Is this Recycling Bin Half Full or Half Empty?

I was happy to see this big bin installed on the public beach access this summer. A lot of water bottles that may have otherwise ended up in the sea are placed in it. At the same time it serves as a daily reminder to me that collecting and recycling plastics is a costly and inefficient process. My blog is supposed to focus on the first ‘R’, Reduction. I have reduced my own consumption of plastic water bottles as much as possible by drinking filtered tap water.

Here are a few quotes that I have found, both optimistic and pessimistic about recycling plastic…

Recycling is almost universally regarded as a virtue. I beg to differ. The act of recycling actually means that we have failed to reduce or reuse.
- Gary Hirshberg

Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.
- South Lakeland Recycling

I am not sure how they got these numbers. The fact that a lot of plastic is transported for huge distances leads me to doubt the figure.

The majority of the plastics we recycle, regardless of type, end up in China, where worker safety standards are virtually nonexistent and materials are processed under dirty, primitive conditions…
- Mindfully.org

Recycling one ton of plastic saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space.
- Earth911

These quotes are starting to look like ‘tweets’. Maybe I will recycle them