I’ve always wondered how legit recycling is and if it’s worth the effort to personally do it. (I live in a high-rise and I can toss my garbage down a chute on my floor, but have to bring my recycling down to the ground floor.) In college I literally saw them dump the recycling bin and trash bin into the same truck, but I know I see dedicated recycling trunks around.
I was told “soiled” recycling can’t be used i.e. greasy used pizza boxes, is that true? Recycling dumpsters are gross, isn’t everything soiled?
When companies sell a product that’s “made from recycled products” how truthful is that? Is it their own recycled products or do they source it?
Whats the deal with the recycling triangles and numbers on a product? If I recycle a number that I shouldn’t, does it ruin everything else in that dumpster?
How does any one/machine feasibly sort recycling? It seems like a herculean task.
Recycling, fact or fiction?
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Some commenters have addressed all of your questions, I think one underlying question is “is it worth the effort to do my recycling”, if I’m not mistaken doing that has a cost for you (it’s less convenient than the regular garbage) but you’re not sure if it really does bring value.
Has you’ve said, the task of recycling is pretty big, in order to be somewhat successful, it needs to reach a critical mass. No factory will invest in ways to procude with recycled material if there’s small quantities available. No sorting facilities will get built for the same reasons. No collection for small quantities. Etc etc…
This is precisely why throughout the process you’ll see recycled material finding its way into the normal trash cycle… One of the reason is also that cities/governments don’t want to invest in the facilities themselves, or not fully, so they need to make it interesting to companies to do that.
All in all, while at a certain point in time your recycled trash doesn’t get recycled, that’s a necessary step into the whole process being put in place, in other words if people don’t sort their trash, then recycling will never happen.
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