A Great Use For Your Waste Plastic Bottles

Fed up with those clips for your freezer bags?

Here’s a useful tip I have been using almost 20 years.

Instead of a drawer full of elastic band, clips, ties and the whole raft of other devices stores will sell to you, simply cut the top off of your waste soda bottles, detergent containers and  milk bottles. Once washed, simply unscrew, thread plastic bag through the nozzle, fan out the plastic and screw down the cap.

Great for:

·         Refrigerator left overs.

·         Freezer food.

·         Packets of nails.

·          Screws.

·          Seeds.

·         Buttons.

·         In fact anything small you care to mention.

I have found that the different colors help with identification, especially in my shed as I use these for sealing up left over nails and screws from various projects. Yet I like to keep them all together in an old ice cream tub, so that I can take them all to where I am likely to need something. I used to just throw them all into an old Folgers tub, but trying to find one quickly became such a pain. If there are a large number of screws etc., then they will have their own tub.

We do use them in the freezer and the fridge, but not exclusively, and my wife does use them for odds and ends in her project box, color coded, for the same reason as myself.

Another Tip

I have found that the bigger milk containers and detergent bottles caps make better fasteners as the thread on the neck is deeper. Some of the packaging can be quite thick and the soda bottle necks struggle to cope in some cases.

For those of you that recycle your bottles, it will not make the slightest different to the recycle business as these are all made into pellets for use by another end user.

I hope you find this useful and happy organizing.

Understanding the basics of Plastics and how plastic waste could sit in landfills for evermore.

Plastic, one of the most abundant elements of our trash

Plastic products are an everyday part of our lives, so much so that many of us don’t give it a second thought. Found in almost everything we deal with, from packaging to containers, from household products to garden products, at work, in our cars and much more.

In fact, plastics make up around 12% of our trash ( Municipal Waste), that’s over a 1000% increase per year since the early 1960’s. Unfortunately, the recycle rates are low too and it is estimated that less than 10% of household plastic materials actually make their way for recycling. Here are some figures from the latest annual figures available on the EPA website:

·         31 million tons of plastic waste was generated in America in 2010

·         14 million tons were plastic containers and packaging

·         A milk jug will have a degradation time in a landfill of an estimated hundreds of years.

What are the type of plastics and how do we recognize them?

There are two categories for plastics, these are known as thermoplastic or as thermoset.  A thermoplastic softens when subjected to heat and is used in most of the containers, packaging trays and coverings we see in our everyday lives. Thermoset plastics solidify when heated and set hard, car dashboards and fenders are a great example of this technique.

The symbols used on plastics as identifiers for recycling are either the recycling triangle symbol with a number in the center or with the identifier initials for the plastic. These are normally found on the base of a container.

#1 #1 PET or PETE denotes polyethylene terephthalate resin. Plastic packages made with this type of plastic include water, soda and vinegar bottles along with prescription containers and film backing.

#2 #2 HDPE is high-density polyethylene resin. Common containers with this symbol include dish/clothes soap, bleaches, softeners, milk, hair care products, motor oil and some toys.

#3 #3 V denotes vinyl/polyvinyl chloride resin. Products that carry this symbol include various cooking oils, shrink-wrap, pipes, shower curtains, coffee containers and vinyl dashboards.

#4 #4 LDPE is low-density polyethylene resin. This type of plastic is known for flexibility and used in bread, grocery and sandwich bags, as well as flexible container lids.

#5 #5 PP denotes polypropylene resin. Items displaying this symbol include some food containers, syrup bottles, jar lids, food containers, diapers and outdoor carpet.

#6  #6 PS is polystyrene resin. This group includes disposable cups and cutlery, fast-food foam boxes, meat trays, packing peanuts and Styrofoam insulation.

#7 #7  A wide variety of plastic resins that don't fit into the previous categories are found in number 7. A few are made from polyactide (organic) and are compostable. Polycarbonate is also number 7, and is the hard plastic that has shown it can leach potential hormone disruptors and has many parents worried.

 
Biodegradable plastics.

Before we go into degradation times in landfills, I want to discuss biodegradable plastics. The normal plastics that we handle, i.e. PET and HDPE etc., are manmade and will sit in a landfill for hundreds of years in to the future.

But scientists and the plastics industry found that by adding certain substances, when placed in landfills, the microbes of the bacteria present will attack the additive. This action will also break down the plastic polymers and for the most part, will allow the bacteria to degrade the plastic substance also.

The FDA have approved the use of these additives and biodegradable plastics for use with foods.

Degradation times in landfills.

The truth is, there no set times for degradation, all of the numbers being quoted are theoretical, in my article about landfills, I wrote about researchers from the University of Arizona excavating a landfill after 15 years and readily identified hotdogs and other food stuffs due to the lack of moisture etc. Degradation time has several factors that speed up the process or can slow it down. Temperature of the landfill, moisture content ( which bacteria thrive on), oxygen and also sunlight.

The whole principle of a dry landfill is to keep moisture out in order to prevent leachate escaping into the soil around and causing pollution. Again, the landfills are capped to prevent rainwater entering the landfill, so once again sunlight is not going to be present for the most part. Temperatures should remain fairly constant due to the degradation and decomposition happening inside the landfills. However, in parts of the United States, where prolonged periods of cold weather occur, the overall temperature can have a detrimental effect on the landfill for that time.

We do know that thin biodegradable food wrap will be expected to degrade in about 2 months, the thin biodegradable water bottles within a couple of years. But the heavy milk jugs, the biodegradable plastics may degrade in 30 years or so, but this is only theoretical. The normal HDPE container would be expected to not break down for hundreds of years.

Summary

A lot of time and research has been spent and is ongoing with plastics. One big advancement has been the recycling of plastics for use in plastic lumber and I can only applaud this discovery and wish I had known about it when I built my porch some years ago.

The problem appears to be, in a lot of rural areas, that the price for plastic remains relatively low, and the prices I have seen quoted range from 12 cents per pound and 20 cents if sorted into the different types of plastic. In my area of Louisiana, my nearest company (120 miles away) also requires a minimum of 5000 lbs. weight. When up against aluminum that fetches 50 – 70 cents per pound, at any quantity and at any scrap metal yard, you can understand why this does not appeal to many as an economical  proposition.

The only sensible way forward would be for all of us to do a bit of research of our own and make an effort to get these plastics into a recycle program. There has been a lot of research in capturing the methane produced in decomposition, plastics are a big contributor to this, and when the benefits are much greater than the affects to the environment, I will become an ardent supporter. So for the foreseeable future, I support keeping plastics out of the landfills as much as possible, at least until a consistently safer way of extracting the energy is found.

A personal note to my readers.

Just to make my readers aware, I also work periodically as a civilian roleplayer at a nearby military base. We help train troops before they go on deployment. Hopefully the experience will bring them all home safely.
So periodically, there may be no new posts from me for a week to ten days.
Thank you for your understanding. Mark.

Aluminum: The super metal that can be recycled and reused, over and over again.

Where does Aluminum come from?

Aluminum is the most common metal we have and the third most common element found in the earth’s crust, behind oxygen and silicon.

The raw material to make aluminum is called Bauxite, this is like a clay and is formed by aluminum rich rocks crumbling and forming the bauxite deposits. Aluminum forms over 50% of the bauxite, in comparison to the earth’s crust which averages 8% aluminum.

Once mined, this is taken to a processing facility nearby and through a chemical cleaning process and converted into aluminum oxide. The next process is electrolysis to separate the aluminum, where it is dissolved in Cryolite at a very high temperature and a DC electrical current is passed through the solution. The liquid aluminum collects at the cathode in the bottom of the furnace cell and then transferred to a crucible by a vacuum system. Aluminum made by this process is known as primary aluminum.

In this liquid form, it is transferred again to a casthouse where it is cleaned again and alloys are added so it can be made into the various forms, dependent on production needs. These forms are: foundry alloys, wire rods, sheet logs and extrusion logs.

This is an energy intensive process, which has reduced in consumption about 30% over the last 30 years, but a process which is equally justified for a material which is light, good tensile strength, long life and low maintenance.

Why is there so much pressure to recycle if aluminum is so plentiful?

Like all resources, there is no endless supply. But aluminum has a quality that few materials possess, it can be recycled over and over again without losing its properties. But there is another huge saving to society, to use this recycled aluminum to produce new only requires 5% of the energy, yes that’s right 5%. This may be a good point to tell you that the melting point of aluminum is 1220 degrees Fahrenheit, trust me, that takes a lot of energy to reach those temperatures.

 Now taking some figures from the EPA website, 966 million kgs of recycled aluminum (2003 figure) saved approximately 966 x 14 kW hours= 13,524,000,000 kilowatt hours of energy. According to US Energy Information Association, the average domestic usage for 2008 was 11,040 kWh, this will give some idea of the saving that can be made or put another way, how much extra aluminum would cost if it was not recyclable.

Are all cans the same?

The answer is no. Your soda and beer cans are pure aluminum, but the canned groceries are not pure aluminum cans. The aluminum is often used for the tear off lids, but the grocery cans are made up mainly of steel, thus the expression Tin Can. Just like aluminum, steel is a sought after recyclable commodity.

How to recycle aluminum.

Most of the bigger towns and cities across America will have curbside collections and will involve little more than the householder saving the cans, after use, in a sack or dedicated recycling bin and putting out for collection on specific days.

I live out in rural Louisiana, here the story is different as it is in many other rural locations. There are no curbside collections, the local parish ( or county) council has created a recycling center, here local residents can take their saved recyclables and put them in the appropriate containers.

Like minded congregations and parents at churches and schools in my local area save the cans to help raise funds for needed projects. Often, if there are 100 or so people collecting, it would not be unreasonable to expect around $3000 over the course of a year.

Finally, there are a growing number of people that save their cans and personally take them to a local scrap metal dealer. Prices vary from yard to yard, but the price is normally in the region of 40 – 70 cents per pound in weight. For most households, this would probably make a nice cash bonus towards a treat or present, but definitely not a second income.

Summary

The fact that aluminum can be recycled, over and over again, makes this the number one candidate for recycling. It is believed that several hundred years from now, the same aluminum can will still retain all of its properties to continue being recycled and reused. Likewise, that same can would also be laying in the landfill with the rest of the trash in several hundred years time.

There really is no argument, if the recycling message does not get through to everyone, future generations could well be excavating landfills searching for the resources that have become depleted.

Some quick fun facts I found whilst researching.

·         Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours.

·         Every 3 seconds a baby is born. In that time, 140 cans were born.

·         America recycled enough aluminum cans last year to stretch to the moon and back 8 times.

·         Aluminum cans have amazing strength. Four six-packs (24 cans) can hold a 4,000-pound aluminum-bodied sedan.