[SustainableTompkins] plastic hair care bottles (digression from household "green" discussion)

[Margaret McCasland]

I suspect that Tompkins County is receiving less income for it's 
plastics, now that it accepts a wider range.  I have even heard that 
sometimes in some places recycled plastics are crushed and landfilled 
rather than recycled, because the market for them is so low.  It may 
be that milk /juice/water jugs are easy to separate and sell to China 
for making PETE products, and that all other plastic gets tossed. I 
can't imagine anyone is looking at the bottom of every shampoo bottle 
to see which are made from #2 and which are #3.  If hair care product 
bottles are sold at all, they are probably sold  along with #7 as 
"least valuable mixed plastics."

Anyone from Solid Waste reading this who can fill us in on what 
happens to hair product bottles from here?

There is a wonderful book called "Garbage Land: on the Secret Trail 
of Trash" that tracks trash and recycling from a household in 
Brooklyn to its final resting ground--or reuse, as the case may be. 
Reading it has made me as wary of generating recyclables as I am of 
generating trash. Here's a review which describes it better than I 
can: "Garbage Land is excellently written and doggedly researched and 
reported, and [Elizabeth] Royte is a funny and observant companion."

Back to shampoo: even with the above recycling caveat, producing 
vinyl is as toxic as disposing of it, so we should avoid buying 
products with vinyl wherever possible.

Anyone know of a non-vinyl version of duct tape?  I still haven't 
learned how to live without it.

Margaret