Sorting Recyclables

[wolverine]

I really hate sorting recyclable items in bins. I started having to do this when I moved off to college in Ann Arbor. AA is big on recycling, yet they claim students who go to college there don't do their part because they are lazy and choose not to put everything in the correct bin.

Well, I grew up in Saginaw, MI and we didn't have to sort our stuff because the city did it for us. Just throw everything in at once. If you don't know if it can be recycled, don't worry. The item will be removed at the center. How many other cities are like this? I thought by now the technology for automatic sorting would be everywhere.

[suburban george3]

Our city suggests sorting, but the only types of recyclabes I sort is my shredded documents, newspapers, paperboard, and magazines. Plastic, tin, steel, aluminum, and glass I throw all in together.

[FromCityToRural]

Back in CA, we simply sorted paper, glass, and plastic. It was so easy to recycle there, it was folly not to do it.

Here, we don't even have recycling aside from one private company in town which you can take your recyclables to.

[jfmecca]

I get my trash & recyclables picked up by a private company, not municipal. We don't have to sort our recyclables.

A few weeks ago I was home when the truck came by. I was shocked to see the guy picking several items out of my bin and tossing them into my trash can. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the private company does not accept many of the items that the county does.

[Neo]

Locally we do not sort items. I lump everything together in their container and put it by the road on trash day. This goes for magazines, catalogs, newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass, etc.

For those that sort their recyclables, is it one container subdivided?

[suburban george3]

For those that sort their recyclables, is it one container subdivided?

[seicer]

Lexington, Kentucky has a manual sorting process for most of the work. For those who do not have access to home pickup, there are many dump bins located throughout the city -- divided into a glass bin, and another for paper, plastics, and the rest. If you have home pickup (70% of Lexington residents recycle!), then you can put everything thats not glass into a blue trash-like container. Glass goes into a separate smaller bin.

Unfortunately, not all types of cardboard or plastic is accepted. They can sort it out at the center, but its the 'wet cardboard' type (i.e. Coke fridge packs) that always fool me.

[Captain Worley]

Cayce, SC lets you put it all in one bin and the trash guys separate it when they pick it up. They have multiple bins on the trucks. Really makes it easy to do.

[Pillsbury]

In Augusta we have a giant recycling bin that they give you and you throw all your recycling stuff in there and put it at the street and this giant weird looking truck comes by and picks it up and they sort it for you.

[zvyozd]

I enjoyed this video immensely.

[wolverine]

^LOL! There was like 9 or so sorting bins in front of that dude's house.

[dtown]

Yeah, up here we are provided with one bin to put everything in. Its not big enough for me, though. We've got another little trashcan that we fill up with recyclables.

Sit 'em out at the curb and they take care of the rest.

[monsoon]

I think it helps if you find out what your local recycling process and do what you can to facilitate it to help keep the costs down. I have noticed in the areas where they ask you to do some kind of sorting, usually are a bit more progressive in these things and accept a wider range of materials to recycle.

[GRDadof3]

I enjoyed this video immensely.

[wolverine]

The point of the video is that people are only "going through the motions" when it comes to recycling. We do it because we were always told to, not necessarily because deep down we know it's good for the environment. Because people will actually say "but we do actually care about the environment," they prove a point by putting all those recycling bins out in front of those people's houses. In reality, they'd never take the effort to go through all that work, even if it was very good for the environment. That's where they prove the point. And that's why it's relevant to this thread. Thanks for posting it zvyozd.

The issue is, people would recycle more if the process was even easier. Technically everything should be recyclable in some way, but so many cities are stuck in the past in terms of the process.

[FromCityToRural]

For those that sort their recyclables, is it one container subdivided?

[Raintree21]

While the video was meant to make fun of recycling, I think it did bring up a good point about the energy used in the process or recycling. I'm still in favor of it though and will continue to recycle myself.

I wish all municipalities would have a recycling program and do more to reuse materials. I watched a Dirty Jobs episode on Discovery Channel and it's amazing what the city of San Francisco does and they actually make money off of it. Why can't more cities be like them?

[JDC]

That's 9 minutes of my life I won't get back. What was their point again? I didn't hear a resounding argument about why we shouldn't recycle (?) other than making fun of Indians and Jewish people, and normal Americans who do recycle (?)

[runawayjim]

in providence, we have 2 bins, a smaller green one for cardboard, magazines, and newspapers, and a larger blue one for glass, plastic, and metal jars, bottles, cans, etc.

at my hometown in CT, we had 1 bin that we threw the plastic, glass, and metal into and then put the newspapers and magazines in a brown paper bag on top of that. cardboard had to be small amounts once a week or once a month they did a big cardboard pickup. they were also very picky about what types of plastic they'd take (like they wouldn't take the soda bottle type).