Original subtitles

CHARLIE: Hey, guys! Charlie here. You know my sister, Kirby. KIRBY: Hey!

CHARLIE: Did you know that a recycled soda can be remade into a new can and put back on

the shelf in less than 60 days?

KIRBY: Or that Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

MIKE: And wait till you see what we do with this goop.

CHARLIE: Ahh! It's time for Weird but True!

(theme music plays)

KIRBY: Charles, we gotta do something!

CHARLIE: Not a chance.

KIRBY: Not even like one piece? CHARLIE: Not even one piece.

Guys, I'm glad you're here because Kirby's being ridiculous!

KIRBY: Charlie's being ridiculous!

Check this out.

CHARLIE: You got any staples?

KIRBY: No, but I have a paper clip. CHARLIE: You hear that?

(screams)

KIRBY: Look out!

Charles? Charles?

CHARLIE: I'm okay!

KIRBY: We've been having craft avalanches. Craftalanches. CHARLIE: Small craftalanches.

KIRBY: And Charles won't get rid of anything!

I've got to destroy this stuff.

CHARLIE: What? KIRBY: What? CHARLIE: Kirb.

Each one of these pieces has a past, a story, how can we get rid of it?

KIRBY: Easily. CHARLIE: You know what?

I'm gonna prove to you that each one of these super awesome amazing pieces of

paper art are worth saving because, today we're unraveling the world of.

BOTH (off-screen): Paper Recycling!

KIRBY: Great, another craft to add to the pile.

CHARLIE: You have no respect for paper crafts, Kirb.

Do you know where this came from?

Do you know what paper is?

KIRBY: It's paper.

CHARLIE: It's much more than that.

People have made paper out of all sorts of things.

Like cabbage and wasps' nests.

But the weirdest is probably the fact that they used to recover wrappings from

Egyptian mummies to make wrapping paper.

Fortunately, since then they've found out that cellulose from

trees works best.

If you look at paper under a microscope you'll see a bunch of super,

super tiny strips called "cellulose."

Cellulose is this material that gives plants their structure like celery,

or sunflower stalks, or trees.

And the cellulose in paper comes from trees.

So, before this shark existed, and before this paper was even paper,

it all started as a seed that found its way into the ground.

Two types of trees are harvested to make paper.

Hardwoods, they're trees that lose their leaves in the fall.

Or Softwoods, they have needles or scales and keep them all year long.

So maybe, that little seed grew into a big beautiful Aspen,

with white bark and fluttery leaves.

Or a eucalyptus with multi-colored peel-y bark.

Or maybe even a pine with long needles and big cones.

And both of these types of trees need to be harvested before they can become paper.

Check this out.

KIRBY: We're hipsters! CHARLIE: No, we're lumberjacks.

KIRBY: You need a man bun. CHARLIE: No, I'm good.

KIRBY: So, where are we anyway?

CHARLIE: Welcome to Weird but True Forest.

This is where we grow all of the trees that we use to make the paper

for our craft projects.

And it looks like that seed we planted grew into a beautiful aspen.

KIRBY: See you later, tree! CHARLIE: Kirby, wait! No, no!

We don't use axes to chop down these trees.

We use awesome equipment like this.

A chainsaw.

Or, even better.

(whirring)

One of these guys, a mechanical harvester.

This thing is unreal.

It can chop down a tree, de-limb it, and cut it into pieces.

In like 15 seconds.

Then comes the skidder.

The skidder has a huge clamp that bunches all the tree trunks up and brings them over

to the log yard.

Where my favorite machine comes into play, the knuckle boom.

At the log yard, the knuckle boom cuts the logs into the correct length

and puts them into neat piles for.

The truck.

(honk)

KIRBY: No cool name? CHARLIE: Nope, just the truck.

(honk)

Which gets loaded up and heads off to the paper mill.

KIRBY: Which is where it gets torn apart and pulverized into paper, right?

CHARLIE: Sure. KIRBY: Neat.

CHARLIE: So, Kirb, can you see how long this takes?

It started as a seed.

From seed to tree.

Picked by the mechanical harvester, dragged by a skidder,

chopped by the knuckle boom, carted away,

pulverized into paper and what?

We just cut it up, slap it onto a super awesome amazing shark and then what?

Just throw it away?

KIRBY: Pretty much.

Do you hear that?

CHARLIE: Hit the deck!

KIRBY: Charlie! CHARLIE: What?

KIRBY: I don't care if it's gone through the knuckle bloom and the vehicle chopper,

but I'm sick of these craftalanches.

We have to get rid of stuff!

CHARLIE: Give me one more shot!

KIRBY: No! CHARLIE: One more shot! KIRBY: Fine, one more shot.

CHARLIE: You're gonna like this.

Here, put this on.

Hold this.

KIRBY: What is this for?

CHARLIE: I dub thee the Ruler of Rubbish, the Sultan of Scraps,

the Duchess of Debris.

KIRBY: It's truly an honor.

CHARLIE: You're Queen of the Garbage now, Kirb.

And I'm gonna show you your kingdom.

You know that tree farm we used to own?

KIRBY: Yeah? CHARLIE: Well, it's not a tree farm anymore.

Well, now it's a dump, because people throw out so many things.

It's your dump, Kirb.

Because you love garbage so much.

You're Queen of the Dump.

KIRBY: You're being dramatic.

CHARLIE: The drama is real, Kirb.

The US is the number one trash producing country in the whole entire world.

Each year, every single one of us throws out around 1,600 pounds of garbage,

which is about the same weight as a mature Holstein cow.

Moo.

KIRBY: This is ridiculous. CHARLIE: It's your dump, Kirb.

KIRBY: What's that noise? CHARLIE: Oh, is that today?

It's a garbage funeral.

To commemorate this year's garbage.

You guys are gonna have to excuse me, I'm expected to talk at these things.

(moo)

Whew.

(sobbing)

Hello everyone, we're gathered here today

to remember our fallen heroes, this year's garbage.

First, our diaper brothers,

protecting the booties of babies across this country.

16 billion diapers are thrown out each year.

Diapers. Rest in peace.

(sobbing)

1.6 billion pens.

Some of them probably half full of ink.

Pens.

Rest in peace.

And finally, the reason why we're all here today,

500,000 trees cut down each week

for our Sunday papers.

They were big trees.

With big pretty leaves.

And now, they are gone.

Trees.

Rest in peace.

(sobbing)

KIRBY: Rest in peace. Wait, what?

Charles!

This is ridiculous.

CHARLIE: What?

KIRBY: I would never sponsor a dump!

This sign is ridiculous. Where are the scissors?

CHARLIE: Uh, I think they're, um, I'm not sure.

Fine!

KIRBY: What? CHARLIE: Fine!

Do whatever you want with all this stuff, Kirb.

Toss it, throw it out.

I can't live with that guilt.

Goodbye, shark.

I always knew your awesomeness wouldn't last.

KIRBY: Yeah! Yeah! Victory! Victory!

It was nice knowin' ya, shark!

CHARLIE: You okay, Kirb?

KIRBY: Yeah, I'm fine, but. We're not gonna throw away the shark.

CHARLIE: What do you mean?

KIRBY: We're gonna recycle him.

CHARLIE: Isn't recycling a sham?

KIRBY: A sham? CHARLIE: Yeah, like pretend? KIRBY: A sham?

CHARLIE: Yeah, like something that is not what it is purported to be.

KIRBY: Charles, let me hit you with some facts.

People of the dump, this is your queen, Kirby.

I know this trash is upsetting.

It smells gross.

CHARLIE: 16 billion diapers!

KIRBY: Yeah, but there's another way.

Recycling.

MAN (off-screen): Is that real? It's a sham!

KIRBY: It's not a sham.

Charlie, posters!

It takes about $70 to burn a ton of trash,

it takes $50 to send it to a landfill like this.

But it takes only $30 to recycle it.

Take an aluminum can.

Recycling one aluminum can can save enough energy to power a TV for three hours.

People of the dump, I implore you, recycle.

Recycling is new meaning.

Recycling is new life, recycling is rebirth!

(cheers)

MAN (off-screen): How? KIRBY: What?

MAN (off-screen): How does it work?

CHARLIE: Huh. That's a good question.

KIRBY: I'm glad you asked.

Because I have the perfect place to show you. C'mon!

We're off to Tyrone, Pennsylvania for a behind-the-scenes look at

paper recycling.

Pennsylvania's known as the Keystone State and home to the first library

in the United States.

Weird but True.

CHARLIE: Hey, guys.

We just made it here to Tyrone, Pennsylvania, where we're hanging out at the

American Eagle Paper Mills.

KIRBY: We're gonna get a hands-on look as to what these guys could turn our crafts

into if Charles lets us recycle them. Let's check it out!

CHARLIE: Hey, Mike it's nice to meet ya!

MIKE: Hey, welcome to American Eagle Paper Mills!

KIRBY: We're so stoked to be here!

CHARLIE (off-screen): Mike Grimm.

Paper recycling guru.

And the guy in charge of this entire paper mill.

His favorite Weird but True fact is.

MIKE: Not all paper is made out of wood fiber.

US currency is made out of cotton and linen.

This mill is 100% recycled.

CHARLIE: So, you don't make paper with any trees?

You make paper with this stuff?

MIKE: Absolutely.

CHARLIE: Where does this all come from?

MIKE: A recycling bin. That's where it all starts.

Ice cream containers, old magazines.

That type of product gets organized into different waste streams.

So each of these bales are different waste streams.

KIRBY (off-screen): So, this is where it all begins?

MIKE (off-screen): Exactly. This is the start of the process.

Everything that you see here will be gone this time tomorrow,

and it will be replaced by other fiber.

CHARLIE: How much paper do you make a day?

MIKE: We make about 300 tons of paper a day. CHARLIE: 300 tons of paper?

MIKE: Yeah. CHARLIE: A giraffe is one ton, so that's like 300 giraffes

worth of paper comes through this a day.

Can a person tell the difference between a recycled piece of paper,

and a piece of paper that comes from a tree?

MIKE: No, absolutely not.

CHARLIE: So, that's something that's always confused me though.

Like, what sorts of things are you allowed to recycle and what

aren't you allowed to recycle?

KIRBY: Good evening, folks and welcome to another episode of, Can It Recycle?

You know our three rules.

If it's covered in food, goop, or film, it cannot be recycled.

Alright, let's bring him out, folks.

Our first contestant, Charlie, from Chattanooga.

CHARLIE: Yay! Hey!

KIRBY: Welcome, Charlie, are you ready to tell us, "Can it recycle?"

CHARLIE: Yes!

KIRBY: Alright, fire up the conveyor belts, Let's see the first item.

Newspapers?

CHARLIE: Um. Um. Yes. KIRBY: Correct. Colored paper?

CHARLIE: Yes. KIRBY: Correct.

This is a tricky one. Food container?

CHARLIE: Uhm. No. KIRBY: Correct.

It is covered in food, so unless you clean it out, it cannot be recycled.

Moving on. Pots?

CHARLIE: Uh, yes. KIRBY: Pan?

CHARLIE: Uh, yes. KIRBY: Motor oil? CHARLIE: Uh, no.

KIRBY: Correct, it's covered in goop so unless you bring it to a special location,

it can't be recycled.

Time for the lightning round!

Let's see what he's got! Bottles?

CHARLIE: Uh, yes. KIRBY: Glass jar? CHARLIE: Uh, yes.

KIRBY: Soap container? CHARLIE: Yes.

KIRBY: He's done it folks! CHARLIE: Yay!

KIRBY: Charlie has told us, "Can it recycle?"

Let's see what he's won, Jimmy.

JIM (off-screen): Your very own at home recycling bin!

Good for paper or plastic!

KIRBY: Tune in next week on.

BOTH: Can it Recycle?

KIRBY: Have a good night, folks!

CHARLIE: What's this?

MIKE: This is a pulper.

KIRBY (off-screen): Pulper? MIKE (off-screen): This is the first part of the process.

What we do is we take the waste paper.

We put a bale or two in.

And we put water in and we mix it up.

And it's like a big garbage disposal or a blender.

We put the waste paper in it and we blend it back into a pulp slurry.

CHARLIE: So is there a big blade at the bottom?

MIKE: There's a big auger in there that spins.

And it chews it all up.

It's a combination of the mix of all the fibers of the waste paper.

CHARLIE: Alright, Kirb.

So, could you imagine our awesome shark just being plopped into here,

spinning around and being chopped up in the bottom?

MIKE: We can chop your shark up just beautifully.

KIRBY: So good.

CHARLIE (off-screen): It still looks pretty gross, I'm not going to lie.

What's the consistency now?

MIKE: It's like a massive spitball.

CHARLIE: Can we feel some, can we grab some?

KIRBY: Oh, it's super wet. Yeah, yeah.

CHARLIE: Eww. KIRBY: Nasty.

There's green, there's gray.

MIKE: That's the imperfections that we have to work with.

CHARLIE: Weird but True, 40 million tons of

paper products are recycled every single year.

That weighs approximately as much as 500 Washington Monuments.

MIKE: Cleaning the goop is the next step.

CHARLIE: So all the little specks in that goop, this is what takes it out?

MIKE: Exactly. When it gets here we inject air into it.

So the air creates bubbles, and the bubbles collect the

dirt that's inside of that goop.

And it floats to the top.

It gets vacuumed off, and it pulls all the dirt out of the pulp.

CHARLIE: This is like the missing ingredient that lets you guys do what you do.

This makes it so you can reuse everything.

MIKE: Exactly, this is very specific to a recycling operation.

Yeah, that's the dirt that we're pulling out of the paper.

KIRBY: Oh! It looks like toothpaste almost.

CHARLIE: Yeah, it's toothpaste.

MIKE: Yeah, It's sticky. Yeah it's like toothpaste.

KIRBY: So, once the imperfections are taken out and sucked up to these tubes,

where does that stuff go?

MIKE: Yeah, that gets collected.

We take that and we use that for land reclamation work.

So we could spread that on old mining sites.

KIRBY: Nice. MIKE: Or properties that need to be built up.

CHARLIE: So, even the sludge, you guys are using for something else.

MIKE: That's correct.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Okay, guys, we'll take a quick break

and when we come back, it's goop to paper.

KIRBY: Weird but True.

CHARLIE: So, this is the big step, right here.

MIKE (off-screen): This is called the machine room.

Every paper mill in the world has a machine room.

All the hard work we put into cleaning the pulp ends up at this room.

Our primary machine makes a 150-inch-wide roll of paper.

The paper travels down the machine at about 1,800 feet a minute,

from the time it starts until it's on the reel takes about 30 seconds.

CHARLIE: 30 seconds? KIRBY: Whoa! MIKE: Right.

KIRBY: So, it enters as liquid and then 30 seconds later,

it's paper.

MIKE: Yeah, you're correct.

KIRBY: How is the liquid taken out?

MIKE: The head-box puts the pulp out onto a wire and the wire's like a screen.

As it goes down the wire, more and more water come out.

When it gets to the end, it goes through a series of presses

that squeeze the paper.

Then, it goes through a drying section.

We use steam to superheat the paper and then it evaporates the water out of the paper.

It's a continuous process.

If the machines are running well, they never shut off.

They take reels of paper off the back end all day long.

KIRBY: That's sweet.

CHARLIE: So, if you had to break them down in the simplest parts,

over there we saw it getting chopped up in a big old slurry.

Right over here, they take out the ink and finally, in this part.

MIKE (off-screen): Then you take the water back out.

KIRBY: So at this point it pretty much looks like paper.

CHARLIE: And the cool thing is you can follow the same process that these machines

take, to make paper at home.

My dear sister Kirby's coming over tomorrow to make crafts.

So I thought I'd make some homemade paper beforehand.

So we could have a stress-free crafternoon.

First, let's put together our paper-making device.

We're gonna take our brownie tray and cut a hole right in the bottom.

We're gonna take the screen and cut out a nice covering.

It's a nice screen.

You know, the kind that your parents put up in the summer.

We always play outside in the summer.

Sometimes with paper.

Now we'll grab some tape and tape our screen to the bottom of the tray.

Some people might use glue, we use glue too, but today we're using tape.

Every letter we give to our mailman Bob is always handmade paper.

Bob really loves it.

Now let's prepare our paper goop.

First, fill it up about a third of the way with water.

Now come the paper scraps.

A little more water and we're ready to blend.

You know, I remember when I first met Kirby.

She was a baby and just born in the hospital, but I knew when I met her that we would

make a lot of paper together.

Pour a thin layer of goop right on the top.

Now is my favorite part.

Really squish out all of that water.

Pop out the screen.

We're gonna let this dry overnight.

KIRBY: Wow!

CHARLIE: If I made crafts with homemade paper like this, I would never throw them away.

KIRBY: Maybe.

CHARLIE: Homemade paper to treasure forever.

Back to the mill.

Weird but True, if we recycled half of the paper in the entire world it's been

estimated that it would save a forest the size of Maine!

That's why recycling's so important, so let's find out how it finally

all comes together.

Woooo!

KIRBY: Woohoo.

CHARLIE: It's hot. KIRBY: It's hot.

CHARLIE: These barrels are full of pressurized steam,

so the paper's wrapping around them,

and rolling all the way through here.

And it's evaporating the water in the paper.

KIRBY: 212 degrees. CHARLIE: It's so hot.

KIRBY: This part's cool.

This is like a giant iron that flattens it all to the same thickness.

CHARLIE: This is the last part right here, this big machine slices it up.

So it starts in a roll, and this chops it up into the smaller bits.

KIRBY: 30 seconds.

CHARLIE: And that paper at the end that doesn't quite make the cut,

they throw it back into the goop.

KIRBY: See, Charles, paper recycling makes total sense.

CHARLIE: It's finally coming together, Kirb.

KIRBY: But uh how you feeling about HQ?

CHARLIE: Uh we gotta deal with the craftalanche issue back at Headquarters.

So uh, we'll see you guys there soon?

Awesome, see you in a bit.

See you later, Mike!

KIRBY: Thank you!

Weird but True.

CHARLIE: Hey guys, welcome back to HQ.

Kirby and I are finally on the same page.

We're recycling all of these crafts.

KIRBY: I don't think I can do it, Charles.

Each one has a memory. I can't throw 'em out.

CHARLIE: Kirb, Weird but True, the average American uses seven trees worth of paper and

paper-related products every single year.

Also Weird but True, we're not normal.

We're pretty abnormal.

We make five-foot-tall paper mache sharks.

So I can only imagine how many trees we used.

I've realized that I can't live with that blood on my hands.

KIRBY: I think it'd be sap.

CHARLIE: Sometimes, to save a tree.

Ya just gotta let go.

Today. We recycle.

KIRBY: Charles, noooo! Sorry, man.

I just couldn't let you do it.

CHARLIE: Hey, no complaints from me, look how much room we got.

We got rid of so much stuff.

KIRBY: Hey, you ever thought of using something other than paper?

What'd they use before?

CHARLIE: Parchment. KIRBY: What's that made out of? CHARLIE: Sheep.

(baahs)

KIRBY: Gross.

CHARLIE: Yeah, it took like 300 sheep to make a single book.

(baahs)

KIRBY: Never mind. CHARLIE: Maybe recycled paper will do the job?

KIRBY: I'll tell the boys at the dump.

We make trash sculptures now.

(moo)

CHARLIE: Alright guys, it looks like we got a new project on our hands.

But thanks so much for stopping by and helping us learn about

paper and recycling.

KIRBY: If we all recycled our newspapers, we'd save

250 million trees every year.

CHARLIE: That's a lot of trees.

Come by again when we discover more things that are weird.

KIRBY: But true. CHARLIE: We'll see you soon! So, sculptures.

KIRBY: Sculptures. CHARLIE: What do you use?

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services