Federal and state leadership are stressing the importance of addressing climate change as its impacts are widespread, but solutions are sometimes creating problems of their own.

Plus, recycling is one way we can play a part in helping the environment, but exactly what you can recycle can be confusing.

We'll help sort it out.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

We'll get to some of the conflicts coming out of efforts to confront climate change ahead but first, recycling.

According to the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Clark County recycled 23% of its waste last year and the year before, marking a 3% improvement from 2019.

However, despite having the largest population in Nevada, Clark County has a lower recycling rate than counties like Douglas whose residents recycled 49% of their waste in 2021 and Washoe, where 29% of waste was recycled last year.

A lack of understanding about what can be recycled and how is what's said to be behind Clark County's numbers, and with that in mind, we went to Republic Services Recycling Center for some education.

Jeremy Walters of Republic Services, let's get right into it.

What are some of the foolproof items that we can surely say yes, I can put this in my recycling bin.

(Jeremy Walters) When it comes to what you can always recycle, think glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles and jugs, metal food and beverage containers, cardboard and paper.

-When you say paper, does that include newspaper?

-Yes.

Newspaper, printer paper, junk mail.

This is actually paperboard, what we call chipboard, so you could recycle that.

-And I thought that might be cardboard, but you can recycle a whole cardboard box.

-Absolutely.

We love cardboard here, especially as consumers are getting more and more of it, right?

The Amazon effect is what we literally call it.

We see a lot more cardboard coming in the residential stream.

I would say though, the best tip on cardboard is to break it down.

Don't throw your whole box in there.

The reason being as things get dumped and jumbled around, you may get bottles and cans that actually slip their way into a cardboard box, and then once we compact that, that actually can be a contaminant for the cardboard.

So break your cardboard boxes down.

-Talking about cleaning up some of these items, a cardboard box for example, do you need to remove the tape or this paper on top?

-The cardboard boxes, no.

Really the cardboard processors understand that this is always going to be something that comes in that package, right?

We have to ask people to do things to prepare recyclables properly, but there's a fine line between asking them to do too much and not enough.

And if you do too much, people tend to stray away from recycling and then not do it at all.

-Right.

I mean for example, do you have to remove the labels on a bottle like this or a soup can like this?

-No, and that's the same idea, right?

You don't need to do that, but the thing that we do ask you to do when it comes to food and beverage containers is rinse them out.

Practice what we call empty, clean, dry, right?

So if this still had soda in it and it's got a little bit pooling up, I'd say squirt a little bit of water in there, swirl it around, tap it dry, put the lid back on, but then throw it in the recycling bin.

And the reason that we ask you to do that is paper and cardboard is very fragile.

If it gets soiled with food and liquid, we have to throw it away.

-What about peanut butter?

I think you get asked that a lot.

How much do you have to take out of the jar?

-Yes, peanut butter is that prime example where it's like you could spend 20 minutes cleaning it out, and it's just a best effort.

You have to make a judgment call at home.

Is it worth it to try to rinse something out?

For me, my furry buddies, they helped me clean it out.

I get as much as I can out of it, but then I drop it to them.

They clean it up for me and then I can throw it in the bin.

But a little bit of residual peanut butter that was still stuck on the lip of the jar, it's not a problem.

-Okay.

So your dogs don't get their noses stuck in the jars?

-No, no.

-Let's talk about some of the items people think may be recyclable but are definite no-nos.

-Yes.

-And this is interesting in particular.

-The milk carton is a prime example, and you have to think about the complexity of that material.

Most people go day to day, it's milk carton, right?

How complex is it?

Well, it's a paper carton and paper by itself is not waterproof, so how do you make it hold milk?

You actually put a polycoated lining on the inside and outside.

So now you've got paper, the polycoated lining, but then you layer in a rigid plastic lid.

You've now got three materials in one.

This is very difficult to break down for recycling.

Recycling generally is after single-component items, right?

Think about these things.

It's just cardboard, it's just paper, it's just plastic, it's just glass.

That's now three things.

It's very difficult to recycle that.

-It does have the symbol on it that says it's recyclable, though.

-Yes, and that is one of the biggest challenges that our industry faces is there's a lot of products out there that have that recycling symbol on it, and that's not the case.

It doesn't mean that it's recyclable curbside.

There may be one small recycler in the United States that can take a small amount of that material, break it down and recycle it.

But when we're talking about scale, right, we don't have the ability to do that, so that recycling symbol is misleading.

Just because it has a recycling symbol on it doesn't mean it goes in your curbside recycling bin.

-But don't let it discourage you.

Stick to the basics.

I think this is similar to this right here, which came with a food delivery service.

It's paper and plastic and has the symbol on it, but you're telling me it wouldn't work.

-That's the problem with that recycling symbol.

Again, we've been trained growing up, we see the recycling symbol, we think that automatically if it's got that on there, it goes in the bin.

But what happens is there's little to no regulation that requires anybody to vet the company that is producing the packaging and then labeling it as recyclable.

So the best thing you can do is check with your service provider, right?

Someone like Republic Services who's directly processing the material, we can tell you what is truly recyclable and what's not.

That is another prime example of something that is mixed material, and it's misleading because it says paper and it's paper on the outside but as you start to break it down, you see it's more than one item.

-A big no-no, plastic bags.

-Yes.

So plastic bags and flexible plastics are one of the biggest problems that we see here.

Those actually have a tendency to wrap and tangle around the sorting equipment, so they cause jams and inefficiencies at our center.

Again, they have the recycling symbol on them, but sometimes they do a better job and they'll actually say store drop-off by that recycling symbol.

So keep those out of the recycling bin.

The best piece of advice I can say is skip them altogether and bring your own bags.

-For something like this that had strawberries in it, is this considered a flexible plastic?

-That's a rigid plastic, right?

So a lot of folks get focused on the numbers.

Plastic bottles and jugs typically have somewhere on it a little recycling triangle and it has a number inside.

And if you're very curious, we do accept plastic numbers 1, 2 and 5, but what we're trying to educate people on is plastic bottles and jugs.

Rigid plastic containers, right?

It holds food or liquid.

-So you would be happy if you were just getting these.

-Absolutely.

-Plastic straws?

-Same thing, and then add in the fact that it is very small.

It will typically get lost in the process, aside from the fact that most plastic straws and utensils are made of mixed plastics, which are very hard to market and very few companies want mixed plastics.

-Would this constitute as a mixed plastic?

This kind of goes along with TV dinner sets, right?

-Yes.

So this one is an interesting example because the lid potentially by itself is recyclable because it is a number 5, but the black plastic is very difficult for us to process because our optical sorters, they're actually designed to read-- to oversimplify-- color and density of plastic.

Well, all these materials are going over a black belt so this has a tendency to blend in with the belt, and the optics will not pick up the black pigment and then it just does not get sorted out.

-Let's move on to contamination, and it brings me to the pizza box because what's considered contamination on this?

-This half would be contaminated, this half would be clean and acceptable for recycling, and the pizza box is one of the biggest misconceptions that we see because people think hey, it's cardboard, cardboard goes in the recycling bin.

But think along the lines of that food or liquid contamination, right?

So a pizza box, you'd want to tear it in half, you could recycle the clean half but the dirty half has to go.

-What is the big deal about contaminating a product, though?

What happens when it gets here?

-So for us, if it's super-soiled with food or liquid, you think about when paper gets wet it starts to break down, it can jam up the machinery, but actually it's for the post-processor, the paper mill who's actually taking this and pulping it to make new paper cardboard boxes.

If you've got grease and cheese, which that's a very clean pizza box, but if it has the grease and cheese and other things in it, when they go to pulp the paper, it actually can contaminate the whole batch and then they would have to throw it away.

-So that would be quite a waste.

Overall, how well do you think Southern Nevada is doing with recycling?

-I'd say that Southern Nevada is getting better.

There's always room for improvement.

We see some very unique items come through the recycling process.

We have seen a lot more folks recycling, making an effort to recycle, since single stream has been the process here in Southern Nevada.

-Explain single stream.

-Single stream is the big bins that we have where we throw all the good recyclables in the bin and then we do the sorting for you.

The folks that have lived in the Vegas valley for long enough remember the old red, white and blue crates that we used to pre-separate at the curb, but single-stream recycling you get a lot more space.

There's a lid so when it's windy like the other day, it protects your recyclables.

It's a wheeled cart.

And a lot more folks are participating, but we need to make sure that we're throwing the right things in the bin.

-And some of the latest data showed that Clark County was about 20%, the rate of recycling, out of everything that they were throwing away, not doing so well compared to some of the other counties in Nevada.

What do you attribute that to?

-I'd say it stems from some of the misconceptions around recycling and the processes here in Southern Nevada.

You have to understand that you have a trash cart and a recycling cart for a reason.

You can't use them interchangeably.

There's a big misconception that we sort through it no matter what so you can throw your recyclables in your trash and vice versa.

You have that recycling cart for a reason.

-And some of us who do not live in a single-family home but in an apartment or have a condo, we do not have any recycling bins, so what do we do?

-So there's a couple different options for you.

You can either A, talk to your HOA about implementing a recycling program in your community, or we have drop-offs, public drop-offs where you can take your recyclables and deliver them to a location either on the south end of town or the north end of town for us to recycle.

-Okay, and they can find that information location as well as questions about content on your website.

-Yes.

They can go to republicservices.com/ southernnevada.

-Jeremy Walters, Republic Services, thank you so much for your time.

-Thank you.

-To climate change now.

Experts say slowing global warming will require a shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable clean energy sources.

But those changes, while good for the planet in one sense, can sometimes hurt the environment in other ways.

Nevada has some notable examples of these types of dilemmas, and joining us to talk about them is Daniel Rothberg, environmental reporter for the Nevada Independent.

Daniel, thank you for taking the time.

Let's start with the Dixie Meadows geothermal project.

It is in northwestern Nevada.

What are the positives of it, and then why can it also be seen as negative in other aspects?

(Daniel Rothberg) So thanks for having me on today to talk about this.

Geothermal is a power source that does not-- it's not a fossil fuel power source-- that can run 24/7, so that's a huge benefit to the grid in bringing new renewable sources online because it can fill in the gaps when the sun isn't shining to power solar panels or if the wind isn't blowing to, you know, run a wind turbine.

But depending on where geothermal is sited, it can come into conflict with other issues, and that's what's going on in Dixie Valley.

Geothermal requires some groundwater pumping, tapping into aquifers, and the concern in Dixie Valley is that activity will interfere with habitat for an endemic species found only in that area, the Dixie Valley Toad, and will also disrupt this meadow spring ecosystem that the Fallon Paiute Shoshone tribe relies on for religious, historical and cultural practices.

-All right.

So in an article that you wrote on this for the Nevada Independent, you included a quote from the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

They extended emergency protections for this Dixie Valley Toad, and the quote is: Protecting small population species like this ensures the continued biodiversity necessary to maintain climate-resilient landscapes in one of the driest states in the country.

Am I interpreting this correctly that this is much bigger than just the Dixie Valley Toad, there are bigger implications?

-Yes, I think that's right.

I think whenever you look at a species, it has to be in the context of kind of the larger issues at play, and Nevada because of the geographic diversity, the topographic diversity in the state, it ranks among the top 15 states for biodiversity, for the diversity of its species.

They might not always be the large species that we think of in other areas, but they are really unique.

They are the types of things you might see in a nature documentary that is just, you know, a close-up of a really unique insect or a butterfly or something like that.

And a lot of those species are at risk in part because of climate change but also because of how we are using our landscapes and the pressures that we're putting on land, whether that's building in cities or developing out in rural areas energy projects or different projects like that, roads, transmission lines, things like that.

-Right.

Why is biodiversity important?

-I think there's a lot of different ways to answer that question and, you know, I think I just touched on one maybe from a very large scale which is, you know, I was watching a nature documentary over the weekend.

I think we've all had that experience.

I'm on PBS right now.

PBS has a program, I think it's called Nature, on specifically, you know, our environment, our natural species and ecosystems, and I think that there is-- you know, I think as a human species, we have a connection to nature whether we live in a city or in a rural area.

So I think there is just some inherent value in protecting biodiversity, but biodiversity more than that, speaking broadly again, really does sustain our life on Earth.

There's all sorts of ways that animal species regulate our environment and our habitat to help clean water and air and, you know, a lot of our medicines, a lot of our discoveries come from the diversity of biological species.

So I think there's some inherent value in it, and there's some, you know, just value in everyday life that we don't always see.

-Okay.

Let's move on to some similar situations, but these involve lithium.

What is lithium, and why is it such a big deal in Nevada right now?

-Yes.

Lithium is a key ingredient to the electric vehicle batteries and the large-scale batteries that experts say are going to be needed to fully decarbonize the grid which is, you know, the state's policy goal by 2050 and is in line with national and global goals as well to move toward electrification.

In order to do that, you need batteries to store electricity, whether that's in cars or on the grid, and those require lithium.

The International Energy Agency and other experts that look at, you know, the minerals that we have right now and what we're going to need to meet those goals show that we're going to need an increase in lithium and other minerals like copper and rare earth metals to produce the infrastructure that I mentioned, the batteries and things like that.

-To reach those goals, right.

And currently the U.S. gets most of its lithium outside of the U.S., so if we're going to become energy independent, we need to start getting it from right here in our ow4n backyard.

And Nevada is-- explain to me how significant Nevada is in that role.

-Yes.

I mean, Nevada is being eyed by I think lithium developers in addition to other places but, you know, there's a big lithium project in Southern California's Salton Sea that's being developed.

But Nevada really is being looked at as a potential central hub for this lithium economy, and one of the reasons for that is Nevada does have the only active lithium operation in the U.S. currently.

That's in Silver Peak which is just a little bit north of Tonopah and-- sorry, a little bit north of Goldfield and, you know, there's a lot of geologic potential to mine more lithium in Nevada.

Now, there's different technologies to do that and different approaches being taken to do that.

Some of it looks more like a traditional mine that you might see, an open-pit mine, and then some of that looks like actually taking groundwater from underneath the ground and pulling out the lithium from that.

-And when you talk about the open-pit mining, we know there are environmental impacts associated with that automatically.

Thacker Pass, that would be the situation there north of Winnemucca.

It's the most prominent lithium project in Nevada, perhaps one of the largest deposits of lithium in the country.

What is the opposition to it though, from an environmental perspective?

-From an environmental perspective, there's a lot of different concerns about Thacker Pass.

I think there was originally a concern about contamination of the water supply, although the current state permit for Thacker Pass would not allow the company to go beneath the water table, at least in its first phase.

But there's a lot of concerns about the impact on wildlife.

I know the Nevada Department of Wildlife sent a letter outlining some concerns about how it would impact sage grouse, which is another imperiled species in Nevada and across the Great Basin, and wildlife corridors for larger big game animals.

There's also concerns about some of the chemicals that could be used and some of the air quality issues.

But there's also sort of cultural concerns of how the mine would impact the area.

It's a largely agricultural area, you know, and siting a mine there would bring new people into the valley potentially or into the area.

And then also the impact on Indigenous communities in the area and, you know, the site is considered to be religiously significant and historically significant for a number of tribes in the Great Basin.

-And that is similar to the Dixie Meadows geothermal project.

In your experience when you're out in these communities talking to locals, what are their feelings on this?

-It's interesting.

I spent a lot of time in the area around Thacker Pass.

It's north of Winnemucca.

There's two sort of agricultural communities that surround where the mine would be located, there's Orovada and Kings River Valley and, you know, some people, I talked to a few people who are, you know, in support of the mine or feel that it's inevitable that the mine is going to come.

Then I talked to a lot of people who are opposed to the mine, and many people were opposed for different reasons.

I came up to the area at an interesting time.

It was in the middle of-- you know, it was last year in the middle of a really bad drought and I think there was a recognition that the climate is changing, that we're seeing unprecedented things.

But I think there was also a feeling that, you know, why should our community be paying the price for climate change in this energy transition?

You know, that's I think a difficult question that policymakers really should be grappling with as they're thinking about how to transition our energy system in a way that's equitable and fair.

-It is a difficult discussion, especially when you consider that you have the Biden administration and the Trump administration both trying to get mining underway at Thacker Pass.

U.S. Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada proposing tax incentives for companies that can increase production of these minerals like lithium, so there's all this support for it.

But how soon could we see anything actually happen on the ground?

-That's a good question and probably something that you will get a different answer to from various different people who are involved, and I should say this mine is involved-- is being litigated, right?

The permit for the mine is being litigated in court, so a lot depends on the outcome of that litigation that several environmental groups, Indigenous groups and also a local rancher have challenged the federal government's approval of the mine.

So a lot hinges on that, but I do think in general we are going to see more proposals for development and possible projects come online in the next few years.

-Okay.

I want to make sure we squeeze this in too.

Near Tonopah is where an Australian company, Ioneer, wants to mine for lithium on the only known spot in the entire world where a rare plant species lives, it's called Thames Buckwheat, and why should people care about its protection?

-Well, I think it's a similar reason.

You know, if you think about this plant, it lives on 10 acres, about 10 acres of land distributed in the Silver Peak Range outside of Tonopah.

It happens to sit, at least a good portion of it, my understanding, happens to sit on top of this deposit for lithium and boron.

You know, I think when you think about the plant, it's easy to dismiss it as just a plant, and frankly I've gotten a lot of emails and a lot of people just say that to me.

But this plant evolved to the ecosystem in this one area, and it took thousands and thousands of years for this plant to be able to survive in what is really an extreme habitat, you know, if you've been out in that area.

So it is in some ways kind of an indication of how well the entire area can persist and survive.

-Daniel, I got to cut you off there.

We are running out of time.

I'm so sorry.

Thank you for joining us, Daniel, of the Nevada Independent.

And thank you for joining us here on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources that we discussed including where you can take your recyclables, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and you can always follow us on Facebook and Twitter at @nevadaweek.

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