{"id":44796,"date":"2024-04-28T22:33:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T02:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=44796"},"modified":"2024-04-28T22:33:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T02:33:18","slug":"recycling-experts-warn-of-wish-cycling-as-the-rate-of-contamination-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/04\/28\/recycling-experts-warn-of-wish-cycling-as-the-rate-of-contamination-rises\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling experts warn of ‘wish cycling’ as the rate of contamination rises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recycling rates in Florida have been declining for the past eight years, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The Energy, Climate Change, and Economic Security Act of 2008 established a statewide, weight-based recycling goal of 75% by 2020. Florida did not meet the 2016 interim goal of 60% and\u00a0the recycling rate has continued to decline<\/a>\u00a0since then.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Many factors contribute to this complex problem in Central Florida. David Gregory, the Solid Waste Division Manager for Orange County, said that consistently rising rates of contamination is the most significant issue. He believes that contamination occurs more often due to a lack of education than negligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople care; they want to recycle, but sometimes there is a lack of understanding,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wanting to help, without the knowledge of what can and cannot be recycled, leads many to wishcycling. Gregory said wishcycling is when \u201cpeople wish that they could recycle something.\u201d Despite good intentions, wishcycling leads to an array of problems in the recycling process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would use as an example, a gold watch. Highly recyclable, and highly valuable. “You put it in your recycling bin, those machines aren\u2019t designed to sort it,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Gregory Solid Waste Division Manager for Orange County promotes higher education for recycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It complicates the sorting process at material recovery facilities<\/a> (MRFs), as recyclable contamination leads to higher sorting costs and delayed timelines. Items like plastic bags and greasy pizza boxes can disrupt the sorting process, leading to entire facilities being shut down. These long-term delays result in declining recycling rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The change from dual-stream to single-stream recycling in Central Florida has also contributed to growing contamination rates. Dual-stream recycling requires the separation of recyclables into different bins. Paper and cardboard products in one, plastic in another, so on and so forth. With single-stream recycling, all recyclables are placed in the same bin for curbside pickup. However, this method has caused a higher contamination rate. This is due to the inability to see what is going in their recycling bins, in addition to the low knowledge of what is meant to go in the bins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid this, recycling facilities aim to help people learn what specific items can be recycled at their locations<\/a>. For instance, Orange County encourages its residents to \u201cThink 5\u201d<\/a> by focusing on the top five recyclable items\u2014plastic, metal, and glass containers, as well as cardboard and paper. The overall goal is to help raise awareness about good recycling habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orange County has also enacted a Recycling Quality Improvement Program<\/a> (RQIP), which inspects recycling bins at households before they are picked up. The bins are given \u201cgood job\u201d tags if the materials within are all recyclable and an \u201coops\u201d tag if not, according to Gregory. Bins that receive an \u201coops\u201d tag are not collected until the nonrecyclable materials are removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have tagged almost 230,000 households in Orange County to bring recycling education to the household level,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brevard County\u2019s Waste Management has made efforts within the workplace to utilize recyclable materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur uniforms are made out of plastic bottles, the uniforms our drivers wear,\u201d said Amy Boyson, senior manager of Brevard County\u2019s Waste Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most effective recycling rules to remember is, \u201cWhen in doubt, throw it out,\u201d according to Kevin Smith, Recycling Coordinator for Brevard County\u2019s Solid Waste Management. Including non-recyclable materials in your bin can result in damage to recycling equipment or contamination that can cause entire batches of recycling to be landfilled rather than recycled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside Brevard County’s sorting area workers continue to carry out the process of recycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throwing away items that are not recyclable helps the overall recycling process. However, with some items, simply throwing them away is not enough. Lithium batteries are relatively new and are causing major issues in waste facilities. Many electronic products we use today are powered by lithium batteries, and when they are not disposed of properly, they can cause fires. The National Waste and Recycling Association estimates that more than 5,000 fires occur annually at recycling facilities, and it recently warned that many were likely linked to lithium-ion batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report added that, depending on severity, the cost of a fire at an MRF can range from a minimum of $2,600 to over $50 million for a catastrophic fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that we continue to talk about recycling,\u201d Gregory said. \u201cRecycling does happen, material put into your recycling cart does get recycled, and it\u2019s important that we try to keep that as consistent as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recycling rates in Florida have been declining for the past eight years, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The Energy, Climate Change, and Economic Security Act of 2008… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[8326],"class_list":["post-44796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-recycling-experts-warn-of-wish-cycling-as-the-rate-of-contamination-rises"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44798,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796\/revisions\/44798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}