We humans leave a lot of waste in our wake. One way to reduce it is to recycle.
But it’s not always clear what’s recyclable. Rules can vary from one community to another.
For WUWM's Beats Me series, we dug in to recycling rules.
Listener wonders which plastics are recyclable
Joanne Poehlman considers herself to be a pretty good recycler.
The 85-year-old is a retired Mount Mary anthropology professor and a Catholic nun — a School Sister of Notre Dame. She says conserving comes naturally after living in community and taking a vow of poverty.
“We could have invented the saying, 'repair, reuse' because that’s what we did. And it was thoughtfulness about how we save in order to share with the community,” Poehlman says.
When she walks from her second-floor apartment near 91st and West Capitol Drive to the outdoor recycling bin, she’s wondered about one particular plastic. She thinks it was a sour cream container.
“I saw on the label that there was a PP triangle .05. Is this something I can recycle?” she asked in her "Beats Me" message.
Rachel Rasmussen says she's never heard of a .05 label. She is education coordinator for Keep Greater Milwaukee Beautiful.
Rasmussen says number 5 plastics can be recycled. They're used to make things like storage bins, shipping pallets and garden tools.
“If it has the triangle symbol, sometimes it’ll just say the original number, but sometimes they do put a zero in front of it. It still counts as a number 5. So, we can recycle that type of plastic in curbside recycling,” Rasmussen says.
That’s for City of Milwaukee residents. It might be different if you live in a different municipality.
Plastics number 1 and 2 are always recycled, others depend on community
Jennifer Semrau understands how confusing it can be to sort out what to sort out. She’s the state Department of Natural Resources' waste reduction and diversion coordinator. It’s her job to keep as much out of landfills as possible.
The backbone of Wisconsin’s recycling rules is written into state law. It spells out what communities must recycle.
“Chapter 287 identifies the materials that must be recycled across the state: cardboard, magazines, newspaper and office paper, containers made out of aluminum, steel, glass and plastics number 1 and 2,” Semrau says.
All of that stuff is banned from being landfilled. So, why are City of Milwaukee residents asked to recycle number 5 plastics?
“There has been an expansion in the marketplace for PP — polypropylene number 5 plastics. So that is a material that we’re seeing more MRFs recover,” Semrau says.
MRF is short for a materials recovery facility. Those are the places where our recycling is sorted, baled and sold to companies that repurpose it. Some MRFs are public and some are private.
Every community has to follow the state law, but some MRPFs go above and beyond when they have a buyer for something like number 5 plastics.
“That is a material that we’re seeing more MRFs recover even though they don’t have to by the law, but we’re seeing more of that marketplace develop,” Semrau says.
Don't put plastic bags in your recycling bin
Another plastic item that doesn’t have to go into landfills is the ubiquitous plastic bag. Semrau says they do have a market.
“The largest buyer is I believe is Trex Company. You can look at their website if you wanted to find more information. They use is as a component of their plastic lumber,” Semrau says.
But, she says, don’t throw them into your recycling bin, because when they reach an MRF, “they end up wrapping around the equipment that’s used to separate out different recyclables and really cause maintenance issues,” Semrau says.
She suggests dropping off plastic bags at grocery and department stores that specifically collect them.
Semrau has been in the waste reduction business for almost 30 years.
“I don’t think it’s a perfect system but I do know that there are success stories in Wisconsin,” she says, most recently around batteries.
While they’re banned from Wisconsin landfills, they also pose a fire hazard if they make their way into hauling trucks and MRFs.
Semrau says a bill just signed into law will require companies that manufacture batteries pay to collect and recycle them.
So, we will have more education about how to properly handle batteries and more collection opportunities in the state as a result of this law in the future.
While many of us wish we could recycle more, Semrau points to missed opportunities within Wisconsin’s existing system.
A few years ago, her team carried out a waste characterization study. Crews hand-sorted through garbage being delivered to landfills. Nearly 20% were items that could have been recycled.
Semrau says if recycled, that waste is worth tens of millions of dollars.
For more information about what you can recycle, visit DNR's recycling information page.
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