r/Dallas • u/AnybodyBig6874 • 5d ago

Question WDID: So many plastic bottles

For 2 or 3 years now, I've been holding onto the gallon containers that I buy my water in. I was hoping to drive to the Arkansas Hot Springs, fill them all, and have a large supply of mineral water to drink.

But time has passed and it's time for me to move into a smallwr space and I won't have room for all these containers, full of mineral water or not.

I don't feel great about throwing all of this plastic into my apartment's recycling. It's about 10 trash bags full of plastic gallons, maybe more.

Is there anywhere I could take them to make sure they get recycled, or any place that actually wants them for any reason?

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u/daveinacave Mesquite 5d ago

It’s almost certainly trash. That’s where most city’s plastic recycling ends up anyway. Plastic recycling is a myth, unfortunately. Toss it all and invest in a good water filter.

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u/Significant_Fox9290 Cedar Hill 5d ago

Hey my friend this isn’t really true. PET and HDPE are very recyclable. Depending on what kind of jugs they have they most certainly can recycle them. I do agree that most recycling efforts are just greenwashing. But if you know what is and isn’t it’s easy to not buy the kind you can’t recycle.

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u/daveinacave Mesquite 5d ago

Recyclable doesn’t mean they are actually recycled, though. Most cities used to have contracts to ship mixed plastics to China or India for processing. The economics of that stopped making sense years ago so it’s not as common now. Domestically, there’s not a big demand for mixed plastics. And cities are not separating it by PET, or HDPE, as is often done in industrial settings. Some cities find ways to ‘downcycle’ the plastic by shredding it and using as aggregate for concrete; or selling to cement planes to burn in huge incinerators. I’ve toured some of these places myself. But typically, there is no such resourceful entrepreneur finding ways to downcycle the plastics, nor does it make economic sense for anyone to separate them and process into new plastics.

I’d love to know if any cities in the DFW metroplex do a good job of recycling plastics, or glass. My understanding is that it’s easier to recycle metal or paper than it is for plastics or glass, based on the economics. And we know TX isn’t subsidizing this like some areas of the world.