Are you recycling less? I sure am.

They tell us everything in the recycling bin needs to be relatively clean yet our water bill goes up every year even though we are using less. For about 5000 gallons our monthly bill is now almost $100. So I need to conserve water and if a recyclable container can not be cleaned out with a quick rinse of a low volume of water it goes into the trash including mayo, peanut butter, jelly, salad dressing, sour cream, yogurt, etc and that is that.

How about you?

While there is some value in recycling at least conceptually, I regard it largely with the same disdain as other virtue signaling based endeavors. So I’ll do something when convenient but if I don’t follow the rules and they don’t like it, I don’t care. I’m just as happy throwing everything into the garbage.

The only thing in will actually spend extra effort upon is hazardous waste and e-waste.

We’re trending toward ecological disaster and recycling isn’t going to avoid it.

They cut down our trash bin to this tiny little thing that barely fits a week's worth of trash in it, and gave us a 65 or 70 gallon recycling bin. So I've been recycling more. If it's paper, plastic, metal or any chance of being a recyclable material it goes in the recycle bin. I don't care if it's clean, dirty or even stamped; it's going in that bin.

Meh. What doesn't burn in the burn barrel goes to the dump.

Used oil goes on the driveway.

No. I get around that by not cleaning everything I put in the recycling bin. If that makes me a bad person, I guess I’ll wear that hat.

Like ryan1986, our trash can is a quarter the size of our recycling bin, so if it’s recyclable, it goes in that bin. We also have a compost bin that’s the same size as the recycling bin, so all food scraps and yard waste goes in there. They alternate collection of recycling and compost every other week.

Recycling aluminum makes sense because you can turn a buck doing it. Anything else is just a circle jerk.

We're no longer recycling at all. Town cancelled the program due to expense.

I take cardboard and metal to the transfer station myself which is "free". If I bag it for trash, I have to put a $1.75 sticker on each bag.

We're still composting everything we can, but that's because I can use/sell the finished compost.

Oh, plus returnables of course. After a Winter off due to weather and Mrs. PHPaul's (minor) medical issues, we're back to our daily walks and picking up "road kill" cans and bottles.

I do at the mid level or so, recycle. We have the two different garbage cans. I think many of those ‘recycle’ items end up as trash, regardless of the symbol on the bottom.

I use clean cardboard for starting fires in the woodstove, large pieces as targets.

Once dryer & the wind dies, I’ll do a little brush burning. That’s another way to dispose of burnables.

Our State subsidizes some recycling, even then most barely holds on.

Our county recycling center CHARGES you by the pound to drop off commodity metals.

The recycler up the street pays you for it.

I honestly think that the manager is pocketing the money and still selling the materials.

^^^^^
Double dipping. It's a time-honored political tradition.

I moved to a community that has trash only pickup. You can recycle cardboard at the center, several miles away. Like everything else, not recycling was to be the end of human life on earth until Covid hit, then they closed the center to avoid....who knows? There was occasionally a man sitting in a chair outside when we came thru, but usually not.

If I get a large delivery, or have a number of boxes accumulated, I'll go across town and put it in the bin. Otherwise, I'll just kill all life on the planet with my empty milk jugs.

Cardboard and plastic/glass bottles are about all we put in the recycling bin. When China stopped accepting imported recyclables a couple years ago, recycling as a whole became much less cost effective. Many locales now take recyclables directly to the dump, but don’t publicize that fact.

Up until last year, I recycled nearly everything. The last city had a very liberal recycling policy. No sorting. Minimal cleaning required. And the city provided large rolling bins, the same size as the trash can.

When I moved last year, the new city has a two page list of recycling rules and requirements. And you have to supply your own bin.

So now, the only thing I recycle is cardboard boxes, because it's the only recyclable product that doesn't have a laundry list of requirements attached. Everything else goes in the trash.

My Town has just announced that it hasn't been able to dispose of a large amount of the stuff we've recycled over the last year and is going to change what they'll accept for recycling.

The new rules will be tin/aluminum cans, cardboard and #1 and #2 plastics only, nothing else.

So I guess I'll be wheeling my recyling bin out once every 6 months or so instead of every other week.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Are you recycling less? I sure am.

We are, yes.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
... if a recyclable container can not be cleaned out with a quick rinse of a low volume of water it goes into the trash including mayo, peanut butter, jelly, salad dressing, sour cream, yogurt, etc and that is that.

We go to a little more effort than that, but not much

No, because I never recycled anything.

I have private trash pickup. No recycling available unless I take it somewhere, and I am not doing that.

But, I understand that while the City of Houston purports to have recycling, all the material goes to the dump because recycling costs more than simply throwing it away.

They only accept plastics labeled 1 and 2. Everything else is trash. Glass is no longer collected either. I don’t go out of my way to recycle but I do what I can. A peanut butter jar gets trashed. Not wasting my time on anything similar.

My townhouse / apartment complex at one point had a recycling dumpster with a posted list of what can be put into it. That has disappeared, possibly due to residents using it as a regular dumpster when the regular dumpsters were too full to use. The county uses "single stream" recycling and provides bins. Lots of rules about what can and cant go into the bins and you must wash out the metal containers before it goes into the bins.
I did use the recycle dumpster but now that it is gone, so are my efforts to recycle.
And they refuse to recycle glass items, claiming it costs too much and no one wants the glass enough to offset the costs.

I’m doing the same amount I always have. Aluminum and copper because I make money on it. Wife rinses out plastic containers and I throw them in the appropriate bins at the dump. Everything else is trash.

Our county allows anything at the solid waste center for free. Garbage, yard waste, brush, demo material, oil, electronics, metal. All paid out of our property taxes.

Do a run once a week when we're going into town anyway, and throw it into the appropriate dumpster.