This is a picture of a kids plate from Disney World. This black plastic dish holds every children’s breakfast, lunch and dinner served at all parks in the Disney World Resort.
The combined 2006 attendance figure for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom was just over 45 million people. For the sake of argument, let’s say half of those visitors were kids and they got two of these plates a day. That’s roughly 45 million of these plastic plates filled with chicken nuggets and fries each year.
My biggest complaint about these cute little Mickey Mouse eared plastic plates is that Disney provides no place to recycle the plates. Disney World visitors are forced to throw the plates away with the regular trash.
Disney World is somewhat famous for it’s trash collection techniques. You might have heard of the legendary underground pipes in the Magic Kingdom that suck trash straight from the trash cans without visitors even knowing what’s going on. The trash collection system has even been featured in documentaries like the History Channel’s “Modern Marvels”.
However glorious the Disney World trash collection system may be, you can bet that Disney World is not going through the tons of trash collected each day and sorting out recyclables from non-recyclables. If I’m wrong, please let me know. Disney does have receptacles for recyclable plastic bottles and cans throughout the park so that visitors can separate the recyclables themselves, but they do not have any place to recycle these plates.
Why not? It is Disney World after all. Disney is a magical place and those fantastic Disney Imagineers can do just about anything. If Disney World goes through the trouble of manufacturing these cute little recyclable plastic plates, why not recycle them?
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Ever notice that Disney does not use trash can liners in the parks?
So maybe they are doing some type of sorting in the background…
When they collect the trash they put in a clean empty can and take the full can away…no liner…
Doug on July 23rd, 2007 at 7:52 pm | Link
Doug said:
[quote]Ever notice that Disney does not use trash can liners in the parks?[/quote]
I have seen Disney use liners in some instances and I have also seen what you describe where they cart the entire can off. It seems like Disney would be smart enough to let the visitors do some sorting work for them by having separate receptacles like they do for plastic bottles and cans.
Actually, according to the backstage tour I took in May, Disney does EXACTLY THAT. They do go through every bit of trash and pull out as much recyclable material as they can. They decided not to bother with separate recycling bins because they often get ignored or trash gets put in them and they need sorting anyways.
So no, it doesn’t give the impression that they recycle, but they do. The alternative would have been to have had their dedicated landfill filled up over 10 years ago.
Joe Shelby on July 27th, 2007 at 9:05 am | Link
Sorting the trash without mention or encouragement seems to be counter intuitive. Disney World, in particular EPCOT, is about dreams, children and the future.
Why would Disney abandoned this fundamental concept when it comes to recycling and write it off as “People are stupid and they can’t get the plates in the right bin anyway.”?
positiveThinker said:
[quote]Why would Disney abandoned this fundamental concept when it comes to recycling and write it off as “People are stupid and they can’t get the plates in the right bin anyway.”?[/quote]
Because this is America and we ARE too stupid.
DBlock said:
[quote]Because this is America and we ARE too stupid.[/quote]
I’ve never been to Tokyo Disney or Disneyland Paris but if they have separate recycling bins there, you might be on to something DBlock!
we spent 10 days in Florida visiting Disney, Universal, Cocoa Beach, Tampa and Kennedy Space Center. We have seen ZERO recycling receptacles in any of these places. (We recycle a lot in Ontario so trust us, we were looking). These places receives millions of people and the thought of millions of recyclable materials (plastic water bottles especially) being thrown away as garbage bothered us so much. We really, really hope that they recycle (in the background) as Joe Shelby posted. We are altogether killing this planet. Every little bit of help counts.
minac on August 11th, 2007 at 3:01 pm | Link
well according to a friend who works at Disneyland, they recycle in the back, just like Disneyworld. I hope whoever has to recycle gets a mask. yuck!
Mel on November 3rd, 2007 at 11:26 am | Link
Who cares the planet is dying anyway, why not just enjoy it and live a free life without the worry of poxy recycling. just bin it all, then burn it down, simple, out the way.
Lewis on February 4th, 2008 at 2:20 am | Link
Lewis you are a total door knob!!!!!!! Enough said
Margaret on June 9th, 2008 at 4:30 am | Link
We took our plastic Mickey plates home to wash and reuse. The kids love them!
Rachel on September 17th, 2008 at 9:55 am | Link
I went to disney and never got a mickey plate. I WANT MY MICKEY PLATE!!!!!!!!
sarge on November 4th, 2008 at 9:35 am | Link
Just went to Disney World (Magic Kingdom), and they use plastic liners. I saw an employee with 2 large trashcans. He opened up the trashcan, and sorted plastics and cardboard items into 1 trash can, and dumped the rest into a 2nd trash can. He systematically poured about 1/5 of the can at a time and sorted through it before pouring the next 1/5.
Ryan P on April 11th, 2009 at 8:16 pm | Link
One more note to what I noticed above… his ‘recyclable’ trash can was nearly filled to the top… and I wasn’t sure what he planned on doing when he got to the next stop.
Ryan P on April 11th, 2009 at 8:19 pm | Link
i know disneyworld do it at the back. and in a huge scale. they have machines that sort out metals and papers. they reuse animal dung from animal kingdom. they line gardens and roads with shaved plastics and such.
Ken on April 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 am | Link
“However glorious the Disney World trash collection system may be, you can bet that Disney World is not going through the tons of trash collected each day and sorting out recyclables from non-recyclables.”
You are incorrect. At Magic Kingdom, Disney has a AVAC’s (spelling) system in place. It was part of the EPCOT world experiment. All trash is not sucked out of the cans as expected and they do use liners. Hang around one long enough and you will see someone collect it.
Back to AVAC’s. The system receives all trash via large pipes located in the Utilidor area under Magic Kingdom. These pipes takes the garbage to one of two or three systems. From there, it is all sorted by hand and a third-party comes to pick up the recycled material. With that said, we were told that it doesn’t matter if you put your plastic bottle in the recycle container or the trash container, it will end up at the same place.
More than anything, I think the recycled containers are there to make people such as yourself feel better.
The next time you are at Disney, I do recommend that you take the Keys to the Kingdom tour. You will hear all of this and then some.
Steven Gabbardb on July 12th, 2009 at 12:40 pm | Link
Thank you so much for this discussion. I’ve been wondering about this.
I think its absolutely wonderful that they go through the trash and recycle everything that they can, that is magical.
I think its just as important though to provide recycling receptacles for everyone. It is really important that people get used to recycling.
People come from all over the country to Disney, and not everywhere recycles. If people see recycling bins, it will get more people thinking, and everyone, especially kids need to get into this habit. Anything Disney is really admired, so its important for them to set a high standard.
Makushla on March 10th, 2010 at 6:44 pm | Link
Almost anything that is solid can go straight from a trash bin to a collector’s home or garage. There is definitely a market for old license plates. They can make very valuable collector’s items, so don’t throw them away. Collectors will scour any junk yard for old license plates.
Regards,
Rob
Rob on June 16th, 2010 at 1:18 pm | Link