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My uncle's fire pit question made me rethink how I sort my recycling
We were sitting at his place in Toledo last weekend and he asked why I bother rinsing out jars since the plant probably throws half of it away anyway. At first I got defensive, but then I looked it up and found out my county's single-stream setup rejects around 22% of what people put in the bin. That changed how I treat the whole process now. Have any of you ever checked your local facility's actual contamination rate?
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finley9394d ago
Man, I gotta disagree with you on this one. That 22% number sounds bad but a lot of that stuff gets rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with food residue, like plastic bags tangling up the sorting machines or people tossing in stuff that was never recyclable in the first place. I toured the facility in my city last year and the guy there said rinsed jars actually sell for more to the buyers who turn them into new glass, so the rinse is not wasted effort at all. Plus if your jar is clean you can skip a step later, like when my mom used to save salsa jars for storing screws in the garage. The real fix is learning what your county actually takes, not giving up on the whole thing.
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