Let's face it, recycling is hard work. Not only is it hard physically (each quart glass bottle weighs one pound and a five-inch stack of newspaper weighs in at ten pounds) it is also tough mentally trying to figure out if a item is recyclable. Then there are the urban myths that complicate things. From the time I started volunteering at VALCORE, I heard that people could save the tabs from soda cans then turn them in for time on a kidney dialysis machine. According to www.snopes.com and the National Kidney Foundation, this has never been true. Interestingly, in 1987, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Ronald McDonald House established a Pop Tab Collection Recycling Program. Their website notes that more than $4 million in funds have been raised from pop tabs for participating Ronald McDonald Houses.

The Ronald McDonald House in Sacramento (916 734-4230) does accept them and there is a donation container at the Senior center for these tabs. If you do the math, is it really worth saving tabs? There are approximately 1300 tabs per pound and scrap aluminum is worth only ten cents a pound. If you left them on the cans and took the cans to a recycling center, those 1300 cans would be worth over $58.

Free Shoes
The rumor is that if you mail a pair of old Nike shoes to Beaverton Oregon for recycling, Nike will send back a new pair. Nike does recycle shoes through their Reuse-A-Shoe program (www.nikereuseashoe.com), but you won't get a new pair of shoes in return. These shoes are recycled into premium sport surfaces such basketball courts.

Plastic Recycling
A myriad of misinformation abounds around those pesky recycling triangles that are imbedded on plastic containers. The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) introduced a resin coding system in 1988. According to the SPI web site: "the SPI resin identification code was developed to provide a consistent national system to facilitate recycling of post-consumer plastics through the normal channels for collecting recyclable materials from household waste.

"A potential benefit of coding is that it "may" facilitate the recovery of plastics not currently collected for recycling. If there is a readily identifiable supply of a given material in the waste stream, it "may" drive recycling entrepreneurs to explore means of recovering that material." In a nut shell, six common plastics were identified plus one ‘‘other." These numbers were surrounded by a recycling triangle. To the public, a recycling triangle means that a product can be recycled. For plastics, this is not the case. Today there are only viable markets for number 1 PETE (Polyethylene terephthalate) and number 2 HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastics. Here is a short description of the hard facts.

Soda, water, and liquor bottles are made from PET along with a variety of other containers. Manufacturers want recycled PET and buy it, however very few new drink bottles contain recycled PET. Most recycled PET is melted and drawn out into long fibers for carpets, fiberfill for jackets, and fabric for T-shirts and shopping bags which unfortunately cannot be recycled. Be aware that local recyclers only accept narrow-neck PET bottles.

Clear HDPE milk and water bottles could easily be made into new containers. The colored HDPE (liquid detergent, shampoo bottles) is generally recycled in plastic lumber. Those tough Tyvek mailing envelopes are also HDPE but are impossible to recycle. Vinyl or polyvinyl chloride (number 3 V) could be recycled. It is used for clear food packaging and plumbing pipe. However, collecting it for recycling is cost-prohibitive because there are not enough items made from the material to warrant local factories to recycle it into new products.

Low-density polyethylene (number 4 LDPE) is used for bags for bread and groceries. Some of these bags are recycled into new bags or plastic lumber. The cost of moving used LDPE is higher than making it from virgin petroleum. Consider using cloth shopping bags. My husband and I have used the same cloth bags for over fourteen years. Polypropylene (number 5 PP) is made into yogurt, margarine, and other food containers. Like number 3 V, there are not enough containers made to justify collecting it.

Then there's number 6 PS - Polystyrene, the plastic that I would ban from the face of the earth. Solid PS is made into compact disc jackets, eating utensils, and take-out food containers. The expanded PS know as Styrofoam is used for packing materials, coffee cups and meat trays. The cost of moving used Styrofoam is higher than making it from virgin petroleum. We find lots of Styrofoam in our local creeks where birds and fish think it is food thus clogging up their digestive tracks and ending their lives.

The last of the labeled plastics is number 7 OTHER. Don't buy this stuff unless you want to keep it. It cannot be sold or recycled. If you like a product but not the packaging, contact the manufacturer and complain. One call a year, that's all I ask. If companies don't take the hint, the government should step in and set recyclable packaging standards.