Recycling Education

I was out in the materials recovery facility trying to get some action shots as the single-stream material was being processed. It is always good to have visuals as you speak about how the material is handled to help everyone understand how we process your recyclables.  As I walked to the loading spot I passed overflowing barrels  - they caught my attention because they weren't going to look great in the video I was trying to capture. 

I paused in the feed area waiting for a large 100-yarder to empty the community's single stream so I could follow it as it was loaded and began the sorting process. As I waited the line stopped once, twice, and then again. I turned to see why it kept stopping and the team was expediently working together to scoop a shrub off of the line including branches, leaves, and dirt. 

It was at that moment I decided it was more important to cover the "ugly" things I didn't initially want to capture than the process itself. 

The overflowing barrels were empty at the start of the shift and emptied again at the 9:00 am break, it was 11:18. The first sorting station is in charge of getting out the blatant offenders; they're also there to try and limit the exposure those contaminants will have on the clean material. They are charged with opening bags, removing contamination, and any large items (plastic or metal). To be clear, nearly all programs state that recyclables should not be bagged, yet we have a team dedicated to trying to open them. At times, the amount of bags is so great that in order to keep the system moving, full bags will be thrown away. 

Next to the main sorting bins, there were three barrels; one for metal, wood, and garbage - these barrels weren't large enough to contain everything they were pulling out. 

I am willing to concede that metal is sometimes confusing - you know it is recyclable and without knowing exactly how it's handled it seems logical that you'd put that in the single stream bin for recycling. For the record - don't, do not place any metal in your single stream except aluminum and tin cans (that is all the process is really set up to handle). 

 As for the other items that are constantly contaminating the material, I really have no explanation. As I started to photograph the items some of the team members told me that I missed the 8x10 rug and the queen-sized mattress. Lucky for me, I didn't miss the tire (oh, and it's a big one), the mini refrigerator, the plywood, the pile of shoes, bricks, rocks, or the barrels filled with other items that should've never been placed in any recycling bin. So, as we mull over how to better educate on recycling I'm left wondering if education is really the largest problem that faces recycling. It's not, in my opinion, but the bigger question is how we fix it. We can target education (we have been for quite a long time now) but how do we make people care? This isn't a hypothetical question, we would love your feedback, please!!