Here in Cleveland, we used to just put all trash, no recycling, on the lawn. Then in 2008 or so, they put out a recycling innitive. Each resident had to pay $10 per family (so duplexs would buy 2 per house), and they’d get a blue bin. You put the recycling in the blue bin, and a seperate truck picks that up.
Sounds great right?
Welll…in 2020 or so they found out the 1st truck would take your black bin regular trash, and the 2nd truck would take your blue bin recyclables, and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.
Since that was discovered I see a massive 90%+ dropoff in blue bins. Not only have people lost faith in buying blue bins at all, but most people now use their blue bins as 2nd regular non-recycling trash can.
and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.
That’s not true, especially for cans. It’s more effective to sort trash at a central location than to have consumers do it beforehand. Aluminum recycling alone turns a significant profit. Glass is also profitable by itself.
Waste management companies should be paying you for your cans; if they are charging you for recycling, you should consider taking your cans to a scrap yard rather than leaving them in your trash.
My city started doing a similar thing. Their contracted recycling plants started rejecting the truck loads because they were seeing less than 40% recyclable content in the trucks. Lots of people overestimate how much of their trash is recyclable, and over-utilize the recycling bin.
Apparently the recycling plants will accept as low as 50% recyclable content in the load, anything under that for a prolonged period, they start rejecting the loads.
So for a year our city was just taking the recycling bin loads to the landfill. Years ago most cities could just sell it directly to China, ship it over on enormous garbage boats, but even China has stopped accepting our nonsense.
Our city had to do a big re-education campaign, and send out new stickers for the bin lids, to get residents to put only recyclable things in the recycle bins.
Where I live, every time you buy a plastic bottle, aluminum can or glass bottle, you pay extra 10 cents that you get back when you take them to the recycling (that every store is mandated to have, IIRC).
Eh, it entirely depends on the market. If your near mills or ports, a lot of stuff goes to a MRF (materials recover facility).
I have visited one and its pretty labor imtensive and gross. I am guessing most employees are undocumented because I can’t imagine others doing the job for the pay. They basically spend all day picking stuff off a constant feed of garbage. It should be all recyclables, but in a lot of streams there is more trash than recyclables.
If a MRF is near a waste to energy plant, they can get like close to 99% landfill avoidance rates. If not, your essentially making people slave over seperating your recyclables that you could have done (at least before the entire country went single stream)
Do most people not recycle cans?
Here in Cleveland, we used to just put all trash, no recycling, on the lawn. Then in 2008 or so, they put out a recycling innitive. Each resident had to pay $10 per family (so duplexs would buy 2 per house), and they’d get a blue bin. You put the recycling in the blue bin, and a seperate truck picks that up.
Sounds great right?
Welll…in 2020 or so they found out the 1st truck would take your black bin regular trash, and the 2nd truck would take your blue bin recyclables, and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.
Since that was discovered I see a massive 90%+ dropoff in blue bins. Not only have people lost faith in buying blue bins at all, but most people now use their blue bins as 2nd regular non-recycling trash can.
That’s not true, especially for cans. It’s more effective to sort trash at a central location than to have consumers do it beforehand. Aluminum recycling alone turns a significant profit. Glass is also profitable by itself.
Waste management companies should be paying you for your cans; if they are charging you for recycling, you should consider taking your cans to a scrap yard rather than leaving them in your trash.
I think you’re misunderstanding.
I’m not stating how recycling SHOULD work. I’m stating how the city of Cleveland DID (or rather did NOT) operate it’s own recycling innitive.
They sold you a blue bin for $10. And then for 12 years, unknown to the public, they picked up the recycleables, and didn’t recycle them.
It was a cash grab to get millions of dollars from residents, to perform a service that was never properly performed.
My city started doing a similar thing. Their contracted recycling plants started rejecting the truck loads because they were seeing less than 40% recyclable content in the trucks. Lots of people overestimate how much of their trash is recyclable, and over-utilize the recycling bin.
Apparently the recycling plants will accept as low as 50% recyclable content in the load, anything under that for a prolonged period, they start rejecting the loads.
So for a year our city was just taking the recycling bin loads to the landfill. Years ago most cities could just sell it directly to China, ship it over on enormous garbage boats, but even China has stopped accepting our nonsense.
Our city had to do a big re-education campaign, and send out new stickers for the bin lids, to get residents to put only recyclable things in the recycle bins.
Bro. Citation needed.
I think this is the thing
It’s true, I have no idea what actually happens to my recycling after it’s picked up, but I guess I can hope…
It’s easier if you don’t hope. Less inevitable disappointment that way.
Where I live, every time you buy a plastic bottle, aluminum can or glass bottle, you pay extra 10 cents that you get back when you take them to the recycling (that every store is mandated to have, IIRC).
The overwhelming majority of people recycle nothing.
As well, the overwhelming majority of recycling collection companies recycle nothing.
Eh, it entirely depends on the market. If your near mills or ports, a lot of stuff goes to a MRF (materials recover facility).
I have visited one and its pretty labor imtensive and gross. I am guessing most employees are undocumented because I can’t imagine others doing the job for the pay. They basically spend all day picking stuff off a constant feed of garbage. It should be all recyclables, but in a lot of streams there is more trash than recyclables.
If a MRF is near a waste to energy plant, they can get like close to 99% landfill avoidance rates. If not, your essentially making people slave over seperating your recyclables that you could have done (at least before the entire country went single stream)
I almost included “including those supposedly doing the recycling” but I didn’t.
I had to teach my parents how to recycle.
According to the actual Aluminum Association, only 43% of aluminum cans shipped within the United States are recycled.