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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It varies – recycling is handled pretty locally. Sometimes, yeah, they just dump it all in the same landfill. A lot of recycling programs relied on shipping the material overseas to be picked over in the poorest countries, this is becoming uneconomical.
The number is the recycling symbol is shorthand for what kind of plastic it is. The recycling symbol does *not* mean the plastic is recyclable, the plastic industry just likes to imply it is.
Cardboard with moderate amounts of oil or other soiling is increasingly accepted.
For information on what plastics can be recycled, and if you can send out soiled cardboard, your city or county should have a webpage about how they handle recycling.
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