Recyclers as Suckers

As you dutifully sort your newspapers, bottles, cans and cardboard, do you ever wonder: Does this stuff really get recycled? Christine MacDonald and the Washington City Paper spent months tailing garbage trucks who haul trash from businesses. What did they find?

(W)orkers throw stuff from green containers, black containers, and blue containers in the same truck,... While we also observed trucks properly handling the two forms of refuse, the more time we spent on the road, the more violations we witnessed.

The New York Post found a similar practice in New York City:

Not only are routine recyclables like bottles, cans and paper being sent to landfills, but so is other waste that is supposed to be trashed separately, such as animal carcasses, medical waste and bins of used kitchen oil...

In that case it was city government staff that was comingling the garbage.

Of course, if you read Al Gore's website (a sacrifice we make so you don't have to), it's the people throwing out the garbage who are at fault. They're lazy.

People are lazy by nature, if you make recycling hard then people will NOT do it. If a recycling bin is right next to a garbage bin any person will recycle, that is unless that person lacks all morals.

We're lucky to have eco-blowhards like Gore as morality police.

City Paper found that DC's ticket-writers also think it's stores and office workers, not the haulers, that are the problem.

The city’s recycling enforcement efforts focus on making sure offices and retailers are putting their newspapers and plastic water bottles in the appropriate bins, not on making sure that those newspapers and water bottles actually get recycled.

....the D.C. Department of Public Works (DPW) has not fined haulers for trashing the recyclables for years.

Congratulations to the City Paper for its expose.