224 posts tagged with recycling.
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How can I buy orthodontic wax with less packaging?
I'm getting orthodontics done now and I've been going through a TON of orthodontic wax since my fixed appliance was installed. Orthodontic wax typically comes in little plastic cases with 5 strips in each one Example on Amazon. I don't have a need for all these tiny cases and I doubt they can be properly recycled due to their small size. I want to find a way to buy orthodontic wax that comes in larger cases or uses more sustainable packaging. Any suggestions? [more inside]
Reusable bottle with soda-pop-style thread?
Where can I purchase an infinitely reusable bottle that has the same type of thread as a 1L or 2L bottle of soda--literally the exact same thread as a liter bottle of Coke you buy in a vending machine or convenience store? [more inside]
Recycling Tyvek Bags
Have you ever successfully recycled Tyvek bags? The DuPont website claims it's possible and provides a 1-800 number to call for more information like it's 1999. I called and was told that the line is closed until regular business hours resume on Monday. Clearly they're not actually trying to make this feasible. Can it be done? I just want to recycle a large household stash.
Best options in 2023 for donating iPhone 6S?
My spouse and I finally updated our cell phones this year, and now we have two iPhone 6S's that we'd like to donate to a good cause. Searching around, it looks like most options actually just recycle the electronics. That seems sad – the phones still work and are in good condition. Is that really the only option these days? [more inside]
Expiration Ethics
An organization I'm working with has a large quantity of expired NIOSH N95 masks that they would like to not just dump in a landfill. What are our ethical options? [more inside]
Is it making a difference?
For the last six months or so, my wife has been watching a lot of YouTube videos on recycling and Earth cleaning efforts. [more inside]
What are your favorite sustainable gifts?
I have some friends who care deeply about the earth, sustainability, and making a difference. I'd like to give them nice gifts that also celebrate our journey to living more eco-friendly, sustainable lives. Please recommend your favorite sustainable gifts to give or receive. [more inside]
Current best practices: electronics recycling edition
I have a handful of old laptops (~5-15 years old), a second-generation Kindle, and some equally ancient old cell phones and external hard drives. What are the current best practices for recycling these? Is there any substantive difference between taking them to, say, Best Buy vs a more specialized business? [more inside]
What’s the best thing to do with worn-out jeans?
Every pair of jeans I own eventually rips in the chub-rub/crotch zone. I am a plus-sized woman; at this point I’m resigned to this fate. No method of repair has ever worked. So what do I do with this pile of o’ blue jeans that I can’t wear, can’t mend, can’t donate? [more inside]
Is recycling worthwhile?
I grew up recycling metal, paper, and many plastics. Increasingly in the last several years, I have been seeing articles posted on MetaFilter and elsewhere that have made me seriously doubt the value of recycling. I have tried to find a good answer to the question of whether recycling is worth the effort, and finding an answer has proven difficult. Do you have good books, articles, or websites to recommend that discuss this question holistically and in depth? [more inside]
If I grow vegetables in this soil, will they be poisonous?
I have some large planters that I have filled with soil reclaimed from commercial decorative flowering plants (begonias, etc). Is it safe to grow vegetables in that soil, or should I dispose of it and use fresh gardening soil to grow vegetables? [more inside]
Phase 1: Collect underpants Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Profit
So much old clothing to dispose of! I found a site online but I can't tell if it is legit. [more inside]
Finding a glass bottle for foaming soap after eating what's inside it
I want to buy a drink or condiment that happens to come inside a glass bottle and then re-use the glass bottle for foaming soap--rather than buy an empty glass container for the foaming soap pump. The difficulty lies within the diameter of the pump. [more inside]
Recommendations for eco-friendly household products
We recently switched to detergent sheets for laundry, we've always used bar soap instead of body wash, and used reusable grocery bags before they were even a nation-wide conversation. But looking around our house, we are finding so many things that come in plastic packaging (toothpaste, mouthwash, dishwasher detergent, floss, condiments, shelf-stable pantry items like rice, quinoa, etc). Help us find alternatives we will love? [more inside]
What's a good name for an office can crusher?
My office recently added can-crushing machines to all our recycling areas, and I need a good punny name for ours. [more inside]
Recycling refrigerator water filters: worth it?
We use the water filter that you screw into your fridge. We go through one per year. I have been saving them to mail to this company for recyling, as they are big chunks of plastic that I would prefer to not throw away. Do you think this company is legit? If yes, do you think it is worth the carbon of shipping them a heavy box of filters? [more inside]
Dispose of DE razor blades?
I have a couple of boxes of DE razor blades. Can they be taken to a scrapyard, or a recycling facility? [more inside]
recycled and sustainable art filter
I'm planning to open a gallery showing sustainable art, that is art made primarily or entirely of recycled materials and/or natural materials. I'm open to all materials, genres, themes and flavors of art and am looking for your favorites artists working sustainably?
Please add links to websites if possible. [more inside]
How do I throw away books responsibly?
I have a number of boxes of books from my childhood and high school years. Many have been sold or given away; the ones that are left are books that would not be good choices for donation/resale (e.g. very old versions of reference works, books that have been written in extensively, books that handle their subject matter poorly.) What is the best way to responsibly get rid of these? Can we just put them in the recycling?
Paid recycling services - verifying what they do, and best total impact?
Is there any way to verify that recycling services like Ridwell and GreenDisk actually keep stuff out of landfill? Should I put money and effort into better landfill policies rather than my own individual trash? [more inside]
Are old vinyl records better off in a landfill?
My brother owns a used record shop & winds up with many unusable records that can't be recycled in my province.
Environmentally speaking, is old vinyl safer in a landfill vs being reused in a consumer product? ie shredded & used as aggregate/filler in concrete or melted into a decorative planter [more inside]
Greenest way to drink sparkling water?
I like to drink sparkling water. I usually have three or four cases of Trader Joe's sparkling water on deck. But I recently read the news coverage about how plastics recycling is a sham, and I want to change my habits to recognize this fact and reduce the amount of garbage I'm producing. What is the greenest way to purchase sparkling water? [more inside]
Is my town recycling legitimately?
My town contracts a third-party to pick up both trash and recycling, and I have noticed that the service uses one truck and loads both the trash bin and the recycling bin into the same truck and the same space on that truck and then crushes it all together. Is this a legitimate way to recycle? [more inside]
What grocery products have great reusable foodsafe containers?
I’ve taken to re-using some of the containers from our groceries for other pantry staples and I’m looking to expand my repertoire. What specific items and brands can you recommend that come in high quality, good sized jars or other airtight reusable containers? [more inside]
Best way to set up very local freecycling/swapping/services offered?
Looking for a solution to set up a very local system for people on my road to record items they have to lend, services they have to offer, things they are looking to donate/find a new home for, just for a handpicked group of local residents. [more inside]
Need a plan to safely deal with dirty plastic waste
Every morning I go for a walk at a nearby estuary nature reserve. I pick up the rubbish that blows in or is washed up. This stuff is too dirty to recycle and at the moment the only place I can dispose of it is the municipal garbage. Is there a way I can bind this rubbish into bricks, or lump it together somehow so that even if it DOES end up as landfill, it at least won't spread around into the surrounding ecosystem again? [more inside]
Looking for a better term than "virgin" material
Part of my job is associated with increasing the amount of recycled materials used in my company, and we talk about "percent recycled versus percent virgin" material a lot. I would like to find a better term than "virgin" to refer to unused feedstock. Unused is one term, of course, but I would like other ideas. (I have been successful at changing our connector terminology from referring to "male/female" connectors to "plug/receptacle," so I believe this is not an impossible task.)
How to deal with items damaged by battery corrosion
I am preparing to take some old batteries to the recycling center. Some corrosion from the batteries got on several other items, how to dispose of these? Also, does anyone know of a charity in Berkeley that needs old sheets? [more inside]
Plastic bags, the more sustainable choice? Break it down please...
Like many municipalities, my town and state are both in the process of trying to pass a ban on single-use plastic bags. Opposers of the ban keep putting forward a handful of life cycle analysis studies of paper vs. plastic vs. cloth reusable bags that find that plastic bags had the least impact on the environment. While I understand the complexities of LCA study and recognize these are mostly government studies and not likely plastic-lobby bias, my strong feeling is that when all forms of impact are considered, plastic is still a net negative. I want to be able to point out the limitations of these studies. What do they miss or exclude? [more inside]
Electronic tinkering - difficulty, no death
Are there any small electronics that are dangerous to dismantle or try to repair? What should I avoid entirely, what should I be careful around, how can I mitigate the danger. [more inside]
Bin with a lid that will fit paper bags?
I need to organize my recycling better, but my condo association likes to pick it up, with regular trash collection, in paper grocery bags. I want a bin that will hold a couple paper grocery bags, standing side by side, and the bin should have a lid that will seal and keep out cats (and possible curious/hungry critters). It should also not look terrible in my dining room. I'm having some trouble meeting all these requirements just googling. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Composting 101
I recently bought a house out in the country, and need to set up a compost area. Please give me your compost wisdom - what is the best way to set up bins (or should I use tumblers)? Are there reliable composting websites you love? Are there speedier or lazier approaches? Any secret to success in a very rainy (~80 inches per year) climate? [more inside]
Water the comparative costs of efficiency?
I'm looking for a handy chart / guide on prioritizing energy efficiency. I'd like it to collapse to a single metric - carbon generated, water used, etc. I'd like to know the relative costs of different materials - how much energy is used to make paper products vs plastic? How much energy is saved by using plastic wrap on vegetables vs. throwing vegetables away? What's the cost of driving 10 miles to the store to pick up one item, vs having Amazon ship it? How does throwing a bottle in the garbage compare to eating a pound of beef?
Can I recycle plastic jugs that have contained fertilizer?
I go through a lot of fertilizer, so I mix and store several gallons at a time, in plastic (high-density polyethylene) milk jugs. I keep the jugs long enough (between 3 and 6 months) that by the time I replace them, the inside has often been covered by an unknown brown substance, which will mostly but not completely wipe off of the plastic. [more inside]
Limit for stray plastic in municipal paper recycling collections?
I appreciate that everywhere which collects recycling has different systems/providers (I live in London but there was a different recycling/rubbish collection company when I lived a couple of miles away, let alone different parts of the country or even overseas) but I'm looking for a baseline on how much this matters. [more inside]
Saving $ by reusing
I'm looking for reusable items that I can buy once to replace things I have to buy repeatedly and thereby save money (and reduce waste). Bonus points if they also save time and/or would make good holiday gifts. [more inside]
Must Exhaust All Possibilities Before Resorting to Trash
I'm spoiled by living in Seattle where I can recycle or compost a lot of stuff, but every so often I come up with an item that stumps me. I have a lot of old pinback buttons (campaign buttons). A lot. And while the city says to just throw them in the garbage, I would really like to find an alternative. I'm happy to mail them to a facility that accepts them, but I can't find one.
Does anyone if there is a company or organization that will take them and recycle them? I'm also happy to donate to a place that would upcycle them.
Most Earth-friendly way to give myself diabetes
So, I drink a lot of soda. Like a lot. Like too much. A two-liter or most of a twelve-pack per day. I know that aluminum is a better recyclable in general because you can get it back to its elemental state relatively easily, whereas plastic degrades every time it cycles. However, given the amount involved, I'm curious if it would be better from an environmental standpoint to have at the end of the week only five to seven plastic bottles to recycle or forty-eight aluminum cans (plus the associated cardboard). No matter what, I intend to keep ruining my health with fizzy sugar water, but I'd like to do it with as little collateral as possible, y'know?
Best way to store vegetables in the fridge?
I've been harvesting a lot from my garden, and I've been putting most things into plastic bags I've gotten from the grocery store or greenmarket. Using plastic is sort of wasteful, but other bags don't keep the vegetables fresh. So how do you store your vegetables in the fridge without them getting sad? [more inside]
You're just YARN! How can you take up so much SPACE??
My workplace is full of knitters, stitchers, crocheters, and quilters. At our homes, we have bottomless piles of yarn and fabric that were once beloved but are now a source of anxiety and resentment. Help me plan a swap/destash event that will find loving homes for unwanted yarn and fabric. [more inside]
Where to recycle this keyboard case in London?
My iPad keyboard case has elected to die an undignified death before my departure from London. If I were in the US, I would know the best place to recycle it. I am not in the US. What would be my best option? I’m starting from Gower Street.
How to get rid of torn unwearable clothes?
Myself and my partner have multiple large bags of unwearable clothes (torn beyond repair, worn through etc) that don't seem any good to donate. We live in Astoria, Queens, New York and we'd like to dispose of them without them going to landfill. Despite attempts on Google we can't seem to find a place likely to accept them without carrying heavy bags a long distance (we don't drive). Any ideas on how to rid ourselves of them? [more inside]
How to streamline sharing supply chain offers with a group
I coordinate projects for an unusual recycling industry that is trying to expand. Random people contact me when they have suitable material available, and I'd love to have a streamlined way to share this with lots of industry members who may be interested. In the past, I've shared these alerts to an email list, but then I never know if anyone followed up, whether materials were ever recycled, or if it all got lost in the void. I keep wondering if there's any team communications app that I could use to post new listings, see who saw the post, and allow people to "claim" items on a first-come, first-served basis. Bonus difficulty: people in my work world aren't generally tech-savvy, so it would need to be really straightforward and simple. While I think a Slack discussion etc. could theoretically work, I'm looking for something with a ridiculously easy interface: see post, click yes or no. Does something like this exist?
Lonely Death of George Bell Filter
Is there anywhere in NYC I can recycle the enormous quantity of plastic bags I have accumulated over the years? [more inside]
So how exactly do I do this recycling thing?
I've been a faithful (possibly obsessive) recycler for a while, but I was distressed to learn lately that my city changed recycling processing companies, and will no longer accept the blue bags, or any bagging of recycling at all. [more inside]
Help me get rid of damaged/low-value stuff
I have trouble getting rid of damaged or low-value things since I picture them moldering in a landfill for 500 years. Are there resources for getting rid of a household items in a somewhat ethical way? Services that will sort through my stuff and do this for me? [more inside]
Does imperfect recycling get dumped?
I just found out that my local council's recycling programme will recycle plastic bottles, but not their caps. You are not my local recycling plant, but what has likely happened to all the bottles I've put in the recycling bin in the past - does someone go through removing caps, label sleeves etc? Or has it all gone in the trash since it's not technically within their requirements?
Where/how to recycle old laptops?
I have some old laptops I'd like securely recycled. I used to use GreenDisk, but I was really dissatisfied with their service last year. Any better options? I'm willing to pay a small amount for peace of mind to have someone do this rather than just try to go at my hard drive with a hammer, or something.
What to do with bare oboe carcass?
I recently visited an oboe factory (amazing!) and was given a wooden oboe carcass complete with metal connectors from their stock of cracked rejects. Now, I dislike stuff for stuff's sake, so what can I DO with this item? All reuse ideas gratefully received.
Is it possible to recycle a vacuum flask?
I have a Zojirushi travel mug that I have had for a while. Someone gifted me a new one. What do I do with the old one? I don't to just toss the old one in the trash so it ends up in a landfill, but I don't know what else to do with it. [more inside]