The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Issues Recycling

October 10, 2007

Recycling Part 3 – Further Lessons from Davis Street Transfer Center

My tour of Davis Street Transfer Center continued with a trip to the garbage transfer pit. This is where all of Oakland’s non-recycled garbage is dumped before being transferred in huge trucks to the Altamont Landfill. Just look at it all. You may not be able to tell from the photo how much recyclable material is mixed in with the garbage, but I can assure you that it’s a lot.

LESSON 9: Your hands are the very last human hands that will touch these items before anthropologists dig the stuff up in hundreds of years. That’s pretty much a direct quote from Rebecca Jewell. Contrary to what some people believe, items placed in Oakland garbage bins are never sorted. They are never even touched by human hands once they leave your curb.

Our residential bins are lifted and dumped mechanically into the garbage truck; the truck dumps its load at the transfer station; bulldozers ride over the garbage, compressing it to allow as little air into th… Read the rest

October 8, 2007

Recycling Part 2 – Lessons from the Davis Street Transfer Center

As I mentioned in my first post on the subject of recycling, “Wait! Are you sure that’s recyclable?” I’d scheduled a trip to the Davis Street Transfer Center today, the place where all of Oakland’s garbage and compost and much of its recycling is taken before moving on to its next use or final resting place. My tour guide today was Rebecca Jewell, Davis Street’s recycling program manager. And our first stop was the brand new $9 million MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) which processes up to 400 tons of recyclables per day for 12 difference Bay Area jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, I was not aware before I came that while Davis Street accepts my household garbage and compost, a different recycling company, California Waste Solutions, picks up and processes the recycling for my area of Oakland. According to Rebecca, it’s a smaller facility and may not be able to handle as many different materials as the … Read the rest

September 25, 2007

Recycling Part 1 – Wait! Are you sure that’s recyclable?

Since I started this project, I’ve run across many misconceptions (including my own) about what is and isn’t recyclable. What makes the issue so confusing is that every city has its own rules about what can and can’t be placed in curbside bins. Some areas require more separation of recyclables than others. Even among a few environmental activists I’ve met, there is confusion about recycling. If they can’t figure it out, how is the average person supposed to? So, here are a few clarifications about recycling that might help:

1) A triangular “chasing arrows” recycling symbol on an item, especially a plastic one, does not mean that it can be recycled! Many, many people make this mistake. The number inside the triangle simply indicates what type of plastic the item is made from and may sometimes be helpful in determining which plastics are and are not recyclable. BUT NOT ALWAYS! For example, my city of O… Read the rest

August 29, 2007

Reducing Plastic Waste In The Workplace

In addition to blogging about plastic, knitting animals from grocery bags, and training for a half marathon (okay, that one is kind of a fib), I have an actual job in an office. I run the accounting department of a small home care agency in the Bay Area. (What, you couldn’t guess I’m an accountant from the graphs and itemized lists?) And one of the things that I noticed when I returned to the office after starting this project is that we had been tossing out an awful lot of plastic.

We have a little kitchen and make our own lunches. But the “tableware” we use is mainly paper or plastic. Numerous plastic knives, forks, spoons, and cups are thrown away every weekday, so I decided to provide an alternative. First, I went to a thrift store and purchased a bunch of cheap, stainless steel cutlery. I also bought a (plastic) basket to hold it. Since the basket came from Goodwill, I felt fine about reusing it for this purpose.

My main concern w… Read the rest

August 28, 2007

A House Full of Plastic

Beth, for someone trumpeting about giving up plastic, you sure have a lot of plastic in your house. Just look at this. What gives?

Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve brought something to the office in a plastic container and received the response, “Beth! That’s plastic! I thought you were against plastic!” And some of my attempts to explain that I either bought the item at a thrift store or I am using something I already had have been met with blank stares or outright skepticism. So I feel like I need to spell out, for the sake of clarity, what my goals are in this project and the guidelines I’ve come up with for myself in order to reach those goals.

Fake Plastic Fish Goals:

To reduce the need for new plastic to be produced since petroleum is a non-renewable, polluting resource, and the production of plastic wreaks havoc on our eco-system in all sorts of ways. To keep existing plastic out of our waterways and landfills… Read the rest
July 31, 2007

Point of Return: Where our recycling actually goes

What really does happen to our recycling after it’s picked up from the curb? Much of it is shipped overseas when it could be better used to provide jobs and source materials here at home. Using Oakland, Northern California, and the Pacific Rim as a case study, this short film is worth the eye-opening 17 minutes!

Also, if you get the chance, see Manufactured Landscapes, a film screening in theaters right now, which shows, among other things, what actually happens to the recycling (much of it hazardous e-waste) after we ship it to China. Michael and I saw it with some friends last weekend and were blown away by both the beauty and horror of the images.… Read the rest

July 6, 2007

Eye Drops

Every night I use one or two of these tiny single-use plastic vials of Refresh Endura eye drops and then throw them away (now, in my plastic purgatory, of course.) And each night I hope as I close my eyes that the drops will work and I’ll be able to open my eyes pain-free the next morning. I have a chronic condition called recurrent corneal erosion, and Refresh Endura drops are the only thing I’ve found, amid all the different drops and ointments and treatments that will work to keep it at bay.

Those who don’t use eye drops might be wondering why they don’t come in a bigger multi-use bottle that would use less plastic. The answer is that then the drops would have to contain preservatives to keep organisms from growing in them. Organisms that could cause blindness from an eye infection. Preservatives that can be very irritating and to which many people are sensitive or allergic.

So, here’s a case where I think the use of plast… Read the rest