Published with the permission of the American Women's Club of Zurich
When Switzerland introduced the trash bag tax in the early 90s, an urban legend calling on householders to put paper in their trash bags achieved amazing popularity. Rumor had it that incineration plants need paper in their trash mix in order to heat up to the required temperature. Ultimately, the operator of a major incineration plant was given full-page newspaper space to explain why “it just ain’t so.” Now another urban legend is making the rounds.
Let me set things straight: whatever you may have heard, incineration plants do not need to burn glass to achieve efficient burning temperatures. The explanation for this is the same as for the earlier rumor—incineration plants don’t need to burn any of the materials we can sort and recycle. We don’t need to worry about the burning temperature either. Plastic waste has replaced paper as a heat source for the furnaces. In fact, plastic waste is such a large percentage of household garbage that, instead of being an aid to efficient burning, these large amounts of plastic produce extremely high furnace temperatures and increase incinerator wear-and-tear. Recycling paper and glass is certainly cheaper than paying trash bag tax unnecessarily, and recycling helps the environment by reducing pollution and lowering our energy and resource consumption. Please put empty glass jars and bottles--you may leave the paper labels on them--in your town’s recycling bins.
Battery recycling is another subject that often needs clarifying. Contrary to a current misconception, battery recycling consumes energy rather than saving it. This is because batteries, whether they are being manufactured, used, or recycled, consume more energy than they give out. They are convenience items and should only be used when it is impossible to draw current directly from the electric outlet for your purposes. Recycling batteries is important because the recycling process enables reuse of important materials such as iron, nickel, manganese, and zinc and also keeps toxic heavy metals such as lead and cadmium out of the environment. Recycling also means less mining and transport of these materials and thus lowers batteries’ environmental impact. Avoid buying Nickel-Cadmium batteries whenever possible. These contain large amounts of toxins, as do many button batteries, which often contain mercury. “Buttons” are particularly dangerous because they can be easily swallowed by small children. Recycling batteries is simple. Every store that sells batteries, including grocery stores, is required to provide recycling containers for customer convenience.
“Yes, Virginia,”….recycling plants really do recycle. The suggestion that they don’t is an urban legend in its own right. The lesson I learned from researching these urban legends is that we can trust the Swiss recycling system. It has been tested and proven practical, environmentally desirable, and economically sound. The technology is reliable and up-to-date, and towns do their best to make recycling as straightforward and convenient as possible. I spent quite a few mornings last year attending citizens’ advisory committee meetings in our town. Our committee was asked to help with the revision of local disposal and recycling infrastructure and procedures. Newcomers may find these procedures complicated at first, but I confidently affirm that every effort was made to simplify them as much as possible.
Illusions of another ilk have to do with us humans. How many times have you heard someone say that an environmentally helpful activity, such as using public transport or recycling, is “only a drop in the bucket?” To say that is to suggest that our contribution (in this case to the environment) doesn’t matter and implies that we are powerless. Whenever we begin to think about global problems, most of us feel pretty small. We aren’t.
A psychologist friend of mine counsels many people who suffer from personal difficulties. When I asked her how their pain affected her, she said something I will never forget: “Yes, it’s hard, but I don’t give up or feel discouraged because I can always do something to help.” Each of us can always do something to help even if what we do seems small to us. As a matter of fact, students of history often tell us that big changes happened because so-called “ordinary” courageous people worked for and supported them. Margaret Mead’s profound insight still rings true: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Women are good at seeing what needs to be changed. We care for (and about) future generations and the world they will inherit. All of us can play a part in building a better world. <
