On Thursday, I went with a friend who was visiting from out of town to a diner that she went to often when she lived here.
When it was time to leave, the waitress brought two plastic clamshells, opaque ones not the see-through kind, for takeout containers.
Recently, Washington state passed a law outlawing Styrofoam containers.
The waitress said they were biodegradable so they could be recycled.
I told her, and the manager, too, that biodegradable doesn’t mean recyclable. Biodegradable means it will break down when composted or put in a landfill.
A manufacturer can say something is biodegradable – it may or may not be true.
It’s up to the local government that provides recycling services to determine what can be recycled. While we were waiting for our bill, I looked up what plastic the city of Olympia accepts in its recycling program:
- Bottles 8 oz. and larger, no lids.
- Plastic buckets and jugs – milk, laundry, etc.
- Tubs – dairy, coffee. No clear tubs.
You would think that after all these years that curbside recycling has been offered people would have a better understanding of the difference between biodegradable and recyclable.
Another consideration environmentally about biodegradability. When I served on the city of Olympia’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee, we learned a lot about recycling and landfills. The staff told us that landfills are so airtight that not much degrades, not even food scraps.
