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The Buzz has teamed up with our neighbor, Hancock Park resident Jon Lagardere, Community Launcher for the Ridwell recycling company. We love the idea that Jon is helping launch a local recycling effort for a company that is recycling plastic into products. Here’s a post from Jon about his latest collection — he’s willing to pick up your multi-layer plastic on Thursday July 20 from your house! If you’re out of town or unavailable for pick up, there’s always a collection box at Tailwaggers on Larchmont Blvd.
by Jon Lagardere
Have you ever thought about what happens after you stress-eat a bag of chips (aside from the happiness & bloat) – should I throw away the evidence in the trash bin or does it go in the blue bin to get recycled? What about the resealable plastic food bag from the dried mango I quietly ate on that Zoom call yesterday? My collection of avocado netting? Or the very colorful dry dog food bag I bought from Tailwaggers this month?
I wish our house had a small team of people who oversaw the collection of all the waste we accumulate each month and could say “yes” or “no” to each item. But alas, this is not the case and I am tasked with this rather large endeavor. Even though we try not to buy things in plastic, it’s inevitable that we wind up with quite a collection each week.
These various types of food bags are called multi-layer plastic and they cannot be recycled curbside. It ends up in the waste stream destined for the landfill. Multiple layers of different plastic types are condensed to make a strong, shelf-stable material that is hard and crinkly. Resealable food bags, dry pet food bags, frozen food bags, ramen outer packaging, chip bags, cracker bags & protein and granola bar wrappers are all examples of this exceedingly common type of plastic.
Multi-layer plastic is very difficult to recycle and is something that Ridwell has been working to find a non-traditional solution for, to complement its service of recycling other hard-to-recycle items like plastic film (soft stretchable plastic such as grocery bags, dry cleaner bags, Ziplock bags, Amazon mailers, bubble wrap, etc), threads (textiles, old towels, ripped or torn clothing, shoes, etc), styrofoam, lightbulbs, and batteries (among other categories).
Ridwell worked with a few local LA-based companies that did a very successful pilot program with the multi-layer plastic and turned it into smart gravel for building material and garden pots (among other things). In turn, multi-layer plastic was just added as a core category for members, which will include LA when launched this summer.
Some more good news for the Hancock Park and Larchmont Village areas: Ridwell is offering a free pickup (from your house) of multi-layer plastic on Thursday July 20th. Click the link to sign up and learn more about Ridwell https://www.ridwell.com/pickup-signup/lOlvzbMv
To date, Ridwell has saved more than 12 million pounds from the landfill.
Do you have any recycling questions that you want to ask Jon? Feel free to reach out directly [email protected] and join the movement https://get.ridwell.com/join-LA
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