Exploration of Waste Management

Even though there have been great efforts to promote and encourage recycling and composting in the past decade, there could be better support on educating the public about how to recycle/compost. This is not just about having a list of items above each bin of three-stream waste bins. Even if something is considered recyclable, for example, a specific item might not be if it was not properly cleaned out.

In general, if an item can be recycled or composted, it is considered better to recycle the item rather than compost it since recycling an item reduces the amount of new natural resources that need to be extracted. However, even if an item is recyclable—such as a plastic bottle, for example—it has to be empty, clean, and dry. If you throw your boba cup with some tapioca balls and even a little bit of milk tea into the recycling bin, not only is the cup no longer recyclable but everything that the remaining liquid spilled onto would also no longer be recyclable. If you take one thing away from this pop-up, please remember to empty, clean, and dry anything you put into the recycling bin. In addition, sending non-recyclable items into recycling centers could end up in damaging their machines; for example, plastic bags and greasy pizza boxes could shut down some recycling machines for days. Though recycling is good, it’s only good if you do it right.

Though recycling is good, there is a limit to how many times some material can be recycled and reused (for example, paper can usually only be recycled 5-7 times), and this is when composting comes in handy. In California, ⅓ of all landfill waste was actually compostable. Some people think that this is not a big issue, since wouldn’t it just decompose in the land anyways? Yes, it would decompose—in a bad way. Not only does organic waste in the landfill take up space for other trash that cannot be recycled or composted, it also emits methane gas while decomposing, which is a big source of greenhouse gas emission today. Throwing away organic waste into compost bins rather than normal trash bins and properly degrading the waste would eliminate these greenhouse gases emitted to the environment.