Plastic bags – the evil that should never be in our
recycling bins – can find a home at major supermarkets. But what happens to it
then?
As with much of recycling, there is theory – and then
there’s reality, which can get messed up because … well, because human beings are
involved.
Publix and Winn-Dixie have explained to me how their
bins worked. I’ve also talked to Trex, a large, publicly traded company that
picks up the plastic bags – “film,” in the recycling lingo – and converts it
into composite board used for decks.
But I’ve also wandered around Dade County and looked
into the recycling receptacles at supermarkets. And well … that’s where things
can get messy.
Both supermarket chains are proud of what they do.
Southeastern Grocers, the parent of Winn-Dixie and Fresco y Mas, reports that
it recycles 3.5 million pounds of plastic each year in partnership with Trex.
Publix boasts of even larger recycling numbers for
2021: 12,526 tons of mixed plastic, 6,516 tons of mixed paper, 273 tons of foam
and 307,826 tons of cardboard.
LESSON
1: USE LESS
First lesson, of course: Use as few plastic bags as you can. Take reusable cloth bags to the store. Many Publix have prominent
signs by the front entrance: “Don’t forget your bags. Let’s do good together.”
Of course, you’re still going to end up with a lot of
film – the plastic that your bundle of toilet paper comes in, say, or the wrap
around your three-pack of romaine lettuce.
As I’ve written before, plastic bags are a BIG
problem for the systems where our city/county recycling trucks go. These
centers are single-stream facilities of conveyor belts, gears and sorting
wheels. Plastic bags clog the system and mess up everything. The Miami center
run by Waste Connections stops the entire sorting process several times a day
just to clear the bags out of the system. (See my story HERE for an inside
look at a recycling facility.)
That’s where the supermarkets come in.
Winn-Dixies and Fresco y Mas (their Hispanic brand) are supposed to have recycling bins out front marked for “plastic bags.”
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| A typical Winn-Dixie setup |
Publix is more ambitious: Most have three bins:
Plastic, Paper and Foam. Some stores have two bins for Plastic, indicating that’s
a popular recycling item.
Each Publix bin has specific labels. Plastic is for “soft
plastics (#2 and #4), plastic bags, product overwrap, pharmacy bags and dry
cleaning bags.” The bin clearly indicates it is NOT for “hard plastics, drinking
bottles, rigid containers, clamshells, jugs, any items containing foods.”
Publix’s Paper Bin is for paper bags, newspapers,
recipe cards and ad inserts. It’s NOT for “fast-food bags with food, cups and
hardcover books.”
The Foam Bin “includes egg cartons, clean take-out trays,
clean cups.” It is NOT for “paper or plastic egg cartons, take-out trays with
food, cups with lids and straws, packing nuts.”
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| A Publix setup. Plastic is by far the most popular. |
Recycling foam is a rarity – I myself have done a
social media post falsely saying there was no market for Styrofoam. But for most serious
recyclers, the crucial element is in the plastic film that our city/county
recyclers don’t want.
The Publix website goes into more details about
what’s acceptable: “Plastic packaging from toilet paper, napkins, paper towels,
overwrap from shipping cases, Ziploc and other re-sealable bags (without the
zipper), bread and produce bags, cereal bags (not the ones that come in a box),
newspaper sleeves, ice bags, salt bags, wood-pellet bags, bubble wrap, air
pillows, and plastic wrap.” Bubble wrap is a biggie for those of us who do a
lot of online shopping.
For more details about Winn-Dixie accepts, see my
next story, on the Trex company that takes the stuff from these stores.
For dedicated recyclers, the advantage of supermarket
bins is that you separate the stuff yourself. You can make sure only the
correct plastic, say, goes into that bin. You’re being a bit like that Japanese
village where residents carefully sort their materials into 34-plus recycling
categories.
That’s much better than the single-stream recycling
that dominates America -- a mostly automated system that is less than perfect
in sorting materials. And that’s after many careless residents don’t follow the
fairly simple recycling rules: For Miami-Dade County recycling trucks, almost
half the material is “contaminated,” meaning it ends up in the landfill.
I visited eight Winn-Dixies (plus one sister store,
Fresco y Mas) and eight Publix.
The Publix all had three or four bins by the front
entrance. Some of the Winn-Dixies had two bins for plastic bags (in green) and
one for trash (in brown).
But I found no recycling bins at two Winn-Dixies (at
NW 7th Avenue and 110th Street and SW 87th
Avenue and 72nd Street) and one Fresco y Mas (near SW 87th
Avenue and Coral Way.
A clerk at the NW 7th facility insisted
there was indeed one outside the front door, but a colleague said: “No, we used
to have one. But no more.”
I guessed a possible reason after I visited a
Winn-Dixie in South Miami near SW 58th Avenue and 73rd
Street. The two green recycling bins contained … well, just stuff, most of
which had nothing to do with the plastic bags being sought:
A brown paper bag from Whole Foods (?!), a couple of plastic
water bottles, scratch-off lottery cards, a paper cup with a plastic top, some
paper receipts and a few plastic bags.
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| A Winn-Dixie bin in South Miami that was supposed to be for plastic bags. |
Though there was a brown receptible right next to
them marked Trash, these recycling bins were contaminated so badly that the contents
were best thrown in the garbage. No store employee was likely to spent time
picking out the bits of plastic bag that were savable.
I can imagine a store manager, after experiencing
this kind of crap for a while, might decide it’d be better just to get rid of
the bins.
Why mess up a recycling bin with crap? I thought of
that poster that cartoonist Walt Kelly did for 1970 Earth Day, with Pogo
uttering: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I found more of a mixed bag, as it were, at a Winn-Dixie on West Hallandale Beach Boulevard, just east of I-95. A large bin held plenty of plastic bags, but also a water bottle and shampoo bottle.
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| A Winn-Dixie bin in Hallandale meant for plastic bags |
Most Publix bins were cleaner, but one on Hallandale Boulevard, east of US 1, had one plastic bin stuffed with bags, while another contained a large Auto Zone jug.
In quite a few places, I saw empty bins or nearly so.
Were they recently cleared by an employee, or a sign of consumer indifference?
At Publix, the plastic bins were used much more than
the paper bins. The foam bins usually contained almost nothing.
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| A Winn-Dixie in Aventura filled with the plastic bags it was intended for. |
And finally, there’s my own Publix, in Miami Shores on Biscayne Boulevard near 90th Street. It has two plastic bins, and both are often stuffed with bags. There’s usually not much paper and almost no foam.
Some persons have posted answers on Reddit:
“I worked for a nicer grocery chain in NC (rhymes
with Moe’s) and they used to throw away the plastic bags people were trying to
recycle. Don’t know if it was true companywide or only at that one store, and
don’t know if it is still how they do things as this was around 20 years ago
now.”
Also: “When I worked at Piggly Wiggly… we chucked
them into the regular trash compactor for years.”
And this: “I know for a fact Lowe’s food’s recycle vs
trash bins make little difference. I’ve had management literally tell me this
when I wanted to throw a plastic cup into the recycle bin and they told me it
honestly doesn’t matter, as they throw it all away anyways.”
But consider this: “I know Food Lion collects them
for Trex. They are picked up once a week. My class did a recycling competition
through Trex and we had to drop them off at a Food Lion.”
Trex is a huge, publicly traded company, and it’s made
a big business of using plastic bags – and other types of film – to build
products. My next story will show what Trex is looking for – and what it does
with what it gets.
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