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I grew up in Connecticut where we always had redemption value on cans/bottles and so on. The rule was if you sold it you had to take it back. Taking back the ca

I grew up in Connecticut where we always had redemption value on cans/bottles and so on. The rule was if you sold it you had to take it back. Taking back the cans and bottles was normal for me as a kid, it was how I got change for the vending machines in front of the store. In CA (in the Bay Area) I am charged redemption value on cans and bottles. I put them in recycling, and guess what, the same truck that picks up my garbage also picks up my recycling... it is all going in the trash. Recycling is broken, and we need to make more changes to make it effective.

benatkin 7y ago
Part of the redemption values is now effectively a tax, because many people who never redeem them. This is fine, except much of it's being scooped up by people picking through the trash, as a disorganized benefit for the poor, which might work well but isn't designed for that purpose.
nrp 7y ago
In the Bay Area, you're probably being served by Recology. They have trucks with multiple compartments for recycling, composting, and trash, but they also have pretty advanced sorting capabilities at their sites: https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-recovery https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-re... I don't doubt that recycling needs to be improved in most places, but the San Francisco Bay Area system is among the better ones.
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  Ummm... In two counties, the same single compartment truck is picking up both cans (trash+recycling) at the same stop. No amount of sorting is going to help fix that mess.
  - nrp 7y ago
    You’d be surprised. In the last city I lived in in Orange County, the waste system was deliberately designed to have a single residential container and full sorting done at the waste facility by a combination of people and machines. The claim was that it was actually more effective than curbside sorting because the professionals and automation knew how to process recyclables better than the average resident. I don’t know if that is what Recology does in single-truck locations, but it seems likely.

benatkin 7y ago

Part of the redemption values is now effectively a tax, because many people who never redeem them. This is fine, except much of it's being scooped up by people picking through the trash, as a disorganized benefit for the poor, which might work well but isn't designed for that purpose.

nrp 7y ago

In the Bay Area, you're probably being served by Recology. They have trucks with multiple compartments for recycling, composting, and trash, but they also have pretty advanced sorting capabilities at their sites: https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-recovery https://www.recology.com/environment-innovation/#resource-re... I don't doubt that recycling needs to be improved in most places, but the San Francisco Bay Area system is among the better ones.

zer00eyz 7y ago
Ummm... In two counties, the same single compartment truck is picking up both cans (trash+recycling) at the same stop. No amount of sorting is going to help fix that mess.
- nrp 7y ago
  You’d be surprised. In the last city I lived in in Orange County, the waste system was deliberately designed to have a single residential container and full sorting done at the waste facility by a combination of people and machines. The claim was that it was actually more effective than curbside sorting because the professionals and automation knew how to process recyclables better than the average resident. I don’t know if that is what Recology does in single-truck locations, but it seems likely.