A pizza box with a greasy liner hung out of a blue recycling bin as I walked past. Hmm, I had heard that I wasn’t supposed to recycle paper or cardboard that was contaminated with food. Would it be taken with the recycling? Or was the whole bin doomed to be passed over?
I paused to glance in the next bin—canning lids. Now there was an item that most likely is recyclable but would never go through the blue bin path to recycling in my household. I have the ultimate recycle system for canning lids—I wash them, put them on clean class jars and give them to my mother-in-law. Miraculously the glass jars return full of homemade strawberry jam—now that’s a recycling system that can’t be beat.
As I approached the next driveway, a large, grey plastic object was perched on top of the underlying contents of the bin. I stopped again—this clearly wasn’t one of my speedier walks. What was that? Upon closer inspection, I could tell it was an infant car seat. Really? Recycling an infant car seat? Not that I had any to recycle—my kids grew up in the days when we could hand down car seats and cribs—a seemingly impossibility today with the rapidly changing safety regulations. But in any case, can they really be recycled now?
I think I am a pretty thorough recycler, but clearly I am way behind if all of the items I saw filling the bins actually could be recycled—milk cartons, an easily identifiable Target shopping bag, a large clear bag stuffed with shredded paper—shredded paper yes; plastic bags, no, of that I was certain; intact cardboard boxes, more milk cartons, maybe I should be recycling them, but no juice cartons—hmm, odd distinction, or maybe no one drinks orange juice from cartons any more. A Miracle-Gro bag, Bounty paper towel plastic packaging, a plant. A plant? Oh wait, maybe that’s with the trash. I was starting to doubt that I knew anything about what could and couldn’t be recycled. A dishwasher detergent box with the metal spout intact—yes or no?
I really need to just follow a recycling truck and see what happens with all this stuff. I mean if it does belong, how in the world is it ever sorted and actually recycled? Is it? And if these items don’t belong what happens to them and everything in the bin with them? Are there people pawing through conveyor belts full of recycling stuff? Has this already been on Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe and I missed it? Clearly this would count as a dirty job. And costly too. Is it at all cost effective to put all of this in one recycling stream? I think I’ll sit on the curb and wait for the recycling truck to come by. I have some questions to ask.
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