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The way people sort recycling at our local drop-off drives me up a wall
I stood there for 5 minutes watching a guy toss a greasy pizza box into the paper bin last Tuesday like it was no big deal. Does nobody read the big laminated signs they staple right next to each lid?
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mark_thomas28d agoMost Upvoted
That greasy pizza box in the paper bin bit, I read somewhere that just one contaminated load can wreck an entire recycling batch. Whole truck gets sent to the landfill because of one person's lazy toss. So yeah, that guy cost everyone else's effort for nothing.
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ross.felix28d ago
Yeah "one contaminated load can wreck an entire batch" got me, I used to think a little grease didn't matter.
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jesser7928d agoMost Upvoted
Totally get what you're saying @mark_thomas but I gotta push back a little here. I mean yeah one bad box can mess up a batch but isn't that kind of the system's fault for being so fragile? Like if a single pizza box can ruin everything then maybe recycling plants need better sorting instead of blaming regular people who are just trying to do the right thing. Also let's be real most pizza boxes are barely greasy unless you let it sit for days, and the cardboard itself is still mostly paper. I've thrown plenty of them in the paper bin over the years and never heard of my whole neighborhood's recycling getting trashed because of it.
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