Found out 75% of our town's recycling ends up in the same landfill as regular trash, got that from a city council meeting report last Tuesday.

The report said the sorting facility just ships anything contaminated straight to the dump, and that's most of what we put in those blue bins, so what's the point of separating it if nobody checks?

3 comments

3 Comments

ben2061mo ago

Right, so my tiny little effort of rinsing out a soup can is basically just me putting on a show for the garbage truck. Sounds like the real problem is we've got a "sorting facility" that's really just a expensive conveyor belt to the dump. Might as well just toss everything in the same bin and call it "pre-landfill sorted" trash, save everyone the hassle. But hey, at least I can feel morally superior while my empty milk jug goes straight to the big hole in the ground.

mila_perry131mo ago

is this just how everything is now? like you scan your own groceries at the store and bag them yourself, then the cashier stands there watching you work for free. you fill out your own forms online for the dmv and still have to wait in line for an hour. it feels like we're all doing the jobs that used to be done for us but nothing actually got cheaper or better, it's just more work for us and less accountability for them. the whole recycling thing is just one more example of the same pattern where we do all the effort and the system still fails, but we're the ones who feel guilty about it.

williamhill1mo ago

So is it really that big of a deal if some of it gets tossed? I mean, you still separated it and tried, right? The real issue is the sorting facility being lazy, not you putting a dirty pizza box in the bin. Plus, if half the town is just tossing in random crap anyway, what difference does one person making an effort really make? Feels like a lot of hand-wringing over something the city could fix if they actually wanted to. Like, who's checking up on those guys?