post consumer recycling

[Fritz]

does your community/town/city have or require recycling for paper/plastic/metal/glass?
Do you participate?
What would you say your neighbors level of participation is?

[threeprong]

We have the gree trash cans.. and the brown recycling cans.. ( the kind the truck with the robot arm grabs.


I'd say participation is high as you don't have to sort it yourself.

This is in a town of 250k.


3p

[Acer]

We have curbside for all those things, except it's just newspaper, not office paper or cardboard, unfortunately. I take those to work to recycle.

I think most of our neighbors put out the bins every trash day. I don't know how diligent they are about putting everything possible in them.

[Chupa Chupa]

1) Yes and No. It can only recycle plastic bottle w/ a neck. It will take non-gloss paper and glass.

2) Participation is semi-mandatory. For those that have private trash pick-up they must also have a recycling pick-up.

3) Personally, I recycle my newspaper only. I don't have time to crush cans or figure out what paper can be recycled and what can't be etc.

[mattkime]

Here in NYC recycling is mandatory but like anything else for the public good, efforts seem to come up pretty short. This is in comparison to what I remember growing up in Wisconsin.

[OWC Jamie]

this year we went to paying for each bag of non-recyclable trash.
$1.00 for each 10 gallon bag, $2.00 for each 30 gallon bag.
paper and cardboard in one blue box seperated from the glass, plastic, al and tin in another blue box.
Also a once a year fee of $95.00 for recycling.
(opting out of the program requires proof that you are paying a private hauler)

Before the pay to toss program, as driving down the street on trash day, about one in five houses put out one blue box of recyclables and three or four bags of trash.
Post pay to toss: Every house has two (or more) boxes of recyclables and rarely more than one bag of trash.
Amazing difference.

It now often takes me three weeks to fill a small kitchen garbage basket with little more than wrappers. A roll of 100 trash bags may last me 5 years. :-)

[AlphaDog]

My observations within my neighborhood indicate everybody is pretty proactive in recycling. We do miss having curbside recycling for glass, but that was eliminated when the refuse company went to automated service. The tradeoff is that we can now recycle plastics, which hadn't previously been allowed. There are a number of conveniently located drop off sites for the glass, and those sites also include large receptacles for all other recyclable items, including large amounts of cardboard that won't fit in the curbside containers. Recycling has been popular in this area overall for a very long time, and I think most people are just accustomed to doing it.

[raz]

Our section of town just increased the recyclables (from plastic 1-5 and newspaper) to include all paper and cardboard - so junk mail goes right into the blue bags.

Combine that with the compost bin under the deck, and our house now produces more recyclables than non.

Participation on the block varies, but most houses have at least one small blue bag out. I suspect a lot of them didn't read the policy change letter.

[Fritz]

here in the burbs of LI, we have town (not enforced) recycling.
Curbside for paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, cans.
At a recycle location in town you can also bring your batts, grass, appliances, some styro and electronics.
Participation in my neighborhood seems low to me. We're down to a grocery store bag of trash 2 days a week. There's only one outlet for recycling plastic bags though, one local grocery store.

I held onto my old IIci until 2 years ago to recycle it locally. My spouse really loved tripping over it for 5 years. I was particularly happy to drop our 20 year old TV when it passed on.

[cbelt3]

Our town did recycling (pickup) then canceled it when the price of recycle raw materials crashed Then picked it up again as a paid service. Most of the households dropped it then, but I picked it up. But my kids had gotten in the habit of not recycling again. The main key is capturing the waste early in the cycle- in other words I put a 'recycle' trash can in the kitchen next to the main one, and harras and encourage until all recyclable stuff goes in there. I'm thinking about giving one of my two big green 50 gal 'dumpster' type cans back. We have only put out one can since we got recycling going again.

People with pickups go around every trash night and take all the metal and anything of marginal value off the curb. We know to not park lawn mowers or bicycles in the front yard- they disappear.