LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Americans generate a lot of waste — about five pounds per person per day — and a lot of it is plastic. Those flimsy grocery bags, shrink-wrap packaging and of course, bottles — lots and lots of bottles.  

Every year, we toss out 2.5 million plastic bottles.  

"They are highly recyclable and it's imperative they end up in your recycling bin," Republic Services External Communications Manager Jeremy Walters said.

Together, we create 400 million tons of plastic waste a year. Only 2 million tons of that gets recycled. We used to do better but during the pandemic, our recycling rate dropped because we started making more garbage.  

"It's how much trash is generated versus how much recycling is generated. And when that trash starts to go up, the recycling volumes start to dilute," Walters continued. 

Las Vegas is a city known for excess— huge hotels and big casinos. It also has the largest residential recycling plant in the country.  

Republic Services recycles 2 million pounds every day, which is the equivalent weight of 500 cars. Workers at the massive plant sort the mixed recyclables, plastics, aluminum, glass and paper and remove the wish-cycle items, which are things we wish we could recycle but can't. 

"Bowling balls, shoes, engine blocks, steel security doors—I promise you, if you use your imagination, we've seen it here," Walters said.

Paper is easily the most recycled item — 50 million tons of it per year, and we also break down and recycle almost all of our cardboard boxes. More than 90% of those boxes get recycled.

There is plenty that doesn't get recycled, though. Approximately 110 million glass bottles get thrown away every year. Glass can be recycled indefinitely—same with aluminum— but we still don't recycle about seven million tons a year. And then there are all those plastic bottles.

All the trash that we create, which does not go through recycling plants, ends up in landfills.  

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WESTBORO, Mass. — Over the course of the next decade, tens of millions of American drivers are expected to get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle. But there's a problem lingering over this expanding industry: what to do with old electric vehicle batteries?

Mike O’Kronley has an answer.

O'Kronley is a battery guy and also the CEO of a company called Ascend Elements. They are at the forefront of electric vehicle battery recycling, an industry that has gained a lot of attention in recent years.

"We’re trying to find new ways to capture those materials and return them back into new batteries, and make that circular economy," O'Kronley said from inside the company's headquarters in Westboro, Massachusetts.

By the end of the decade, hundreds of millions of electric vehicles are expected to be on the road, dramatically decreasing the carbon emissions the US produces.

But there's a problem. As electric vehicles manufactured 10 years ago reach the end of their life, their batteries could end up in landfills, potentially releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere.

That’s where all the engineers and scientists at Ascend Elements come in. They have figured out a way to recycle spent lithium-ion batteries into new ones that are longer-lasting and could be recycled into batteries in perpetuity.

"We have to develop new ways of recycling these materials otherwise we’ll continue to destroy our planet," O'Kronley said.

O’Kronley sees the issue of electric vehicle battery recycling as one which has to be dealt with now. By 2030, nearly 145 million electric vehicles are expected to be on the road. That’s up from 11 million in 2021.

"There’s a need and it’s not just a want. It’s a need to conserve our resources, to capture these critical elements, these critical materials and transform them and use them over and over again," he added.

There’s another layer to all of this. Most materials in an electric battery are imported. By recycling electric vehicle batteries here in the United States, Mike O’Kronley believes it could increase the country’s energy independence.

"Once we get those elements imported into the country we certainly don’t want to lose them."

WEST CHICAGO, IL — Breathing new life into discarded items takes vision, and an artist is doing just that every time he walks past a discarded bin of knickknacks.

Most people would probably toss out a bucket full of old springs, valves, and rusty gears, but not Randy Meyers. He uses these recycled materials to create new-age, functional art.

“Most of these are used fittings or obsolete,” he said pointing to a bin full of parts.

Over the years, Meyers has painstakingly curated all the ‘junk’ in his garage.

“I never incorporate plastic, you know, maybe some wood, copper, aluminum. But it's all got to be pretty old and unique. It's got to have a look,” said Meyers.

For Meyers, the workshop clutter is a treasure trove of possibilities.

“They asked me, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ It's like, ‘You're never going to understand.’ I knew exactly. I'm going to have some big wire coming down and then I'll rewire that for a 110 light. It'll be a desk lamp.”

When he sees a random piece like a car bumper part, he has a vision of what he'll do with it.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. This is because people can relate to this. I mean, older people,” he said. “The kids nowadays wouldn't even believe that came off a car. [There’s] more steel in here than a car these days.”

Using old equipment, vintage car parts, gears, and pipe fittings, Meyers makes retro-futuristic designs with a turn-of-the-century aesthetic that would likely make Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison envious.

“Everything is old that I'm working with like these are old lampshades from the 50s. The lamp would go in there and a big shade would screw on that and would shine down on something.”

The tinkering artist has created some 400 pieces, mostly lamps, all of them are now numbered and signed.

“There's a dimmer switch in this tin here. You can control the light,” he said, pointing to one lamp built out of a series of gears and an animatronic figurine. “I dim him way down just to make it look like that's a little factory, and this guy is cranking the crank and the generator to power the light.”

The first time he discovered he could make a cell phone speaker out of old record player parts he didn’t sleep all night.

“It’s louder than the phone itself.”

Like the gears spinning on his creations, his mind is always turning with ideas buzzing.

“Gauges, the bigger ones like this one, it's such a cool gauge. I'll probably just leave it the way it is, but if this was a little nastier, I would take the guts out of it, put a little quartz movement in it make a clock out of it," he explained.

The conservation artworks are show-stoppers at markets and local exhibitions.

But for Meyers, it’s not just about the sales. It’s about seeing the vision and reassembling the puzzle.

“I think creating something out of basically nothing is -- that's the magic," he said.

CINCINNATI — Soon, the question ‘paper or plastic’ won’t apply anymore.

Kroger announced it would comply with Cincinnati’s ban on single-use plastic bags in January of 2022.

In a statement released by spokesperson Erin Rolfes, Kroger encourages customers to use reusable bags when shopping and to recycle plastic bags.

In 2018, Kroger initially committed to phasing out plastic bags altogether by 2025.