1. Generated *way* more than average. At work – an attorney client confidential project ended.
As part of contract, destroyed documentation regarding the project. Two 55-gallon containers
worth of paper in one day. Other trash included kitty litter, pizza box, several beer cans, diapers,
bathroom waste, and food waste (wrappers, cardboard boxes, dunkin donuts cups).
2. To get an understanding of how refuse gets from the household to the truck, survey a variety of
municipalities in urban, rural, and suburban areas to understand how refuse is collected.
3. The article is not accurate. Combustion in any form generates more than just carbon dioxide and
water vapor. Although properly installed air pollution control technologies can minimize
emissions, no technology is 100% efficient. In addition, although plastic may degrade in sunlight,
the marketing does not state how long this will take. Plastic bags can also become windblown
becoming a problem for drivers and potentially depositing the bags into water bodies.
4. Disagree . There is a large problem with “NIMBYism” – not in my backyard. Although people
want the convenience of the garbage men coming once a week to pick up their trash, they don’t
want the landfill the trash ends up in around their backyard. Until society changes the way it
operates, the refuse needs to go somewhere; and there is no option will make everyone happy.
5. Community involvement will be key to get to 50% recycling to divert from the landfill. Each
household/condo/apartment will need a barrel for recyclables (single stream) and a marketing
campaign to inform the community what is recyclable. The community will also need to
construct a recycling facility or make arrangements with one already in existence. If the ultimate
goal is diversion from the landfill, the community can also look into waste-to-energy facilities to
incinerate the refuse.
6. It would be impossible to generate a zero-waste community. For example – car maintenance.
Cars need an oil change approximately every 3,000 miles to continue to operate. The oil
removed from the car is a solid waste; and the car will require oil changes throughout its life.
7. Three ways to reduce waste from grocery shopping: use reusable bags (instead of
paper/plastic), buy enough food for the week (instead of buying in bulk and letting food go to
waste), not using the little plastic bags to store fruit/vegetables
8. The recyclable materials can be potentially misleading because it doesn’t specify where the
material is coming from (pre-consumer / post-consumer). I would assume the 100% is more
misleading – and would recommend that the company specify where the recycled material
came from to be more accurate.
9. Three examples of waste reduction in everyday life: bring renewable silverware to work
(frequently use plastic utensils provided due to convenience), bring reusable bags to the grocery
store, buy food on an as-needed basis (to prevent it from going bad)
10. Solely marketing materials: any figure that states the product was created with recycled
materials. If manufacturers did not think that it would increase sales of their product, they
would have no reason to inform consumers of the quantity of recycled materials that went into
the product. In addition, it may turn some people off (people who believe that the recycled
material creates and inferior product); the only reason to include the information is for
marketing. Intent to buy recycled materials: If the consumer’s intent is to buy recycled
materials, then the signs that indicate that the product itself is recyclable will not be useful.
They will need to make sure that the statement includes what the product was made from. It is
interesting to note that both materials that are made from recyclable materials and materials
that are themselves recyclable use the same symbol (even though it may mean two different
things)
11. Assuming price/quality are the same – I would recommend the 75%. Many people will likely
only look at the first number, and 75% is a bigger number than 50%. In addition, creating paper
out of recycled post-consumer material is typically more energy intensive than using non-postconsumer product.
12. The paper used by my company contains no recycled content. It is, however, 99.99% jam free,
which due to a practical standpoint from the admins who service the printers is more important.
In CT, there are no goals specific to recycled paper content for private businesses; only
newspapers and printers. It is a requirement to recycle paper.
13. I live in Suffield; they recycle plastic #’s 1-7 (all that are pictured). It may not be misleading for
plastic manufacturers to place the arrows; some plastics may be recycled in some locations and
not in others. However, if there are no locations that recycle the plastic, then it is misleading.
14.
Raw materials industrial productiondomestic use--
energy
Products will either be reused (back to domestic use), recycled (Back to industrial production), or
recovered (back to raw materials) or converted to energy.
15. Glass, plastic, paper. We don’t have any receptacles for metal. My town does single stream
recycling which accepts glass, plastic, paper, cans.