I am always careful about sorting recyclables from the regular trash.
Occasionally, though, a stray piece of plastic or metal may end up in the wrong bag.
Mrs. Loser is adamant that every single piece of recyclable material MUST be removed from the normal trash lest we face a “fine” from the trash hauling company.
My question is, how does that work?
If, at the sorting facility, they see a soda can mixed in with non-recyclables as they pass by on the conveyor belt, how could they possibly know it came from me?
Again, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be careful about recycling. I’m just wondering how this “fine” thing works. And is it applied for the stray can or bottle that was mixed in by mistake?
Where I live they’re also picked up by different trucks. I can’t imagine the trash truck driver getting out and fishing through the bin looking for recyclables (the only way they could tie the material to you) and have never heard of any fine for trashing recyclable material anyway (some of which inevitably ends up in the trash), though local situations may well vary.
Seattle fines people for not recycling, but it’s not one can - it’s when the garbage collectors notice that your trash is habitually full of beer bottles and soda cans.
Right, when they pop that sucker upon and notice it’s got s shit-load of recycables in it, then note it, and you get a warning. Then, someone may actually drive out on trash day and take a look.
A few stray pieces will not cause a fine.
Do note that aluminium cans are one thing you should try very hard to recycle.
Almost everywhere you put your trash (not recyclables) into those dark green plastic bags before they go into the trash can. Who’s going to be able to tell? the reason for those bags was so that bits of crap arn’t blowing around the neighbourhood or acting like bird feeders for the local wildlife. Those automated dump trucks hoist the can 10 feet in the air or more. If there’s a good breeze blowing, half the “fluffy” trash will be down the road instead of in the hole, unless it’s contained in a bag.
Nobody conveyo-sorts non-recyclables that I know; they sort recyclables on a conveyor, but use automated to separate what they can first. By then, it’s a truckload and they can’t blame any one house.
What does Seattle do to inspect the trash? I assume it’s still manually dumped in the truck? But do they forbid garbage bags, or catch lazy and stupid people only?
In Washington DC, a woman was fined $2000 for not recycling cat litter. The inspector said he dug through trash looking for violations.
Cleveland has “smart” bins that know when they haven’t been taken to the curb for a few weeks, which will prompt a visit from an inspector.
San Francisco hadn’t fined anyone after a year of mandatory recycling. A representative commented, “Our people don’t dig through the trash, but they do see what’s on top when they wheel the carts to the truck.”
In some German and Swiss cities there is a municipal police force, the Ordnungsamt, whose job includes (among other things) picking through people’s garbage to make sure they’re not consistently throwing out recyclable materials. It’s not hard to find accounts online of people who received nastygrams or fines from these garbage inspectors.
AFAIK in Germany the municipial authorities very rarely, if at all, get involved in this manner. The main incentives to properly sort your garbage are:
[ol]
[li]Recyclable waste gets collected at no cost to the end user, paid for a levy on packaging materials. Non-recyclable waste (Restmüll), on the other hand, is collected at a cost depending on quantity (you have to pay more for a greater bin, and increasingly you are billed for number of collections, metered by an RFID chip in the bin, i.e. you can save money by not putting your Restmüll bin to the curb sometimes.) Which is a strong incentive to sort.[/li][li]The more usual violation is to throw non-reyclable, organic or hazardous waste in with the recyclable, or organic waste in with the Restmüll if there is a separate organic-waste-for-composting collection. If the garbage men detect that (there are detectors now fitted to the garbage trucks) they simply let it stand at the curb, with a note attached to that effect, and it’s your problem to dispose of it. Costly, and if you share a bin with other apartments there will be recriminations. In the apartment house where my SO lives there was recently a note by the janotorial service: “On date collection of the the large recyclables bin was refused because there was a fluorescent tube of length improperly deposited in it. We had to arrange to arrange for commercial disposal at some cost which will be shared by all apartments. Please note that fluorescent tubes must be disposed of as hazardous waste.”. I imagine the offender might have avoided meeting his neighbours’ eyes for some days. wondering if anyone has seen him walking around with a fluorescent tube.[/li][/ol]
I’ll probably get flamed for posting this. But I’ve never been bothered by anyone regarding all the crap I throw into my regular garbage. The daily newspaper, at least a case of beer bottles and a case of soda cans a week, cat litter, NG computer monitors, old VCR’s and other electronics, etc… My recycle bin can go months without needing to be collected. The sanitation workers apparently couldn’t give a flying intercourse about it, and I’ve never had anyone else do anything about it either.
Rules regarding mandatory recycling are so far all at the local level in the U.S. If you are at all representative of the general attitude in Milwaukee, it is not surprising there are no restrictions there.
In CA we have the opposite problem. You get a big ol’ honkin’ recycle bin and a tiny little garbage bin, standard. It’s a lot extra to get a big garbage can. That’s supposed to make you recycle more, and most people do. But I know several people who just throw everything in the recycle bin and say “ef it”.
In Germany (in Darmstadt) at the grocery store the recycle can is right by the exit and amazingly shoppers turn in their recycles on the way out of the store!
Yup. After paying they will go through their purchases and deposit the cardboard and paper and whatever other packaging is recyclable so that they bring home only the consumable innards. The practice amazed and impressed me.
A year or two ago, Cecil did a “Straight Dope Chicago” column (whatever happened to those anyway?) about recycling in Chicago. The gist was:
– They used to give you blue plastic bags to put recyclables in, which you were then supposed to put into the regular barrel along with all your other trash.
– At the collection station, the garbage company would then set aside all the blue bags.
– They discontinued this plan.
– Because it wasn’t working well. For one thing, the blue bags often got torn apart in the collection trucks before getting to the station. For another thing, the workers just weren’t doing it.
Cecil wrote of the job those trash workers do, sorting garbage down at the station, which he described as “a job every bit as disgusting as it sounds.”