4 ms·

While I agree that this is the wrong approach and your solution is an improvement, I don't think it's much of an improvement. It shares the same flaw in thinkin

While I agree that this is the wrong approach and your solution is an improvement, I don't think it's much of an improvement. It shares the same flaw in thinking as the fine: you are attacking the problem from too many angles. Every single person has to alter their behavior for it to work. I think a much easier to implement, less wasteful, and much more likely to work solution is single-source waste disposal and recycling. Charlottesville, VA has this: you throw away everything, and the city outsources sorting and recycling to a single-source waste disposal company. Their job is to recover as much money as possible from recyclables. And the best part is that to improve the efficiency of single-source recycling, you only need to improve your sorting and recycling technologies. You don't need to improve the accuracy of every human who throws away recyclables, which the history of recycling tells us is highly costly while also highly ineffective.

zoul 15y ago
You mean that people just don’t sort their garbage at all, the company does it for them? Is it technically plausible, with decent material recovery levels? Don’t the recyclable materials lose value by putting them together with regular garbage?
- drunkpotato 15y ago
  > You mean that people just don’t sort their garbage at all, the company does it for them? Yes, precisely. The usual caveats apply: no hazardous waste (hazardous chemicals, biohazard waste). > Is it technically plausible, with decent material recovery levels? It seems to be, based on Charlottesville's experience. I don't know the recovery levels. That is a good topic for research. > Don’t the recyclable materials lose value by putting them together with regular garbage? They do, but my understanding is the lost value is much less than relying on residential pre-sorting of recyclable materials. The idea is not to compare the efficacy of single-stream with a hypothetically perfect human recycler, but with recycling rates in actual practice among residents after decades of attempted recycling education. I was told by a reporter in Charlottesville that single-stream compares favorably, but I am having trouble finding actual rates for comparison in my quick Googling today. So if you're interested, take my comment as a basis for further research into the issue.

zoul 15y ago

You mean that people just don’t sort their garbage at all, the company does it for them? Is it technically plausible, with decent material recovery levels? Don’t the recyclable materials lose value by putting them together with regular garbage?

drunkpotato 15y ago
> You mean that people just don’t sort their garbage at all, the company does it for them? Yes, precisely. The usual caveats apply: no hazardous waste (hazardous chemicals, biohazard waste). > Is it technically plausible, with decent material recovery levels? It seems to be, based on Charlottesville's experience. I don't know the recovery levels. That is a good topic for research. > Don’t the recyclable materials lose value by putting them together with regular garbage? They do, but my understanding is the lost value is much less than relying on residential pre-sorting of recyclable materials. The idea is not to compare the efficacy of single-stream with a hypothetically perfect human recycler, but with recycling rates in actual practice among residents after decades of attempted recycling education. I was told by a reporter in Charlottesville that single-stream compares favorably, but I am having trouble finding actual rates for comparison in my quick Googling today. So if you're interested, take my comment as a basis for further research into the issue.