OK, since I started this, I guess I need to give you "The rrrrrrest of the story!"....as per the late Paul Harvey.
First of all, our curbside pickup service provides a tub into which we can put all sorts of approved recyclables. It's not up to us to sort them. As long as the contents meet the posted criteria, we can voluntarily have them collect our recyclables bi-weekly.
And, as stated before, one of the criteria regarding plastic items is having the recycle symbol/number embossed/stamped.
So, what if we just toss any old plastic item in....like the WS and MTH O gauge...even HO and N... structure packaging clamshells (which I reference as examples of many such plastic packaging items due to their sheer size)? Seems harmless enough.
Well, here's the rub.
The curbside guys are trying to make a living by helping to keep our environment safer, cleaner, re-use materials wiser, etc., etc., blah, blah. But they're NOT the ones who check the contents of our recycables tub. Nope. They have a contract with a recycling center/processor somewhere else that has given them a price for the aggregate collection. All their accumulated pickups are dumped into another container and trucked/trained to the processors...the guys that pay them to deliver 'clean' (read: bonafide) materials.
So if there's non-compliant materials delivered to the processor, they send notice to the collectors that they need to put us....Peter and Paula Perpetrator...on notice that, unless we 'clean up' our act, follow the rules of the rubbish, one of two things will take place.
First, the amount the processor pays the collector will go down. They have to deal with sorting/disposing of all this...junk...that arrived at their plant. This puts the hurt instantly on the collector, who has put his trust in us. Their bottom line looks worse. Their employees may start to feel a financial pinch. Perhaps the collectors will advise the township/city....taxing authority...that this service is going to cost each of us more due to non-compliance. Citizens will grumble, aggravate/agitate their local representatives. If the residents start taking the attitude that this recycling 'thing' is too tedious for them, they'll simply put it all into the common trash headed to the burial grounds, the amount of recyclables will drop, and the collector will have less material to send to the processor......for which they're getting paid less than when their business relationship started.
Well, of course, the solution to that is to find another, less stringent, more benevolent processor that the collector can deal with. But, more often than not, that second....third....fourth...choice is twice....three times....four times farther away. Trucking/shipping costs of the bulk recyclables goes up....offsetting the better rate-per-ton of raw recyclables that the processor might pay the collector.
Further non-compliance from Peter and Paula? The collector, the curbside convenience service, dies....gives up...folds up the recycling option to his trash collecting service. Default back to a simpler business model....pick it up, take it to the landfill, dump it, repeat. Tough luck, Mother Earth. Tough luck, employees who were part of the recycling collection business. Tough luck, township efforts to provide environmental services.
So, look.......I'm not a so-called tree hugger. I am, however, a conscientious reflector. I get these nifty buildings in humongous plastic clamshell packaging....packaging that, unlike the foam-filled boxes in which my hallowed pricey engines came in, I have absolutely no intent on keeping stored under the train table or in the crawl space above the garage. It's absolutely worthless to keep....IMHO. But when those humongous flimsy clamshells are put in my home trash container....and literally fill THAT with the packaging of a single structure!!!!....I begin to feel some regret toward adding it to the local landfill. It deserves for ALL of us to find a better end to its existence......recycling....voluntary.
And all this.....just because the recycle symbol/number is too danged hard, too much a PITA, to add to the simple die, or stamped on a sticker, so that it qualifies for the most convenient way of disposal, the better way to treat our environment?
And to think that right now some people live under the legal threat of financial penalty...or worse...for handing out, without customer request, a plastic drinking straw in order to save the planet from choking on its polymeric refuse. But, it's too much trouble to expect a recycle logo/number on appropriate disposable items sold into our hobby??
What a crock.
What a shame.
But, that's just MHO.
It's most certainly not my hill to die on, however, so I'm done with the question/suggeston. Que sera, sera.
KD
