Waste harvest

I just watched a documentary from CBClearning called Harvesting the city. It's set in Toronto and portrays several companies that collect waste and sell it or use it as raw material for their products. Unsurprisingly, there were all these companies dealing with recycling: paper, cardboard, glass & metals, even contaminated water. It was not said what exactly happens to plastics from the recycling bins. One company collected food leftovers from Toronto's restaurants and distributed them to pig farmers. As well they were looking into extending to cattle farmers but cattle is a bit more fussy and the company does not know in advance what kind of scraps they'll receive.Another company collected scrap fabric and turned it into small clothing items such as hats. The most interesting company was the recycler of disposable diapers. In an "intensive process" the "materials" (the owner of the company does not like the word garbage because a lot of it is material that can be turned into something new) get cleaned and separated. The result is fibrous wood pulp whose quality is better than from trees and sells at higher prices. The shredded plastic is very absorbent and for example soaks up oil from water which makes it suitable for cleaning up oil spills. This diaper recycling company is the first of its kind and processes 40 tons of diapers each year. The question that did not get answered unfortunately was what "intensive process" means - according to the footage I would assume water & energy.  Maybe even chemicals?

The documentary did not really show what happens with thrown-out materials that do not go into the recycling process. Recycling is surely better than no recycling but it's still not an invitation to throw things out thinking that somebody down the road will hopefully deal with it. And if it has to be disposable diapers then why not use biodegradable ones and compost them.