Eco Scouts: Recycling Deep Dive

 I missed the Repair and Reuse session of Eco Scouts, because I was out of town 😞. I heard they got little sewing kits to take home and got to sew their badges onto something.

I was able to attend Recycling Deep Dive, however, so here's what that was all about...

Agenda!

The first thing we did was watch a video of a material recovery facility (MRF). This is where our unsorted recyclables go to get sorted for recycling. We learned about why municipalities make some of the rules they do about what can go in the recycling bin and in what condition.

One important thing I learned is that there is misinformation going around in the media that less than 10% of plastics get recycled. I have heard this disheartening figure. It was clarified that this percentage is related to the entire U.S. economy. Rest assured, if you put the appropriate plastics in your recycling bin, they are very likely to get recycled. The issue is how much plastic in the economy is going straight to landfills without the opportunity to be recycled.

The activities for this session of Eco Scouts were a waste audit and a life cycle system boundary draft for a discarded product.

Waste to sort for the waste audit

Waste audit sorting and documentation

Working on a system boundary for a router

These activities got us thinking about what people throw out and what materials things are made of.

The last Eco Scouts session is coming up! I will provide my overall thoughts on Eco Scouts in that post.