Friday, September 30, 2005

recycling PET bottles

PET means polyethylene terephthalate, and it's just referred to as PET in Japan.

Apparently, you're supposed to remove the cap when you recycle a PET bottle. I only fully realized that today. Oops. Of course, that means that the lovely plastic cap does not get recycled, which is a bad thing.

Like we need more plastic which degrades very verrry slowly (slower than George Bush's brain, can you imagine that?) cluttering up the world. At least the aluminum bottles get completely recycled (I think). I will have to stop using PET bottles.

4 comments:

katiedid said...

I'm just so grateful I live in Oregon where I have the option to recycle all sorts of things, via curbside pickup. When I went back to visit relatives in the Midwest, I kept unconsiously cleaning and prepping the stuff they thought was "garbage" because I'm so in the habit of recycling. They thought that sounded like such a pain and thought it was a bad idea. I could only shake my head at such a foolish notion. It's not so hard at all, and I can't believe more folks here in the US don't grasp what a simple individual way it is to do something good for the world. Sigh. And it certainly makes my garbage can less full every week. We can go two weeks and only fill one of those big black outdoor cans. Some of my relatives had at LEAST two cans EVERY week. I can't imagine. Sheesh. That looked so wasteful to me. And expensive! Good on you for deciding to stop using PET bottles. Sometimes I just forget or don't pay attention when I'm shopping and then I'm irritated I can't throw it into my recycling bins.

kuri* said...

Oregon sounds nice. It's funny that people can think that recycling is a bad idea. Inconceivable. I need to recycle (or properly dispose of) my used batteries! Everything we throw away should be recyclable.

I did find the requirement to separate burnable and non-burnable trash in Japan rather annoying at first, but now that I've gotten used to it, it's extremely strange not to separate my trash.

I've only started being more conscious about recycling stuff in Tokyo. Now that I've been paying attention, it's actually difficult to find drinks in cans. Usually it's only coffee and sodas that come in cans, neither of which I drink. I'll just have to carry my water bottle around all the time.

I bought toilet paper (100% recycled) yesterday, and was wondering why they had to package it in plastic. I guess if it gets wet toilet paper is unusable, but plastic wrapping is so unrecyclable...

katiedid said...

Seperate burnable and non-burnable trash? Wow. We just have a "yard debris" classification, which means only leaves, branches, and grass clippings. All food refuse either has to go into the trash, or if you are able to, into your own composting heap. That's neat that you do that.

I've only seen one brand of recyled paper toilet paper here, and it too comes in plasic for a wrapper. What's weird is that it's not difficult to find non-recycled toilet paper in paper wrappings here. How strange of the recylced brands to not pick up on that idea.

kuri* said...

I don't think the separation of burnable waste from non-burnable waste is terribly ecologically friendly. I'm under the impression that burnable waste gets burned, whereas the plastic, etc. gets dumped in landfills.

What do they do with "yard debris"? Burn it?

Strange about the toilet paper, isn't? Missing the forest for the trees.

I've been good about buying cans all the time. It was a very easy lifestyle change :D