People are always expected to recycle themselves, but wouldn’t going through the garbage be easier in the dumps themselves to sift all recyclable waste from non-recyclable waste and sending it to the appropriate places be a more efficient and reliable way of doing things? Is this being done in any country, and if not, why not?
In: Earth Science
Millions of people even half assed sorting their garbage is going to get a lot more done then a couple hundred professionals.
Where I live in the US my county uses property taxes to pay for everyone in the county to have recycling. But then, beyond that my garbage company also sorts garbage for recyclable materials. However, my garbage company is the only one I’ve ever heard of doing that.
Essentially, *you* are being used as “extra help” when you’re being asked to recycle/separate your garbage.
Imagine the level of effort that the garbage people would have to expend if everyone just dumped every type of waste together, and we dropped it off into a big pile. The job of separating types of waste *within* a type of waste (say, kicking cans or bottles out of *other* recyclable waste) is quite the effort already. We have some automation that can *help*, but most is still done by hand.
The effort of separating the *sheer volume* of organic waste from *the mind-boggling volumes* of recyclables would be a gargantuan tasks nowadays–hence, asking the generators of waste to at least *try* to help out on their end is more efficient.
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