March 14 : Green Garden Group went to visit the recycle facility at Greensboro - a very interesting field trip and departure from our usual botanizing. The facility is operated by a "for-profit" corporation, recycles those items that it can sell, with the exception of plastic bottles and aluminum cans, which it must recycle regardless as it is illegal to place either items in a NC landfill. We learned that the recycle numbers on plastics are not the issue - it is shape. The reason: some plastics are pour molded, others blown molded ( bottles) and in melting and reusing (recycling) they are incompatible, and if co mingled in a remelt, will make the batch unusable for either process. We also learned that we should not "tidy" our contributions to the recycle dumpster by bagging things in plastic - that just has to be undone at the facility, causing more work for the employees. Watch a video of the process at :on the bottom of the page click on "watch video" when the video comes up double click on the image for "full screen " viewing.
Our thanks to K Windham for arranging this great trip!