I do woodworking. One of the things I have been thinking about is the life-cycle of our waste products. For example, the sawdust. It is frequent that wood workers are now integrating plastic products into their production processes and shaping them with the same tools used for wood. I have done this with Plexiglas and the image below from Willamette Valley General Contractors shows the worker cutting a Trex decking like material and wood. Typically in these set ups there is no clean-up process to remove plastic shavings from the environment. The process is to set up an outdoor workstation and make sure everything looks neat when the job is done. We don't set up our wood shops to consider the differences between wood and plastics materials either. So what do we do with these plastic shavings and how are those impacting our environment? When we cut materials outside do we just expect the plastic to integrate with the environment?

Image of Willamette Valley General Contractors cutting deck material.