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It was so frustrating when a dude at work was trying to bust my balls for not using the recycling for my plastic bottle. I didn’t have the energy or patience t

It was so frustrating when a dude at work was trying to bust my balls for not using the recycling for my plastic bottle. I didn’t have the energy or patience to explain to him how our city has single stream recycling and there was 100% chance that bottle was being shipped overseas, dumped in the ocean or something else way more stupid than just being buried in the city landfill.

gregmac 2y ago
I worked in an office with recycling bins where everything was just gathered up and thrown in the dumpster with the rest of the garbage. It wasn't just our cleaning people, either: from my desk I could see the only two parking lot entrances and while the garbage truck came weekly, never once did I see a recycling truck.
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  likewise at a large office building I'm familiar with it was said that because employees/building tenants contaminate the recycling bins with unrecyclable items including food waste, there was no point to do anything but combine it into the trash however the recycling bins were kept presumably to keep people from protesting about trashing everything, and the memory of this news quickly faded the same goes for recycling bins in downtown toronto - they're so contaminated that they go straight to landfill
- raisedbyninjas 2y ago
  PepsiCo did the same thing. Custodians dumped everything into the same bags. Leadership confirmed it all went to the dump. Still had a personal recycle bin crammed under every desk.
  - ARandomerDude 2y ago
    This is just corporate virtue signaling.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      And/or ass-covering. There might be contracts in place etc.
    - robocat 2y ago
      More likely it costs the building cleaners time & money. No economic benefit for them so they don't bother even if overall there might be a benefit. Incentives need to align.
- maxerickson 2y ago
  My town uses the same trucks for both.
- ropable 2y ago
  You might not be seeing what you think you're seeing, WRT everything going into the same truck. Lots of municipalities (e.g. mine) undertake resource extraction from commingled waste & recycling streams. It isn't the same everywhere, but sometimes it's more efficient to just put the entire waste stream through the same extraction process to recover recyclable materials. The separate receptacles at the client side are obviously redundant, but sometimes those remain from legacy processing arrangements.
  - seb1204 2y ago
    I heard this as well. There is a recycling plant that you need to run anyway to separate the waste/rubbish so you might as well use it to get the plastics and cans out. I think there is an argument that while the machine can do it well avoiding the machine does have benefits. This also doesn't work for paper or cardboard as it would get soiled from what I understand.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      The real benefit of separate sources is those machines cannot handle things like plastic bags (they get caught in rollers and jam the machine), dirty diapers, and other such weird stuff. Once you get those out of the stream you may as well separate a few other things that are not recyclable so you need less of the expensive separation machines. However you always need sorting machines - people will make mistakes and so you need to verify everything really is recyclable.
Goonbaggins 2y ago
Based on the single stream comment, I'm going to assume you're describing an experience in North America, and your assumptions are pretty off base for PET bottles. Figure 1 in the linked paper gives the raw numbers for where PET bottles end up. [1] [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13496 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13496
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-a...
  - Goonbaggins 2y ago
    Yep, I've worked in recycling for 6 years and am well aware that there's a lot of broken parts. My point was that if a PET bottle goes into a single stream system, the recycling industry is pretty good at capturing it, baling it, and selling it to a plastics processor. That processor will clean it, pellet it, and sell it as rPET. 85% of PET bottles that end up in curbside single stream end up getting recycled. I'd like that number higher, but it's where things are at the moment. Throw a bottle in the trash, it's getting landfilled/burned. Throw it in recycling, it's most likely getting recycled.
    - seb1204 2y ago
      In Australia the whole hard VS soft plastic blew up recently. The REDcycle brand by mayor supermarkets was shown to just collect and store the soft plastic in large warehouses. For bottles there is a refund scheme.

gregmac 2y ago

I worked in an office with recycling bins where everything was just gathered up and thrown in the dumpster with the rest of the garbage. It wasn't just our cleaning people, either: from my desk I could see the only two parking lot entrances and while the garbage truck came weekly, never once did I see a recycling truck.

wahnfrieden 2y ago
likewise at a large office building I'm familiar with it was said that because employees/building tenants contaminate the recycling bins with unrecyclable items including food waste, there was no point to do anything but combine it into the trash however the recycling bins were kept presumably to keep people from protesting about trashing everything, and the memory of this news quickly faded the same goes for recycling bins in downtown toronto - they're so contaminated that they go straight to landfill
raisedbyninjas 2y ago
PepsiCo did the same thing. Custodians dumped everything into the same bags. Leadership confirmed it all went to the dump. Still had a personal recycle bin crammed under every desk.
- ARandomerDude 2y ago
  This is just corporate virtue signaling.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    And/or ass-covering. There might be contracts in place etc.
  - robocat 2y ago
    More likely it costs the building cleaners time & money. No economic benefit for them so they don't bother even if overall there might be a benefit. Incentives need to align.
maxerickson 2y ago
My town uses the same trucks for both.
ropable 2y ago
You might not be seeing what you think you're seeing, WRT everything going into the same truck. Lots of municipalities (e.g. mine) undertake resource extraction from commingled waste & recycling streams. It isn't the same everywhere, but sometimes it's more efficient to just put the entire waste stream through the same extraction process to recover recyclable materials. The separate receptacles at the client side are obviously redundant, but sometimes those remain from legacy processing arrangements.
- seb1204 2y ago
  I heard this as well. There is a recycling plant that you need to run anyway to separate the waste/rubbish so you might as well use it to get the plastics and cans out. I think there is an argument that while the machine can do it well avoiding the machine does have benefits. This also doesn't work for paper or cardboard as it would get soiled from what I understand.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The real benefit of separate sources is those machines cannot handle things like plastic bags (they get caught in rollers and jam the machine), dirty diapers, and other such weird stuff. Once you get those out of the stream you may as well separate a few other things that are not recyclable so you need less of the expensive separation machines. However you always need sorting machines - people will make mistakes and so you need to verify everything really is recyclable.

Goonbaggins 2y ago

Based on the single stream comment, I'm going to assume you're describing an experience in North America, and your assumptions are pretty off base for PET bottles. Figure 1 in the linked paper gives the raw numbers for where PET bottles end up. [1] [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13496 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13496

Mistletoe 2y ago
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-a...
- Goonbaggins 2y ago
  Yep, I've worked in recycling for 6 years and am well aware that there's a lot of broken parts. My point was that if a PET bottle goes into a single stream system, the recycling industry is pretty good at capturing it, baling it, and selling it to a plastics processor. That processor will clean it, pellet it, and sell it as rPET. 85% of PET bottles that end up in curbside single stream end up getting recycled. I'd like that number higher, but it's where things are at the moment. Throw a bottle in the trash, it's getting landfilled/burned. Throw it in recycling, it's most likely getting recycled.
  - seb1204 2y ago
    In Australia the whole hard VS soft plastic blew up recently. The REDcycle brand by mayor supermarkets was shown to just collect and store the soft plastic in large warehouses. For bottles there is a refund scheme.