Why A Lot of Plastic Isn't Getting Recycled

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Oakland resident Paul Beach cares a lot about recycling. So, he was troubled to hear rumors that all his carefully sorted recyclables might be going into the landfill. He wants to know, how much of our recycling is actually getting recycled? Turns out, when it comes to plastic, not a lot. Additional Reading: 'You Can't Recycle Your Way Out': California's Plastic Problem and What We Can Do About It California's Plastic Problem Prop Fest playlist Listen to a transcript of this episode Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Monica Lam. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Amanda Font and Brendan Willard. Our Social Video Intern is Darren Tu. Additional support from Cesar Saldaña, Jen Chien, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:02.0	Hello, you're listening to Bay Curious.
0:06.0	I'm Katrina Schwartz in for Olivia Allen Price.
0:10.0	Friday is Trash Day in my neighborhood.
0:13.0	So come Thursday night, this is me.
0:15.6	I know I can do glass and aluminum.
0:21.1	It can be kind of stressful to figure out what can and can't be recycled.
0:26.0	Half the time I'm just guessing.
0:28.0	This part's a little trickier.
0:29.0	I mean this is a clamshell, like to-go container from when we had Ethiopian food. It kind of has the feeling of that
0:36.7	compostable like made out of corn material but when I look on the bottom it does say
0:41.5	number five which means I think it's a plastic and should be recycled.
0:46.0	A lot of us try to recycle, but are we doing it right?
0:50.0	And do our efforts matter?
0:52.0	Listener Paul Beach lives in Oakland and is very committed to recycling.
0:56.0	So he was disturbed when he heard a rumor.
0:59.0	I had heard somewhere that, oh yeah, they're just taking the recycling and they're dumping it in the landfill and I was like okay
1:05.6	first off that really irritates me because you know I'm going through all the sorting exercise
1:10.3	he wants to know how much of our recycling actually gets recycled?
1:15.0	His question won a voting round on baycurious.org, which means he's not the only one wondering.
1:21.0	Ooh, an olive container and it says 7.
1:28.0	I'm not sure that's going to get recycled.
	...

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