A mild recycling rant

[warning: recycling gets me pretty riled up, just ask my husband]

My parents taught me to recycle at a very young age, in a city where there was no curbside collection. We frequented community collection events and everyone in the household participated. It is nearly unfathomable to me to throw something away that is obviously recyclable. My husband has also started saves his recyclables to carry home as needed. It makes my heart soar when he does this.
During book club the other day, we got on the topic of why recycling is so hard for some people. My condo is a perfect example of how people don't do this correctly by any stretch of the imagination. I have written one-pagers for our community to improve the community's baseline knowledge but inevitably spend an extra 5-10 minutes organizing the area whenever I am down there.

As I throw away the obvious non-recyclables (e.g. pillows, suitcases) and empty out the non-clear bags of recycling into the bins (which is required but ALSO makes more room for everyone), I inevitably start wondering - how are we still SO bad at this? 

Well, as it turns out, there are a lot of reasons why.

1. Some people still legitimately don't know how to recycle. I know some people who just never learned this stuff growing up. It wasn't emphasized as important or taught to them by their parents, schools, etc. They are not opposed to it, but they also don't prioritize it in their lives.

2. Recycling isn't mandatory, and in some areas, it is a service for which you actually have to pay. No incentive to help Mother Earth there. Bravo, Georgia.

3. Recycling has become infinitely more complicated. For example, there are just too many different types of plastic. To the right is a snapshot of earth911's listing of plastics. If this isn't intimidating, I don't know what is.

4. There is no standardization of what is accepted. For example, "metro-Atlanta" is comprised of 29 counties. Let's say you live in DeKalb but your best friend lives a block away in Fulton:
  • In DeKalb, residential recycling is free, but you have to sign up for it. They accept most things I would consider standard: cardboard, shrink wrap, plastics 1-7, aluminum cans, packing paper (no wax), and mixed paper.
The problem isn't just Georgia.
  • Let's say you live in Boston but your best friend lives 20 miles away in Framingham. In Boston, you can recycle milk cartons, juice cartons, and all flattened food boxes. In Framingham, you cannot recycle any plastic-coated paper.
  • In Virginia, both Alexandria and Arlington accept pizza boxes, but Arlington goes on to require that they be placed in the trash if there is "excess grease." How should the average person interpret this?
This is all to say that recycling actually IS difficult. No wonder China recently cut us off. Even if you grew up with the best parents, you may not do it correctly. At this point, I could go down a totally different rabbit hole about whether or not recycling is actually good for the environment once you factor in all the oil needed to move a tanker multiple times across the Pacific in order to carry out the actual process...but that's a tangent for another day. 
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So where do we go from here?

Q: Why break down the cardboard boxes?
A: If you don't, they get stuck when truck's arm tries to empty the bins.

Q: Why do they get all weird about pizza boxes?
A: The paper fibers can't be separated from the grease, and it ruins the entire batch. When in doubt, throw out the pizza box. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Q: Why is my city requiring glass be recycled separately?
A: Broken glass in single stream recycling has little/no value and contaminates the rest of the recyclables. If it is allowed in your single stream - be gentle!

Recycling References: