Originally posted by WPRESTO Long ago our town became a test site to see whether people would actually sort material to be recycled. There are the following crushers or disposal bins: 1) cardboard and brown paper (but no pizza boxes); 2) plastic (but no petroleum/oil containers; no lids; no containers more than one gallon, no Styrofoam or similar foam plastic); 3) plain paper, including books; 4) metal cans, bottles, glass of all kinds, and curiously, milk cartons; 5) take-it-or-leave-it shed; 6) big tank for waste motor oil; 7) brush, branches, leaves and similar yard waste; 8) "white goods" including TV's; extra fees for some articles (e.g. CRT or refrigerant); 9) small bins for several different kinds of batteries; 10) big bin for large metal items such as bed springs, old lawnmowers, metal shelving, old metal fence posts, etc.; 11) large bin for waste lumber, old furniture, mattresses, etc (extra fee for some items); 12) garbage = most everything else. One thing the town does not have that an adjacent town does is a bin for Styrofoam. Has the experiment worked? Pretty well I think but sometimes one wonders. Plastic recycling has gone sour now that China is not taking it. I don't know what happens to the plastic that goes into that crusher but I fear it now ends up either in an incinerator or a landfill with the mixed garbage.
Yikes! That’s complicated. At our drop-pff site - the one open to everyone - there are bins for cardboard, any kind of paper, three colors of glass 9(clear, brown, green), and any recyclable plastic.
Anything large (white goods and anything else like furniture and mattresses) we can arrange a large item pickup for $65. You get three lifts of the traditional trash truck. The fourth lift costs another $65.
Surprisingly, people generally behave. I think paying for the service makes people more responsible. If it was free, like in most other nearby municipalities, no one bothers to wash out their cans, take off the bottle tops or separate the trash and other stuff.