Costco dress shirt is a recycling challenge

Costco Wholesale sells cotton shirts in button-down and open-color styles, but you'll have to remove soft and hard plastic, cardboard, paper, pins and string before you wear one, below.

If you're in a rush, you might want to leave your new Costco Wholesale dress shirt for another occasion.

You'll need several minutes to remove all the plastic, cardboard, paper, string and pins apparently needed to keep the shirt folded and in shape during its long journey from Indonesia.

Without using a small scissor, I still haven't figured out how to remove a string attached to a folded, black cardboard tag that hides two spare collar stays.

The string is wrapped so tightly around a button, it can't be removed by hand.

The price can't be beat: only $17.99. 

But if I thought Costco's packaging of 2, 3 or 4 items -- such as milk, juice and catsup -- produced a lot of recycling, this dress shirt holds its own. 

Once you have the shirt on, what do you do with all the packing material?

One shirt produces a lot of waste.

The light cardboard and tissue paper goes into the recycling can with junk mail, paper bags and so forth.

The flexible, printed plastic and pliable plastic under the collar goes with recyclable plastic grocery bags, which likely will be blowing around after our civilization has been wiped out.

I keep the pins and add them to a divided container with safety pins and collar stays.

The Kirkland Signature fabric band around the shirt? The string? Beats me.

The black fabric band seems over the top.

 

  

The flip side of reusable food shopping bags

ShopRite is the only North Jersey chain that recycles plastic shopping bags, and still gives customers money back for using a reusable bag (5 cents).

The Record of Woodland Park carried a long article about reusable food shopping bags yesterday. But there was no discussion about stores that recycle those pesky plastic bags that will undoubtedly be blowing around long after all life ends on our planet.

If I carry a dozen reusable bags in my car, why do I have to recycle plastic bags? For one thing, I often forget to bring the reusable bags into the store. For another, I also recycle lots of plastic wrapping and plastic bags that come with the food I buy.

If you shop for food at Costco, for example, you'll find that the two or more items you often have to buy at once are wrapped in plastic (or come in a cardboard box, which I also recycle). 

I also recycle the plastic pouches holding instant mashed potatoes and the smaller ones for Japanese green tea; plastic from shrink-wrapped poultry, fish, cheese or other food; plastic that covers bottle caps, plastic produce bags and other plastic items.

Unfortunately, I know of only supermarket chain -- ShopRite -- that accepts plastic bags for recycling. Hollywood Cleaners on New Bridge Road in Bergenfield had a receptacle for recycling its long plastic bags when I used to patronize it several years ago. Now, my dry-cleaning bags get recycled with my plastic shopping bags.

My recycling philosophy is if you are in doubt about whether something can be recycled, put it into the recycling container and let the sorters who work at recycling plants decide for you.