Sometimes one wonders if the effort to do the separate collection in the house is worth it

Many times when we divide the trash we wonder if our commitment will serve anything, if the material that we divide then will actually be used or will end up in landfill or worse burned, if the burdens we pay, despite our pre-selection work, are useful to the environmental cause.

In the house, perhaps having limited spaces, having to select paper, glass, plastic and food waste in different containers, involves commitment, mental fatigue in separation and spaces subtracted from other things.

If we then add that we must also remember on which days of the month they pick up the bag of one or the other product, it becomes a task to organize with commitments not to forget if you do not want the house to be filled with garbage.

Every now and then we remember how comfortable it was to throw everything in a single bag and when the garbage collection passed you just had to think about taking the bag, with the mixed waste, out the front door and you didn’t think about it anymore.

We have seen this general inertia where it has led us, but perhaps we would also have the right to understand what our domestic efforts in the separation of waste are for.

When we buy tomatoes, peaches or strawberries, we are often presented in the store in transparent plastic cans, closed by a lid that protects the perishable product. We take it home, we put the contents at the table and the packaging, in this case in PET, is immediately thrown.

All these transparent PET packaging,through recycling, can be reborn to new life by avoiding using new oil to make other products. Yes, but how?

The tray, along with the other travel companions, is taken to the waste selection centers where it will be divided by the other plastic packaging and started to regenerate.

PET food packaging will be ground into 10 mm-sized pieces. about, then washed in order to remove the labels on the packaging, separated by color, if there were colored trays mixed with transparent ones and then extruded creating a grain that will constitute the new raw material to make many products.

If the destination of the new grain still has to be the food, during the process leading to granulation, the material will be sanitized and sanitized, then being able to be used to rebuild food packaging.

If the destination is in non-food sectors, the grain will be packed and sold in many production sectors. Let’s see which ones:

• The furniture industry uses recycled PET granules to make the fiber we’ll find in the cushions and padding of sofas and armchairs.
• The textile industry uses recycled PET granules to make fiber suitable for clothing and blankets.
• The packaging industry uses recycled PET grain to make the seals for the packaging we find on many packages or pallets of goods, with the aim of stabilizing the material contained.
• The cleaning industry uses recycled PET grain to make mono-filaments for domestic and industrial brooms and to make brushes for mechanical cleaning machines.

As you can see, every effort to separate waste at home is intended to save CO2 in the atmosphere, natural resources, to unnecessarily consume fossil raw materials and to solve the problem of plastic packaging that will no longer be put in landfills or worse dumped at sea.

See more info about recycling