The Seven Deadly Sins of Plastic Recycling?

My wife and I have gone to the extreme.

As Solar Punch, the renewable energy powered band I performed with in India with the India Youth Climate Network sang, "Plastic, It's Getting very Drastic".



We now have a separate plastic bin at home for all seven "species" of plastic.  We made a pledge on our our one year wedding anniversary that we wouldn't take out the garbage for a year at a time, not until our next anniversary.

Because all of our food waste and toilet and shower and dish and clothes washer water waste turns into fuel and fertilizer for cooking and heating and growing food via our home biodigesters, everything else we bring home stays at home, for a year at a time, until we
can turn it into something valuable or trade it or sell it to a qualified upcycler.


That means really knowing the polymer resin codes and the different density and melting point characteristics of the plastic "garbage" we are responsible for.

https://slideplayer.com/slide/8191327/

Why are we doing all this now?
This summer, when I was speaking about our off-grid lifestyle at National Geographic at the Explorer's Festival my wife and I took the "planet or plastic" pledge to eliminate all single use plastic from our lives.   WE CHOOSE PLANET!

My apartment in the slums of Cairo

From 2005 until 2009 I rented an apartment in the slums of Old Cairo being renovated by the Aga Khan Foundation for Culture at the edge of Darb Al Ahmar's Al Azhar Park, a place that had formerly been a huge landfill/garbage dump, transformed by international teams and local experts into a beautiful recreation venue with botanical gardens, playgrounds, waterfalls and restaurants.

This gave me an opportunity to live among the impoverished communities and experience the same deprivations they did in electricity, hot and cold running water, heating and cooling and municipal services like trash pickup.  To live well I challenged myself and my neighbors to create our own solar hot water systems and biogas systems and other amenities.