Wednesday, 11/29

I think it's gonna take a while to break this habit.

In a decision I think is horrid for the environment, those of us who live in the city of Marquette will no longer be able to recycle glass along with our plastics, paper, & metals. The news came after the city signed a new trash deal with Waste Management, and took a lot of people by surprise. Apparently, there's no money to be made in recycling glass, and the glass we have been recycling has been pulled out of the bins and tossed in the Marquette County landfill for several months now.

That's not good news.

As some of you may know, I've been an avid recycler since, well, forever. I think that's one of the things about growing up in the late 60s and early 70s, during the height of the environmental movement. It's something I learned about as a kid and something I've done ever since. In fact, I recycle so much that I only have enough actual trash to fill a city bag once a month.

I'm guessing that number's gonna go up soon.

I have no idea why it's no longer cost-effective to recycle glass. I mean, I know it's made out of sand, and I'm guessing it's probably cheaper just to dig up new sand than to recycle the old stuff. But I did a little research—did you know that glass can last up to two MILLION years before it breaks down in a landfill? Two million! Think of it this way--modern humans (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) have only been around 200,000 or so years, which means that we're making materials that will last at least 10 times longer than we've been around as a species. That blows my mind. And that also makes me wonder just how much glass will be sticking around the Marquette County Landfill long after we have a species have either blown ourselves up, evolved into whatever comes next, or have been enslaved by our new robot overlords.

The capper of it all is this—for several weeks now, even though I've known better, I keep washing out all the glass bottles and containers I use. It's force of habit; I've been recycling for so long (and trying to be hygienic when I do it) that I'll still clean an empty glass container out without even giving it a second thought. I mean, I know that I can just toss it in the trash, but there's a default setting inside me that makes me want to recycle the container, even if the city says I can't any more. I'm pretty sure it'll take me a while to break the habit.

Hopefully, it just won't take as long as the glass will last in a landfill.

(jim@wmqt.com, disappointed recycler.