Americans throw out more than three-quarters of their household recyclables

The city where I live is quite progressive and has excellent recycling programs for single-family homes. Unfortunately, I live in an apartment community, where there are no equivalent programs. The City won't send any trucks to pick up recycling, they won't provision any containers for us to separate it into, etc.

All we've got is a set of six Dumpsters, and people put everything in there. Literally, everything: microwave ovens, sofas, scrap metal, etc. There's simply no opportunity for separating recyclables. I just don't do it. I used to collect cans in separate bags, because our groundskeeper redeemed them somewhere, and my collections would save him the trouble of dumpster-diving. This worked out great until he retired. There is simply no reason or impetus for me, or anyone else, to put effort into recycling. Either our local dumpster-divers do it for us, or it goes to the landfill.

Instead of being paid for the materials they have collected from households participating in their recycling programs, municipalities have inexplicably been paying by the ton to recycle them! One city has stepped up and has put an end to the madness: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-p...

Can anyone tell me who the big consumers of used recyclable plastic materials are? Are any of these uses repeatable? If not, then we should stop pretending that recycling plastic is good for the environment and convince people that they should avoid buying plastic products that they might throw away.

Bingo. Not to mention the distinct lack of focus on reuse or reducing use of plastics in the first place. And, let's not forget, the whole recycling thing was basically a corporate scam in the 1970s to push the blame for waste generated by their packaging onto consumers. [1]

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[1]: https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/the-passionate-eye/recyclin...

As an American who moved to The Netherlands from Texas, the difference in recycling here is night and day. I lived in Dallas, so there is a recycling program, but since I always lived in an apartment complex, usually that option wasn't even available to me to use. There was one big dumpster for the building(s) spread across the complex. But even if I could recycle, looking back, the packaging in America is not setup to efficiently allow for it.

Here in the Netherlands, there are two major recycling/trash schemes. The one you've likely seen as a tourist in Amsterdam is common in most of the large cities. There are bins embedded into the sidewalk/street that require an NFC card to open. The card is linked to an account that you pay for. When you insert trash, it is weighed, and your account is debited depending on the type of trash. Recycling is MUCH cheaper than throwing things directly into the waste bin. Food scraps/compost and glass is generally free, but they might still weigh it.

In the suburbs and small towns, they have bins much like in the US, that you roll out to the street periodically. In my village, we have a bin for general waste and food/organic materials. For plastic, we have special bags that can be picked up at every supermarket in town for free. They're normal kitchen bin sized bags and a family of four will likely fill one or two of them in a week.

The thing that makes everything work though is how much trash costs and culture of recyclable packaging. In most places, you pay _per pickup_ of your waste bins (for me, €15~). In the city, you pay by the weight of your disposal like I mentioned earlier. The frequency of pickup is also greatly reduced compared to the average American trash schedule. My general waste pickup happens once every 6 weeks. I have a 240L bin (half the size of the normal American one). When I first moved here, I was flabbergasted how people managed to wait that long. I said to myself that everyone must be making supplementary trips to the local dump. However, my worries were unfounded. 15x8 = 120/year, but since I often don't fill up the waste bin, I can only put it out 4 or 5 times in a year.

Food waste is picked up every week. In the winter, pickup for food waste is free to encourage people not to hold onto the extra scraps from holiday gatherings that might rot and attract pests. The cost normally is cheap enough (€2-3~/week).

Plastic and metal recycling is picked up every two weeks and is free! All you need to do is set the bags outside on the street. Many times, neighbors will all pile their bags at the end of the street to make it easier for the people collecting them, but it's not a requirement. Many elderly simply place the bag in front of their house.

Paper/cardboard is also free and picked up once a month. Many people use have a laundry basket that they place on the street. It gets dumped out by the people following the truck, and then placed back where you left it. Some people get big cardboard boxes from the supermarket and take them home, then place the entire box on the street on pickup day.

Almost everything you buy at the supermarket is recyclable. Either it comes in a paper box, metal can, or plastic. These methods are all FREE to dispose of when you use the appropriate scheme. When you're cooking, sort the packaging into the appropriate bin during disposal and forget about it. Everything has a designation and when the system is so clearly defined, it's easy to follow inertia and "do the right thing". Plastic bottles allow you to get money back when you return them to a special machine at any supermarket.

Since you pay for food waste, you are incentivized not to cook crazy amounts of food that you have to throw away. My food waste is mostly cooking scraps and coffee grounds. Miscellaneous waste is more expensive and infrequent, so the incentive exists to search out recycling options to keep your bin from overflowing.

Overall, I think it's a good system that penalizes households that generate excessive amounts of waste and ensures that the maximum amount of goods are funneled to the correct recycling centers. In the US, the incentive is simply nonexistent. I paid a fixed amount for trash and I could dispose of whatever I wanted.