The Lance J. Technoweb

We've all seen the famous recycling symbol on products, like these: ♲♳♴♵♹ The Weird "Recycling Symbol" Surprise The "Recycling" symbol you see on packaging and products are NOT designed to have anything to do with curbside recycling.  Instead, the symbol is merely an indicator of what kind of material it is made out of. Industry plasters this symbol on many products that are to be thrown in the trash.  Industry over-applies this symbol as a "greenwashing" strategy, tricking consumers into believing that a product is recyclable when in reality it is not.  And Consumers are tricked: people WANT stuff to be recyclable, and so they throw it into the recycle bin.  Then the bad item gets blended into a bunch of other otherwise good stuff, and diminishes the entire lot. So what is recyclable?  The answer is: read your local recycling rules, and be a pessimist. If in doubt, it is better to throw it into the trash than to ruin an entire lot of recyclables. Befo...

I recycle a lot of stuff that comes into my house, but I don't recycle everything.  Here is my rule: "If I don't know with confidence that it is recyclable, it goes in the trash". "Trash" in my area isn't as bad as others.  Where I live, trash is processed.  Valuables like metals are pulled out, and the remaining stuff is turned to energy.  Although incineration does release CO2, the same amount of CO2 is release when putting trash in the ground. After the incineration process, the more metals are pulled out of the ash, and the ash is turned into bricks for capping old landfills. Each locality has its own rules on what to recycle because each recycling facility has specific technical capabilities.  And these abilities can change over time.  So therefore, my first job is to pay attention to the current rules. Without overriding the rules, here's what I generally do where I live: Food containers I generally recycle food containers made out of cardboard...