There's a big recycling place on the way to the place where I take our
> trash so my wife and I decided to recycle some of our trash rather than
> pay $1.50 per bag to throw it away.
> So about 2 months ago we started seperating our stuff out, the paper goes
> in 1 area so I can burn it about every 2 weeks and all the
> plastic/glass/cans go in another area to be recycled and everything else
> gets bagged to go to the trash place.
> Right now there are 4 big bags of what I thought was recylable stuff
> sitting on our back porch, so I went to the recyle place to find out what
> was recycleable and what wasn't.
> They gave me a pamphlet.
> My wife and I went through it this afternoon and became greatly > frustrated.
>
> First, everything has to be washed out and no caps left on.
> No problem.
> No styrofoam.
> No lightweight produce packages, like the ones strawberries come in.
> No plastic bags, like groceries come in.
> No this, no that, no hardly anything.
> No motoroil containers, insecticide, fertilizer, paint or other hazardous
> materials containers.
> Clear glass only, no mirrors, no plate glass.
> And on and on and on...........
> WTF?
>
> Its like you have to have a college degree to figure this stuff out.
> Like I said, I got frustrated, so I just bagged all the stuff and I'll go
> pay $1.50 a bag to load up a landfill somewhere.
> I'll continue to burn our paper trash.
>
> Who do you think created and runs the *Brown County Recycling Facility*? > You got it.
>
> Everything they touch turns to shit.......... sigh
>
> BTW: Wwe had recycled for at least the past 10 years in FL and none of the
> restrictions above were in place.
> We just put the stuff in a state supplied bin, sit it at the curb on Tues,
> and then brought the empty one back in at the end of the day.
> It was handled by Waste Management Incorporated, a private company.
> THAT is how you encourage recycling, the Brown County way is how you
> discourage recycling.
>
> The next time someone runs their mouth about *green* or *sustainability*
> or *save the erf* or any of that stuff I'm gonna wail their ass but good
> wiffa boat paddle.............
> Onward.
>
>
I saw a discovery channel show the other day on recycling. Doing recycling needs a serious amount of workers if they need to sort the stuff. It's possible your city or country or whatever either doesn't have the budget for it or doesn't have enough population to get enough workers to do it. We were amazed at how many people they needed to sort through the stuff. Pretty much none of it was automated or done by machines. Everything you mentioned has to be either sorted separately or thrown out (like the caps and or color vs clear glass) each of which costs the money of a laborer. How big was this recycling place anyways?
The other thing is, they might not have a market for the recycled waste or to ship it to places where it is needed would cost more than it is worth.
Here I am pretty sure the recycling gets taken by the city, and we only got a pamphlet for green waste. Everything else recyclable goes into a blue bin, and they take it, without checking that I have sorted properly.
I think you have to take into account that you live in the boonies these days Don :).