A few days ago, I read a news article from the BBC stating that in Germany alone, 2.8 billion disposable coffee cups ended up in landfills each year.  A July article in CNN says 60 billion paper cups end up in landfills in the US.  Most of the disposable paper coffee cups are not recyclable because they are coated with a thin layer of polyethylene to make them waterproof.  Although several organizations, countries, and companies are working on developing either recyclable paper cups or processes for recycling the current type of paper cups, most of the cups still end up in landfills because the problem is not easy to solve.  A few cities in Germany are testing a reusable cup that can be returned to the coffee shop to be washed and re-used.  In the UK, a new type of cup, easier to recycle, is being tested by a large coffee chain, while another large coffee chain is installing recycling bins in shops and sending the cups to a special recycling facility.  

One way to solve the problem of disposable coffee cups is to stop using them.  Take your own re-usable cup to the coffee shop.  Keep a clean one in your car, briefcase, or bag for unplanned stops to buy a quick cup of coffee.  And don’t use the drive-up window.

Recently, I bought a 16-ounce spray bottle of a new (to me) natural household cleaner.   When it was time to buy more, I found that this company offers a 32-ounce bottle of concentrated refill.  It takes three teaspoons of the concentrated refill plus 16 ounces of water from my kitchen faucet to refill the 16-ounce spray bottle, so the 32-ounce refill bottle is equivalent in product to 64 of the original spray bottles.  Using this type of concentrated refill has significant sustainability benefits.  First, it avoids the manufacturing energy and materials cost of making 64 new spray bottles, while making only one larger simple bottle without a spray nozzle.  The spray bottle I originally bought will be reused many times, so the energy and resource cost of manufacturing it is spread across many uses.  In addition, the energy used for transportation of the product is much less because the water to fill each of the 64 spray bottles is not trucked from the manufacturing plant to the store, although there is a small energy cost to get the water to my house. 
 
Refills are available for other products, although not as many as I’d like.  Some of them are concentrated product, some are not.  Even for those that are not concentrated, in most cases the refill bottles are simpler (no pump or spray nozzle) and so use less materials and manufacturing energy.  Refills are a good way to reduce use of energy and materials.

Last week’s post provided information on recycling plastic grocery bags.  Other types of bags can be recycled with the plastic grocery bags, but please don’t sneak in forbidden types of plastic such as frozen food bags, as this can cause problems in the recycling process.  There are plenty of bags that CAN be recycled with your grocery bags, such as zip-close plastic food storage bags (clean and dry), plastic bags labeled #2 and #4,  bread bags, and newspaper bags.  I found a good website with more information on what can be recycled, what should not be included, a new labeling system that you may see on some bags, what happens to recycled bags, and a locator for plastic bag dropoff locations in the US and Canada. 

http://www.plasticfilmrecycling.org/s01/s01dropoff.html  

Even if we mostly remember our reusable grocery bags, most of us end up with extra plastic grocery bags.  Many of those get re-used as trash bags or to pick up doggie poop.  The rest can be recycled, but many curbside recycling programs prohibit plastic bags.  If you look around, most grocery stores have a bin (at mine it’s near the front door) where you can put the clean bags to be recycled.  For some reason, the recycle bin seems to be hard to find in many stores.  The plastic bags cannot be recycled into new plastic bags, but they can be made into structural plastic building materials such as patio deck boards. 

Some other kinds of plastic bags can be included with the recycled grocery bags, but if you add the wrong type of plastic, it can cause problems in the recycling process.  In the next post, I’ll tell you about other types of plastic that can be included in the grocery bag recycling bin.