Week 27
The bad news first, I suppose. We accumulated several items of trash this week, one under terrible circumstances I don’t want to repeat anytime soon. This week’s trash: two blister packs from contact lenses, 1 piece of foam-type stuff from a box of chocolates we received for Christmas, and two broken bungee cords. Here’s the picture:
Our garbage for the week - two broken bungee cords, a piece of foam, and two contact lense packs.
While the foam and contact lense cases are fairly standard trash, the bungee cords represent a nasty turn of events. Our dog was let out of our yard this week by someone who decided to cut the bungee cords holding our gate shut. Yes, the gate is padlocked, but due to construction circumstances, the horseshoe closure is too far away from the pole it wraps around to be secure enough for our comfort, so we take the extra precaution on bungee-cording the gate shut. About two weeks ago, we came home to find our gate open and chalked this up to my dog deciding to go on the lam (which he’s never done before) but now I don’t think so. After the gate was opened the first time, we secured it, but last Wednesday, Adam came home to find the cords cut through, the gate wide open, and our dog missing. A 12-hour search ensued, culminating in, thankfully, our dog making his way back home. To have our home broken into like this is unsettling, to say the least. We’re just happy to have our furry friend back.
We’re taking a second look at the trash that ended up in our can last week, wondering whether we’re dealing with a malicious neighbor or a child who likes to play pranks. We’ve even wondered whether someone could be trying to deliberately undermine our project. Regardless, we’ve had enough and are installing a monitored home security system to avert future incidents like this.
The good news: Thankfully, in the midst of a stressful week came one of the most exciting events we’ve experienced so far during our project – we made contact with Agri-Plas. Located only a half hour away from our house, this cutting edge company takes used plastics and converts them into crude oil through an innovative recycling process. I missed the tour of Agri-Plas offered during my Master Recycler class, so I had to go alone, but boy am I glad I did. When I contacted them, I was put in touch with Allen, an extremely personable man who agreed to sort through the contents of our garbage shoebox to see what leftover plastics I have that he could recycle. Here’s the before picture of our shoebox full of garbage:
The garbage in our shoebox before Agri-Plas.
I sorted the various plastics out of our shoebox, which accounted for about half of our total garbage. It included things like medicine bottle safety seals, plastic wrapping from a movie, yellow birth control pill packs, small plastic tags from clothing, and so on.
And here’s the shoebox now – Agri-Plas took ALL of our plastic garbage to recycle into oil!
6 months' worth of garbage. The box is new because the original shoebox was left with Agri-Plas.
Allen spent a lot of time talking with me and my mom (who had come down to Oregon to help look for our dog) about the process of converting plastics into oil. Agri-Plas is one of the only facilities like it in the country, but it makes so much sense – I hope to see Agri-Plas expand their facility and can only imagine what this sort of enterprise could do on a large scale to keep plastics out of the landfill. There’s no real negative about this process – plastic is kept out of the landfill and oil is produced, which saves that much oil from being drilled out of the earth. It’s win-win, and I’m delighted that a small amount of my plastic can go to help this process. Check out their site - interesting stuff. I’ll be touring Agri-Plas with the next round of Master Recyclers in February and can write more about the recycling process at that time.
As promised, here’s a run-down of the remaining trash in the shoebox. I’ll note that I still hope to do a few upcycling projects with some of this stuff, so the final tally at the end may change slightly. Over the past six months, our total garbage has been:
- Two broken bungee cords
- 1 piece of foam from a candy box
- Two pieces of nonrecyclable, plastic-foil composite Christmas wrapping paper
- 1 dog toy run over by a lawn mower
- Two empty Theraflu pouches
- 3 used lightbulbs (moved into a new house and bulbs subsequently burned out)
- 4 used Gilette razor blades
- 7 foil tops from contact lense blister packs — the plastic parts were recyclable at Agri-Plas
- 3 Alkaseltzer foil wrappers
- An oil change sticker
- 1 broken tack
- Assorted stickers
- 1 insect sting relief foil pouch
- 2 pieces of tape
- Flea medicine garbage
- Birth control pill packs and wrappers
- 1 tangled mess of bubble wrap and tape about the size of my fist (and I honestly don’t remember where this even comes from)
All of this fits easily into the bottom of a shoebox. We’re on track to meet our goal – only 6 months to go!
4 comments
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Is Agri-Plas open to the public? Can anyone drop off plastic waste there?
I’m so glad you found your dog!!
thanks for keeping us updated…comments/questions:
* contact lens – mine are a foil part you pull off and a plastic container it sits in. i put the plastic in my far west fibers plastic bin since they take 1-7 and the foil part in with the curbside metal recycling
* birth control – i can’t figure out what to do with the bubble pack part but the plastic case can go into the farwest fibers plastic bin as well.
curious what you do about the wrapping on cubes of butter? that’s been my recycling obsessive question this week
Ecogrrl – Thanks for the comment! My contacts also come in a plastic blister back with a foil-type pull-off tab. I’ve not called the company to check that this tab is 100% foil, so I’m a little leary of putting it in the recycle bin. As far as the plastic part of the cases, and the plastic birth control casing, you’re right, these can go in with Far West Fibers.
I make a lot of my own butter, but if I buy it, I make sure I buy the kind that is wrapped in wax paper, not foil. I scrub the wax paper and use it as firestarter or throw it in the compost.
Stephanie – AgriPlas does have various drop off sites the public may utilize. Check out their website for details!
aha so wax paper is compostable…cooooool! learn somethin’ new every day – thanks