The recycling bin at my apartment is just one bin for recyclables. Cardboard, paper, plastic, glass, recyclable foam – all just goes in the same bin. All of these materials, however, have to be recycled in different ways. So does someone have to go and sort through the different recyclables to separate them after we put them all in? If that’s the case, why not have the bins win different compartments to begin with to make it all easier?
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Recycling in North America is mostly brought to a sorting facility that organizes the various materials by type, and removes the large quantities of non-recyclable materials that inevitably end up in the bins.
We could resolve this by having separate bins for different materials, but you would still need a degree of sorting and filtering at the other end.
The problem to be perfectly frank is a cultural one. North Americans can’t be bothered to sort things properly in the trash and even if we did have multiple bins enough people wouldn’t bother to make it a problem.
In Japan by comparison they have lots of individual recycling bins for different materials, and culturally they are much more likely to follow instructions so it’s less of a problem.
The solution in North America is a financial intensive. People are surprisingly meticulous at sorting and returning items like pop cans if you pay then 5 cents a can.
The other side of the coin is that Recycling in a lot of ways is a giant make work project. One of the big goals of recycling was to generate a new government backed industry that employ large numbers of people. So sorting facilities and the like are encouraged because they fulfill that goal.
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