I recycle and ship it out.
Good for you. Still, in aggregate, too much of this material ends up in the waste stream and the manufacturing debt, and recycling debt, isn’t zero. And that’s before we dig into what happens to most things that are “recycled” in this country — sadly, there’s no money in it and very few assign an ecomic value to the health of the planet. To be clear, I’m as guilty as anyone of consumption — but we all must do better.
Reuse trumps recycling, “Never came into being” because we didn’t need it beats all.
I use it to pack stuff I sell. Who throws away good bubble wrap ?
Lots of people? Those who don’t “sell stuff”. Those who do “sell stuff” but use a fulfillment company? My apocryphal neighbors who pay someone to take their stuff to the UPS store who in turn packs and ships it for them?
Me?
I’m in the middle of the spectrum myself. I do save “good” pieces of bubble wrap and packing material. However, once I have one “flip-lid carton” full —maybe two as the holidays approach, though lately Amazon does a lot of that “packing and shipping” for me — additional material must go. There’s only so much room here. Bubble wrap gets punctured and goes into a “plastic bag of plastic bags” to be taken to the county facility.
When I lived with my ex — no kids, 16 room Victorian — we had an entire “packaging materials room” on the third floor. She was a glass blower, and obsessively hoarded the stuff. I think I initially won her over with rolls of bubble wrap that Hobie used to ship kayaks to my employer — wrap otherwise headed to the dumpster. Eventually, even using materials regularly, that room filled to the point where after passing much along to other artists, I still had to haul a trailer load off. Make that the back of my SUV plus the trailer.
There is a better than even chance that at this very moment I could bike one mile to my city’s recycling drop-off (for items that don’t fit into your bi-weekly bin) and photograph an entire dumpster full of bubble wrap and brown shipping cartons. I don’t see this every time I visit, but frequently enough. I’ll see it more frequently as the holidays approach. The irony is that the bubble wrap isn’t even supposed to be dropped there. It can’t be recycled curbside here either. It needs to go to a country facility along with plastic “grocery” bags.
I store the “soft plastic” and make a run to that facility about twice a year. Many
can’t be bothered to drive the 20 minutes so they dump it in the local mixed bins. No doubt congratulating themselves for doing their part by “recycling”.
The irony is that the presence of those materials in the “mixed” recycling
contaminates it, so the entire dumpster will end up in the landfill.
Gold stars all around!
