Where I live, you can choose from about six different providers for your trash and recycling and the one we have is great, but they have been raising prices on us and we just got another notice that there’s another significant price increase coming.

All apparently due to increased recycling costs.

I really would just like to cancel the recycling part of this and start taking cardboard somewhere myself and maybe aluminum cans and just trash the rest.

Just wondering how all you guys do it?

And I’m convinced that this is all a scam anyway because I’ve watched them on more than one occasion just come by and dump the recycling can right into the trash truck.

Around here, the trucks are made to look like they separate trash and recycling on pickup, but they actually get mixed together inside and are separated at the plant. So I use both bins as garbage. But the service here charge for the garbage bin and the recycling bin is “free.”

Yep. The woman down there was crazy. Yelling at people about how they were doing things. I think they got rid of her.

None of the services in our area offer recycling, so we don't use it all.

I looked it up, apparently China stopped taking our recycling, so we shifted to other countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, but then they stopped as well. So now we are kind of stuck.

Went from something like $3 a ton to $50 a ton.

I’m done. Our water and sewer bills have exploded this past year as well, everyone is raising prices on everything and we can’t afford this.

We recycle paper and metal. We no longer recycle plastic, and here's why:

We have one company that picks up both trash and recycling for a fixed fee. They do use different trucks, but I don't believe much is actually recycled other than aluminum and steel/tin cans. Cardboard and paper will be contaminated, so likely just sent to the landfill.

I dutifully put all metal cans in recycling. I put cardboard into the bin until full, then the rest goes in trash. Plastics I try to put in recycling but I don't expect it likely gets recycled.

Our town has an extensive recycling drop off center. We do take glass, metals, cardboard, paper, and styrofoam there several times per year. But I still only have about 50% confidence that it doesn't go to the landfill.

They pick up "single stream" recycling where my friend lives, but the only things that actually get recycled are aluminum cans and tin cans so I take mine there to her bin. They do get separated out of the recycle bin but the rest goes to the landfill along with the rest of the garbage. Large appliances are picked up on some schedule and they get sold for recycle as well.

Even clean, untaped, bundled, cardboard was costing more to transport to a paper mill (which would just sometimes take it but at no cost) than to take it to the landfill. Still it was held until they would accept it but then that facility closed. No loss because it cost more to separate all the crap paper (greasy pizza boxes, slick cardboard, etc) out than the landfill charge. Plastic and glass went to the landfill. I know it's not feasible to recycle old glass but I don't understand why glass can't be pulverized and used for fill, added to concrete or asphalt, etc? At least that would keep it out of landfills.

Our town cancelled the entire program a couple years ago due to cost. Cheaper just to haul it with the regular trash and pay the tipping fee.

They DID allow us to bag cardboard separately and pick it up for free. It goes right in the same truck with the regular trash but saves us the "per bag" fee.

Beverage cans/bottles get taken to the redemption center. Veggie/Soup type cans go in the trash, larger metal items get stored until there's enough to take to the scrap yard. Fortunately, there's one about 10 miles from here so I can usually get enough for a load of scrap to at least pay for the gas and maybe put a couple of bucks (literally) in my pocket.

The town also has a "transfer station" where you can take large items like furniture, brush and metal scrap but they changed their fee system from an annual permit to a per load system and I'm damned if I'll pay them to accept my scrap metal and then turn around and sell it. I burn my own brush and occasionally other flammable stuff gets inadvertently mixed in...

quote:

They pick up "single stream" recycling...

Yeah, it's all part of the same bill here, not a separate charge for recycling. They do pick it up at different times, on different trucks but I do wonder how much of it actually gets recycled.

I stopped separating the first time I saw it dumped into the same truck. Fixed fee here so no discount.

I use it as a cheap trash bin as its "free" around here. It saves me some space in the actual trash and it saves me the trip to the recycle center to get rid of crap I'd otherwise have to condense into the bin.

If they charged for it I'd drop it.

Yes, just to clarify here:

We get one bill, but it’s broken out for trash and recycling and they are separate charges. I just emailed them and told them we love their service, but we cannot afford another price increase as this will be the third one in a year and we are dropping the recycling part of this immediately.

In our area of Fairfax Co. VA, the county govt. performs the trash/recycling pickup and disposal function. This is paid for as a separate line item on our water bill. Two different cans, two different sets of trucks, different workers, different policies, etc. A couple of years ago, they stopped accepting glass in the recycling, giving "customers" the option of taking it to a recycling center. About the same time, they closed perhaps 60% of the recycling centers that they had been maintaining, including the two closest to our house. I just started putting the glass in with the trash (as did almost everybody I have talked with about this). The county does not use county employees but contracts the service out of their general fund, They do not limit themselves to the funds collected specifically for the service. The "no glass" policy was because the recycling contractor would be charging more if they had to deal with it. As I understand the science, glass is one of the most recyclable items in the trash stream.

It probably doesn't matter, both trash and recycling trucks line up at the same transfer facility/landfill and dump their loads in the same pile. The trasg dozers then mix all the refuse together. I have seen this with my own eyes on multiple occasions at multiple locations.

In other words, "recycling" is purely feel-good optics done to maintain the facade that the Board of Supervisors is, in some way, "green" and "socially responsible." Efforts to educate tax and fee payers on these matters have not been supported by the press or other media.

The next step in the raise taxes/drop services cycle is that next year the county is stopping their Fall leaf curbside vacuum pickups. Their recommended alternative is "leave them on the lawn to rot." IIRC, this was initiated back in the 70's as a way to "save the taxpayers money" by reducing the blockage of storm sewers, and consequent flooding damage to roads and property. Of course, this led to an increase in both the service-specific fees and the personal property tax to pay for it. My bold prediction is that most residents will ignore or forget this change next Winter, pile their leaves in the gutters anyway which will lead to storm sewer blockages, and significant road washouts and flooding of areas that have not seen any for years. Did I mention that the cessation of leaf pickup was not accompanied by a reduction in either fees or PP tax, instead, these are both going up, and the rationale is that "they would have gone up more" if retained.

I am not going to whine about where and how all this revenue is being spent, but that is seriously questionable as well. Many supervisors have businesses that have the county as their biggest or only customer. And they make up projects that are ludicrous on the face. The high school from which I graduated is in the final stage of massive upgrades that will more than double its square footage. All of the space is for administrative offices and common space expansion, not one single additional classroom is included. When I was there, enrollment was about 2,000 students, the same school now has an enrollment of about 950. I would be willing to suppose that the extra office space is "needed" for all the staff hired in the name of DEI over the past few years. As a bonus, about half the athletic fields have been denolished in this construction, and County residents are no longer allowed to use high school athletic facilities at any time whether school is in session or not. When I was there, the cinder track around the football field was a very popular jogging path for many people young and old, now there is no room for a track, and joggers are in the street.

The tax and fee situation in my county is truly out of control. There seems to be no limit to the lengths that these people will go to fatten their own bank accounts at the expense of the populace.

If it sounds like I am disgusted with this whole trend and our elected representatives, I would have to say that is an accurate appraisal. Perhaps I should have posted this in What's your deal, but I got started on the trash issue, and it just went from there. It really is all part of the same mindset, and "disgusted" doesn't begin to cover it.

In the city of MQT, there is a "solid waste fee" added on to the residents water bill. This gets you a second trash can for items that are recyclable. Outside city limits in the township, we heathens do not recycle. My townhouse complex has large dumpsters that hold everything, including any old sofas you may have lying around cluttering up your place.
However, the main Michigan bite on the ass is with "returnable" beverage cans and plastic bottles. You pay ten cents extra per container at the register. Then, you have to bring the container back to the store and put them into a machine that mashes them and counts them, spitting out a receipt that you take back to store to get your ten cents back. The machines are often located in a separate room from the grocery store. And these rooms are nasty, since many people wont wash out the containers before they bring them back. The machines are often broke down or full. You may find yourself behind a college kid or a hoarder with bag after bag of beer cans, thus prolonging the whole ordeal. I just shitcan everything and consider it one of things you deal with and have no control over. The whole "returnables" thing is making someone $$$ but it damn sure aint me!

We dropped trash pickup and recycling back around 2008. We have a collection center for both trash and recycling about 2 miles from our house and in 2008 the cost for both was just under $200 per month. Now we just drop the stuff off about every other day while on our way past the center. I would say less than 1/3 of the houses in my neighborhood have trash collection and 1 in 10 of those have recycle. Around us, it’s two separate trucks that come on different days.

My daughter in law wanted the service while they lived with us. I paid for it until I learned in Utah it was a scam. All of the recycle trash was dumped into the regular trash. I saw them do it. I stopped that week.

We don't have a choice of our provider . People are free to recycle or just trash everything . You pay for it either way .

Our town used to have several "drop zones" scattered around, each with dedicated bins for recyclable plastic, paper, cardboard, and glass. Sites were open 24-7, which made recycling really convenient.

Then they decided to close those sites, drop off 96-gallon cans at each residence, and run a truck around the neighborhoods... and then charge residents for picking up the recyclables. I went to one of the meetings the town held. It was an adventure.

My question was fairly simple, I thought: "So, you're going to charge residents to do what we were doing voluntarily already?"

That wasn't the question the town rep wanted to hear. After some back and forth it came down to, "well, you can opt out if you want to. But if you opt out of pickup for recycling, we're not going to pick up your regular trash either."

I don't remember if I blurted it out or not, but the next thought was, "okay, the choice is either be forced to pay more for the weekly service, or to get nothing."

Shortly afterward, the town forced the issue by closing all the drop zones and removing the bins.

I'm convinced it's a money grab.

I'll admit I'm tempted to cancel both services and just drop my stuff in the dumpster at work (like I've seen other employees do). It's not like I fill the cans each week -- in fact, our house would be okay if the pickup was once a month (except maybe for the stinking in the summer).

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
We recycle paper and metal. We no longer recycle plastic, and here's why:

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NLkfpjJoNkA" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

I saw that and have the same feelings. And even then, I'm not that religious about it. I suspect we're somewhat scammed.