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Can someone help
Deborah out on determining the environmental impact of washing the plastic
containers and the environmental gains of recycling the containers? I don't know
the price/availabiliytof water in Jerusalem, which may have an
impact.
Thanks,
John
My name is Deborah Rubin Fields. I am contacting
you, as I have recorded that you (like me) were once members of the GreenYes
group. Unfortunately, I no longer receive regular mailings from what I
considered to be a very informative forum.
I am a non-professional ecology volunteer from
Jerusalem, Israel. I need expert advice on the following issue:
Aviv Plastic, Israel's main plastic recycler (handling our nation-wide 1 1/2 liter PET recycling
program) recently noted that it has the capablilites to also recycle HDPE,
LDPE and PP containers. Those of us interested in promoting
environmental sustainability were thrilled to read this information on the
company's website. However, when we verified the news, the company's
management stated that while it is set up to recycle these additional plastics,
it will not do so. They said that plastic food containers must be
picked up every three days and that they can only provide once a week
service - at best.
When asked if participants could help out by
rinsing the containers (as for example, other communities do in the US),
the management replied that the extra use of regular dish soap (I suppose they
meant, not vegetable, but chemically based soaps) would be more detrimental to
Israel's environment than continuing to bury our many
dairy containers in landfills.
Is there any way to calculate the relative
damage (water contamination vs. plastic contamination in a
landfill). My gut (granted, unprofessional) sense is that it still makes
sense to recycle our dairy containers, and that for whatever reason, we are
not receiving a full answer from Aviv Plastics.
I would greatly appreciate any light you can shed
on this issue.
Yours,
Debbie Rubin Fields
Jerusalem Israel
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