
insurance offers in the mail. Idefinitely have signed up for
that. Okay, so there's thatthose are the two options, then
(35:39):
less mail is $4. But it's $4 forlife, so it's permanent. Maybe
if you I don't know, if you moveactually that I think
I'll pay another $4. If I move,it's fine. You know, just don't
get that Starbucks cold brewthat one day. Yeah, exactly. So
we'll have that link becauseit's it. I think that's a really
cool service because I get likea stack of junk paper in the
(36:04):
mail every week. And it's reallyannoying. And that's seems like
an easy way. So all I can try toremember to keep everybody
updated on if it actually makesa difference. But
so another thing avoid papertowels when possible. Hey, we
have a show about that. We havea whole episode. Yeah, we
(36:25):
haven't. Um, paper towelsepisode, I think wasn't our
first one. Yeah, I think it wasepisode one. Yeah. So go back
and listen. Yes. So then aboutbooks, buy used books. Okay.
Right, a little bit of a data.
But it's sometimes you don'tthink about it, because I used
to work for a used bookstore.
And I feel like these stores arehidden gems, and they're
(36:49):
unfortunately hidden. It's like,I don't know why, but I never
thought about it before. Beforeof use bookstores. Yeah. I had
visited them. But I never reallythought about like getting most
of my books from these places.
Because it depends on thequality and the stores. Yeah,
sometimes aren't that great,right? And you'd like Pulp
Fiction or whatever. Like,you're not necessarily going to
(37:12):
find the latest Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, right? But but
you might I mean, if you getlucky, I always use it when I
was like a poor grad student, Iwould go to the US bookstore
down the street. And that's whatI got everyone for Christmas.
Yes, use books. That's what Idid when I was working there. So
yeah, all you have to do issearch us bookstore on Google.
(37:33):
And you'll most likely find likeseveral near us Half Price Books
here in Austin down south. Andyeah, there's a bunch of them. I
mean, okay. I'm gonna I'm goingto promote the best use
bookstore in the world. YourPublic Library people. They're
amazing. I don't even have it onhere. I go to the library all
(37:53):
the time. No, it's true, though.
That is, number one, for sure. Iwill also promote if you really
need to buy this book, or buy abook. Wonder book is the one
that I used to work at. They doonline shipping, and it's free.
So it's like everybody thinks,oh, Amazon, but there's still
(38:16):
bookstores. I mean, Amazon wasfun fact, specifically created
to try and put bookstores out ofbusiness. And yeah, she's pretty
evil with a premise. It is Ihear Barnes and Nobles bouncing
back. And that's actually like,I feel really good about that.
Even though Barnes and Noble.
It's almost also a conglomeratebookstore. Yeah. Yeah. I love
they're still local. But like,we have booked people here in
(38:38):
Austin. There's page one booksin Albuquerque. I know. Like,
these are great. And they sellus books, too. Usually, they
sell both. So yes. So butlibrary 100%. Absolutely. Yeah.
So if you you if you do useAmazon or other delivery
services, although it's good tocut down but we aren't perfect.
(39:01):
You can do a couple things. One,choose Amazon day for your
delivery day, and then they'llcompete. If they're fulfilled by
Amazon, you can check on thepage on the listing. If they're
all fulfilled by Amazon, theywill combine them in one package
if they're not if they're likeimages, or they're fulfilled by
amazon.com. That means it's likea third party vendor it's
probably gonna be shipped fromelsewhere.
(39:23):
Do weekend. Yeah. Green matterstalks about frustration free
packaging. Have you ever seenthis option on Amazon? I have
and I didn't know what it was.
And I assumed that it wasstupid, but it's actually kind
of cool because they basicallyship it to you. You know, you
usually get a box in a box in abox. Yeah, they ship it to you.
I think in the original box, orlike a smaller recycle
(39:47):
recyclable box without all thebubble wrap with all out all the
extra stuff. So they're savingmoney as a company and you have
less crap. Yeah, they just dothat naturally. I
I don't understand. I don'tknow. I think people I don't
know. It's like maybe maybe theyjust had the factories have like
(40:08):
certain size boxes and they onlylike no thought goes into it.
It's just put it in the box, putit in them, because I know that
Amazon workers have to put somany things and they pickers
have to do so much with it.
Right? Yes, I've alreadythoughtless kind of thing,
right? They just gotta getthrough it.
Yeah, I think it's a little bitmore work upfront for them. But
(40:28):
not everything offersfrustration free packaging, but
if you do see it, use it becauseit's, it's kind of a cool thing.
It's a win win. Yeah. UNICEF hadthis really random, really off
the wall. Recommendation. Usefont, the font, if you need to
(40:49):
print something off, useGaramond instead of Times New
Roman, because it's Lessing. Ithas the equipment. This is a
quote from UNICEF, it has theequivalent of a 10 point font
rendered on a 12 point linewhile still being legible. Okay,
yeah.
(41:09):
So I think it means it's justsmaller yet, but it looks
bigger. Yeah, it's still legibleat 10. The
font designers, so I'm assumingthat means if you have to print
off a shitload of pages, you'regoing to be printing less. Yeah,
it'll because it'll do it. So itlooks like a 12 point font, but
it's on a 10 point. It's a 10point font. Yes. So yeah, you'll
(41:33):
be you can fit more on the page.
Yeah. Okay, kids, if you'rewriting your college paper, I
don't think anybody printscollege papers anymore. If they
tell you to write five pages useTimes New Roman, no, Garamond
No, no, if you're just writingit and sending it over email, or
whatever, it'll beremember, because he used to do
the 2.25 spacing there, likeit's double spaced, and you're
(41:56):
like, that was always sostressful. You're like, Please
fit. Get to the place just befive pages. And you'd get to
four and three quarters and justbe like, Alright, 12.5 font 2.2
spacing, we got five. Turn itin. Although let's be honest,
kids are just using AI to writeeverything these days. Well,
they apparently all lit up.
(42:19):
Okay. tree huggers says when youmust buy paper look for 100%
postconsumer recycled paper tosupport the value of recycled
commodities. And that is mypaper recycling Epson. I love
it. Some out of the end uplonger than your aluminum one
with this. We talked, we talkedfor days and days about your
(42:42):
plants. Probably that's true. Wechat there. And then we had
several moments of clearing ourthroats on mute and laughing at
each other for it sounds true.
That's your that all good. Butoh, that was great. I and we, we
we spoke for the library. And Ithink anytime you can speak for
the library is a good time. No.
For real, though. They'reactually under attack. And it's
(43:02):
very upsetting. It's soupsetting. They're so important.
But yeah, if I didn't have thelibrary, I don't think I would
be a sane mother. To be honest.
No minor. So great. Yeah, justtake her there for two hours.
And it's like, oh, I can't goup. So what's happening next
week?
Next week, I believe we aretalking about glass recycling,
(43:25):
which would be our thirdhorsemen of the recycle
apocalypse. Yeah. And this we'rereally getting this is probably
famine or pestilence. We'rereally getting into I'm not I
don't know, we haven't I haven'tdone the research yet. Right.
Plastic is death as we're sayingplastic is death. 100%. But
yeah, I think glass recyclingbecause I know. That's a problem
(43:46):
for a lot of places. So I willreport back next week. The good
news is we're also going to havean episode a bit later in the
season, a mini episode about howto reuse jars. Yeah. Can we
easily I can I've beenexperimenting for years and
really good tricks and tips.
Okay, well, I need to learn thembecause my roommate has a stash.
(44:08):
And I'm like, why don't we justrecycle these.
A hoarder, I have a jar orthere's a lot of jars. And I
don't know where the lids arehalf the time. Oh, yeah. Well,
you can buy new ones, but Well,yeah, good to know. All right.
Well, thank you, Tiffany. Thankyou, Kat. And thank you to our
listeners. Oh, yes. By the way.
Follow us on Instagram. We aregreening up my act. You can find
(44:33):
us there we will have I don'tknow the apocalypse pony clip.
Possibly that's from last week.
But we'll see what we have upthere this week. But Tiffany
always has a wealth of wonderfulthings to post and we share a
lot of information about newsthat we find out and people that
we like following so follow uson Instagram. Yes, whatever cool
(44:54):
stuff I come across and I'mlike, oh sweet. You can grow
strawberries from slicing astrawberry and half
It makes more sense, but Ididn't think about it. Yeah,
that's 100% Yeah. Good stuff.
Good. Or whatever you'relistening to this Have a good
one. Whatever it is a good one.
(45:15):
Shoot.
This thing is all blocked.
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