Tag: recycling

Single use plastic?

This is a plastic egg carton from Tienda Inglesa.

We have not bought eggs from Tienda Inglesa in years – five or six at least. I discovered eggs are cheaper in the street market (feria) so bought eggs there, but because the best feria packaging for a dozen tends to be a plastic bag, I started carrying this with me. Now I buy them next door in recycled cardboard trays of 15, and put them in this container for storage (actually, we have two of them).

Five or six years? At least, and quite probably more.

And why the one egg on the lid? Because this single use container, meant to be opened 12 times at the most, has been opened and closed hundreds of times and is still springy enough that without a weight, the lid will pop back over the rest of the eggs.

And most people will simply throw it in the garbage.

Proper disposal of biodegradables

So, a small bundle of trimmings to add to the waste pile collected a few times per year. Fina a handy reusable plastic something (hamper) to carry them in. And of course, just leave the plastic as well.

I don’t know if it’s just certain people in certain areas, but it’s certainly the case in the no-man’s-land where we walk dogs. Oh, people.

Where the garbage goes

I had a little bout of getting things done the other day. This included a trip to the place the garbage trucks go (10 years ago I also didn’t know what it is called), with a small plastic bag of lithium batteries, a lead acid battery from the defunct alarm system we removed while renovating the casita, a compact fluorescent light bulb, and half a liter of glyphosate, purchased probably 12 years ago when I didn’t realize how nasty that shit is. I didn’t want a liter, but that’s what I ended up with.

Anyway, here’s the rear axle of a garbage truck, resting on a stump, huge brake drum and pads, and a child’s plush toy.

Because of course.

Reduce, re-use: yes; recycle: no

A little over a month ago, I began drinking sparkling water (agua con gas) instead of wine.

I love the vastly reduced clink-clank of bottle recycling, and the cash savings will certainly buy a little sushi, but I didn’t feel good about the single-use plastic water bottles from the supermarket. Given tightening purity standards in China for recyclables, many municipalities up north have gone from making a little selling recyclables, to paying much more to send them to a landfill.

I don’t know the status here. I don’t know if plastic is really recycled, and if so, where (but they seemed serious about it last I checked, seven years ago). But then I remembered how we got drinking water before I installed filters: the water guy who comes around every Monday morning.

He brings pressurized bottles like the one on the left. Total waste is reduced from a bottle with three types of plastic, to a little piece of plastic wrap. Plus the water stays fizzier because the bottle is pressurized. Also it costs less. And the delivery guy is friendly and helpful. For example, after starting delivery only a few weeks ago, we were out last Monday morning. We returned to find six bottles of water at our doorstep, to be paid this week, no problem.

So how many times can these pressurized bottles be re-used? I have no idea. However, this is one delivered today:

refillable water bottle, Uruguay

Notice the phone number. Phone numbers in Uruguay no longer begin with zero. In fact, they haven’t since late 2010. So, chances are these bottles have been around a while.

I like that.

I stand corrected (trash collection)

I usually let loose dogs Benji and Mocha (aka Choco Mocha Latte) to run with Syd and Gundy’s five dogs in the Villar Wilderness,1 but Benji’s still limping a bit from the accident, so I like to give him rest days. Which means walking each individually a few bocks around here on a leash while the other, forced to stay home, howls and cries and whimpers incessantly. Hard for Susan, and hardly a rest for me: after ten minutes, Benji finally ceases to be the equivalent of trying to restrain a runaway garden tractor. Mocha, on the other hand, is like a turbocharged small garden tractor with defective steering: slightly less forceful, but constant veering from left to right, making choking noises, and of course the classic back-right/cross/forward left wrap-the-walk-human-in-the-leash maneuver. Exactly what Benji did, but not something he taught Mocha. I thik that move is more instinctual.

Point is, I took them different directions, carefully selected rocks in pockets for the occasional loose and aggressive (if only playfully) neighborhood dog.

So I saw new stuff. After commenting yesterday on how often the trash containers have been emptied, in contrast to the recycling containers, this:

overflowing waste bin, Atlántida Uruguay

While it is true that most of the “dumpsters” near us have been well serviced, obviously some haven’t . Another day for this one, a few blocks from here, and no doubt there will be bags on the ground, eagerly torn apart by dogs, cats, and comadrejas (possums).

May be there was extensive waste from a party (as in this post), but it doesn’t look like that. Seems like one “they” forgot about. Notice the sliver of white in the lower right – that brush is piled on top of a discarded refrigerator. Maybe that has something to do with it?

1 In case you’re new here, this refers to 100+ hectares of no-man’s land, sandy scrub brush, islands of pine forest, seasonal water holes, cow pasture, burnt eucalyptus trunks, sand roads used by horses and motos/quads, punctuated by inexplicable trash deposits I have documented often, all north of the Ruta Interbalnearia in Villa Argentina.

Funny thing happened at the recycling bin

I don’t recall when “they” introduced the recycling bins, probably 2012 or so. I see no particular pattern in emptying them; frequently, as recently, they become so overfilled that I simply throw recyclables in the trash bins. I’m sure “they” still go through trash as I documented in a post on 24 March 2012, which appears to have disappeared (500: internal error – bleh).

Where Syd and Gundy live, “they” have done away with the corner “dumpsters” and assigned each house two wheeled containers. One day a week “they” pick up trash, another day recyclables. I question the logic and economics , but no one is asking my opinion (especially the guy who sold the town council 1,000 wheeled household containers).

recycling containers, Atlántida Uruguay

After the last recyclables overflow event, these signs appeared in the bin near us: “Please only recyclables. No trash!”

sign on recyclables bin, Atlántida, Uruguay

Which raises a question: when the recycling bins are consistently overflowing and the trash bin nearby is not, what exactly transpired to evoke this response?

A further question to ask is what Ave Fenix, an organization addressing drug addiction, has to do with the recycling program?

I guess the answer is, it’s a different Ave Fenix. (Ave Fénix=Phoenix.)

Unrelated, I also learned today (via an article from 2014) that given RGB images for print projects, best not to convert them to CMYK before placing in InDesign documents. Fascinating, no?

For these two revelations, you are – from the bottom of my heart – most welcome.

Bulk, recycled, cheap – what’s not to like?

In an obscure and unmarked store I would never have stumbled upon, you can buy several things not generally sold, such as pure bleach, not the expensive and watered-down Agua Janes, so ubiquitous that the recycling station has a separate bin for its distinctive orange bottles. The real stuff costs a fraction of the diluted.

They also sell detergent that is not watered down, again unlike the crap sold in the supermarket.

It comes in recycled 1.5 liter soft drink bottles (notice the variety of caps). In the beginning, I only had one bottle with the white  at the bottom, and with the latest batch it apears to be normal. I know next to nothing of the chemistry of detergent to guess what it signifies, but regardless we use ‘Deter’ for dishes, clothes, and other duties as assigned.

When you buy it by the funda (wrapped quantity), it’s cheaper. In this case, a little over a dollar  (23 pesos) for 1.5 liters. A single 2-liter bottle of bleach cost 39 pesos, or just under US $2.