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I think it depends on the recycling system.. In the US and Canada I've found that you often mix all recyclables. The article mentions blue boxes collected from
by jopsen 7y ago
I think it depends on the recycling system.. In the US and Canada I've found that you often mix all recyclables. The article mentions blue boxes collected from each household.
In Denmark I dump paper and glass into a separate containers, these are typically present around apartment buildings, or spread throughout residential areas. The containers are large and rarely emptied.
Collecting from each household sounds very expensive. As does sorting the recyclables (in particularly any manual sorting).
- wolco 7y agoThe sorting is automatic.
- skybrian 7y agoThe article talked about it happening partially by machine and partially by hand. At least, in whatever system they looked at. I'd guess this varies. Either way, the blue bin encourages "aspirational recycling" where people just put in anything they think might be recyclable, rather than following the rules based on what their local recycling system can actually handle.
- TylerE 7y agoThis is yet another failing of US Suburbia. Households are too spread out for centralized collection points to be viable - you'd end up with each point only serving a few houses or people driving the stuff over - both of which rather defeat the point.
- angry_octet 7y agoDo people in suburbia not make regular trips to the supermarket in their cars?
- pixl97 7y agoDepends, with grocery delivery services I find myself doing it less often. Also, if I do visit the store it may be after work and before I'm back home.
- angry_octet 7y agoImagine if you could only borrow a fixed amount of packaging at a time, and you had to return the excess (properly sorted and cleaned) before you could buy more. The more non-R material (light weight plastic like strawberry shells) the more your waste costs would go up. And why not rigid and reusable ABS trays for strawberries? Would the trucking cost for returning to the distribution centre be excessive? Or is it just that the entire supply chain assumes trucks return empty? An interesting example is CHEP pallets. They are only loaned, pallets come back eventually. Interesting operations research problems in moving pallets around.
- dgudkov 7y agoIf you read the article, the problem remains regardless of whether garbage is sorted manually (Denmark) or automatically (Canada). The problem is that the sorted recyclables are subject to market supply/demand laws and are frequently cheaper to send to landfill than to sell (and deliver) to manufacturers. In other words, we produce too much garbage and there simply isn't that many manufacturers that are interested in buying and processing recyclables.
- skybrian 7y agoI'd guess that better-sorted recyclables are easier to sell, though.
- hairytrog 7y agoSilly Europeans spending their time sorting trash...
- oriolid 7y agoThe things that become trash are usually pre-sorted. It's not that difficult to not throw them in the same bin. If we get started about national stereotypes, maybe it's too difficult for Americans.
- hairytrog 7y agoit's too difficult for me. I wonder what the economic loss of having people sort their trash is, regardless of productivity and education level
- geewee 7y agoThat's not necesarily an unsolvable problem. I know several companies in Denmark who produce fresh plastic from recyclable plastic, and they can't meet market demand for their product - primarily due to them not being able to get enough "clean" or uncontaminated plastic. So the reality is much more nuanced than that. (I have a startup in the danish waste industry)