A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
Last week, while on the topic of recycling plastic, we closed with an item from the New York Times. They reported a French firm is making a watch from recycled plastic materials of fishing nets and the waste plastic found floating in oceans. I commented that I couldn’t help but wonder if it smells fishy — I haven’t bought one yet so don’t know the answer to my curiosity.
Since using similar plastic waste, which could end up in the ocean or other bodies of water, was the topic of an item in a recent Resource Recycling newsletter, I will continue with that idea today.
The article started with a report that UL, a global certification company headquartered in Illinois, certified that resins used by the technology company HP include scrap plastic which otherwise might have gone into the Caribbean Sea.
The five resins, used by HP electronics, are from scrap plastic collected in Haiti. The recycled content of these resins varies from 5% to 99%.
Some of the things HP uses this ocean-bound plastic for are its ZBook Create mobile workstation and ZBook Studio notebook. Their HP Elite Dragon laptop also has ocean-bound plastics in it. Additionally, it plans to use ocean-bound plastic in all its new HP Elite and HP Pro computers.
Thus far, HP has used more than 1 million pounds of ocean-bound plastic. And just last year, they invested $2 million in Haiti in a system to remove impurities from the waste plastic. I always like to read articles like that.
And now several quick things on how the virus is affecting some plastic recycling. The first is how a company is now using recycled plastic to produce emergency ponchos to help protect health care workers from the coronavirus.
The company recycles millions of pounds of post-industrial plastic each month. When the company president heard some health care workers are using trash bags for protection against the virus, he said, we can do better than that — and they did.
Next, I found a few municipalities are reinstating curbside recycling programs that were suspended due to the coronavirus. Unfortunately, still due to unknowns about the virus, many others that stopped this service remain shut down.
Many of the programs were stopped in mid-March, along with the stay-at-home orders and all the other changes to daily life throughout our country tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
Officials cited safety concerns, staffing shortages, the need to reallocate resources and other reasons for making program changes. The article listed many of those programs which had re-started — none in Texas — and those that remain shut down — a number in Texas.
And finally, I found California’s single-use bag ban has been suspended for 2 months. The ban was to encourage the use of reusable grocery bags or recyclable containers; however with the virus, it is felt to be safer to use a new plastic bag each time.
Till next week, do have an enjoyable, healthy and safe one. And don’t forget today is Mother’s day, so celebrate one of the most wonderful people in our lives — where would we be without them?
--
Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432.
