i finished off one bottle of car wax, started on another, and thinking how to deal with the "empty" one. It's a nice brew of petroleum products, not sure if there's any responsible way to clean it and recycle the plastic bottle. Still thinking on that, but to REDUCE what needs to be cleaned out, and get more wax out of it too, I hooked up the old bottle (above) with the new, with a short piece of bicycle inner tube. Got it started with a little help from a heat gun, at least I think that might help. Let it sit for a day or two, hopefully most of the residue will run into the new bottle.
Ouch I was not expecting an X-Rated photo of two wax bottles. Well I personally favor trash-to-steam vs. landfills to recover the energy from non-recyclables.
I know, looks like mating slugs (shudder). I think I recovered some of the wax. And I ended up sluicing out the empty with a small amount of kerosene, which I poured into my paint stripper reservoir. Left the bottle and cap outside to air in the sun, then into the blue recycle tub. Yeah, started look at all the cool pics on an oil filter box. Ok, here's some flat bed scans: Oil Filter Box Scans | PriusChat (PriusChat Gallery seems to be messing up at the moment. Anytime you go to a folder, only the first image loads properly, subsequent attempts just freeze.)
Great. Now that additional little piece of polluted inner tube will also need to go into the landfill.
Isn't the sad truth that despite what it might say on the bottle, plastic really isn't very recyclable?
In the traditional sense, it isn't. But we could use thermal conversion or even pyrolysis to revert it back to a petroleum crude. I dream of 'harvesting' the plastic flotsam in the oceans and doing so on ship.
I finally got around to checking the bottom of the bottle; there was a "3" in the recycle triangle. So I looked through all the recycle pamphlets from the city, and I go to our Coquitlam recycling website: there is NO mention of what plastic grades are acceptable. It took an email to find out they only take 1,2,4&5, as it has been, for some years. We switched over to new, standardized bins that are picked up by an automated truck, the website and publications have been redone, and that acceptable plastic grade info lost in the shuffle. So I've got a clean (albeit unrecyclable) bottle and cap, and a bit more solvent in my waste paint thinner jug. And the inner tube section: a wipe with a rag, it's fine.
I recently watched "Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". Fascinating to see the amount of seemingly ageless plastics floating around the ocean. Equally fascinating to see some clips from early 50's educational films promoting the wonders of the upcoming "Kingdom Of Plastics". I think advanced humanity has been guilty as a whole of embracing the manufacture, ease, and convenience of plastics without much or any thought to long term damage. To be honest? I'm as guilty as anyone. I loves me some durable cheap plastic! Went to the convenience mart to get a soda. Sure I have a multi-use thermal cup at home...but that's the key, I left it at home. So I get my pop in the convenient plastic cup the store so kindly provides. Sadly when I go to the grocery store, I often forget my re-usable sacks. Then the groceries end up in "plastic". If you're even trying to combine bottles and going as far as looking for the number in the recycle symbol, then going further and finding out whether your recycle center "actually" CAN recycle it? I think you're way ahead of most of us. From my narrow scope and limited knowledge, the sad thing is evidently the whole "Recycle Your Plastic" seems to be more of a feel good myth being promoted by companies trying to make something look green when it really isn't. These numerous products get produced mind boggling quantities with nobody really taking responsibility for what that means to our environment.
There's some facial scrubs with tiny plastic beads. Down the drain they go; toxins bond to them, and various small animals eat them. Yeah, the reality of recycling is likely much less effective. Something like a used motor oil bottle for example. I think we've gotta stop with all the single-use-and-chuck plastic containers, somehow. Much more direct and effective than recycling.
There is no easy answer here. Unless we pass laws making manufacturers more directly responsible for the entire life cycle of their products including of course the containers they are sold in. And demand the product be REALLY recyclable. Right now bags, containers, bottles, all get churned out with no thought or responsibility being taken as to how that impacts the environment or even really how they get removed from the environment after initial use or the end of life cycle viability. However this answer reduces profitability and probably increases cost. So nobody is going to be too anxious to embrace this. Easier to ignore it, or just put a symbol and number on the plastic and pretend it's great.
Shunning products in lousy packaging helps, especially when there's a competitor with a better idea. An example, there's an independent coffee place near us, all their in house servings are in porcelain cups they wash. A few blocks the other way is Starbucks: in house you get a plastic coated paper cup, paper sleeve and plastic lid.
If you found that interesting Google the guy who built an island out of trash in Hawaii iirc. This guy is a genius. He needs to go to the garbage patch and make it a continent. I think There's a Netflix special movie on it. I can't remember.
And it is required at one point in your life to take one ceramic mug home. Every good Canadian household has at least 1 ceramic Timmy's mug lol
