I got asked this by my son after we had to throw out an old toy and I realized I didn’t have a good answer beyond that it goes to the dump. After they pick it up, does it get sorted at all? Does it matter what else it’s with? What would determine which specific landfill or recycling center or wherever it would go to? What does it look like when it gets here?
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Assuming you’re in North America — If you toss it in the trash, it goes straight to wherever your community sends its refuse (dump, incinerator, barge, etc.) without any sorting.
It goes from your curb to the garbage truck to a transfer station, and then on to wherever it’ll end up.
Nobody goes through the trash looking for recyclables.
As for where recyclables go, that depends on where you live and how they process it. Some operate their own sorting facilities, others just sell the material wholesale, but many communities (far more than is commonly known) typically send some or all recyclables to landfills.
Most of the time, that decision is made by the consumer. When your household decides to get rid of something, it will go into one trash stream or another unless you decide to use it for something else or give it to someone who can.
When I moved to Knoxville, I wrote the local waste department, and they have me a really detailed and thoughtful response. Consider reaching out to your local department and making this a real learning opportunity.
“This not an easy question to answer. If you want to discuss feel free to call me.
It kind of depends on what type of waste you have, where you take it, and who picks it up and transports it. It also depends on how you define waste stream. Recyclables are waste but not necessarily trash…
Bagged household trash from the City curbside program County Convenience Centers is hauled to a transfer station and then it is transported to Athens TN to a landfill called the Meadow Branch Landfill owned by Waste Connections. But some private waste companies operating curbside trash pickup may use the Chestnut Ridge landfill just north of here in Anderson County owned by Waste Management.
Almost anyone with construction and demolition material hauled by public/private companies probably ends up in one of two construction and demolition landfills in Knox County called Poplar View or Riverside Landfills both owned by Meridian Waste.
Some companies may also transport waste to other counties. For example people south or west may choose to transport some waste to a landfill in Loudon County or people with a load of waste in east may choose to take it east to other landfills in counties to the east.
There is very little regulation of flow of waste, lots of actors public/private hauling lots of different types of waste, and lots of different types of disposal options available to public/private enterprise.
Neither Knox County nor the City of Knoxville own or operate a landfill so we are customers with landfills and transfer stations just like everyone else though we can negotiate a much better rate due to the amount of waste we handle from our constituents. Landfills will accept individual customers but it is normally prohibitively expensive to use a landfill if you do not have large truckload+ amounts of waste or a special type of waste that is difficult to get rid of.
Almost all recyclables collected from the public go to a company with a plant located in the downtown area called Westrock. Almost all metal recycling collected by the government goes to a company called PSC metal that have multiple locations throughout the County. Depending on the type of recycling it may offer some revenue or may not cost anything to recycle. Some recyclables cost money to process. It costs a lot to process mixed recycling but when recycling is collected separately it can often be sold as a commodity (steel cans, cardboard, aluminum, paper) but not once it has been mixed.
Almost anyone with yardwaste, tree waste, leaves, or any other greenwaste must take their waste for processing to a company with 3 locations called Living Earth. They charge fees for disposal of greenwaste.
No trash gets incinerated locally but I could not know for sure that nothing collected locally isn’t later sent to some kind of incinerator. An example of this would be some types of hazardous wastes may have to be incinerated but they would be sent away for processing first. Also human/veterinary remains may also be incinerated locally at various crematoriums but I am not aware of how many are in the area. “
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