I finally realized my recycling habits were actually making things worse

For like 5 years I was tossing soft plastics in the curbside bin, thinking I was doing good. Then a guy at the local transfer station in Austin told me they just get sent to landfill anyway because our facility can't process them. Anyone else find out they've been recycling wrong their whole life?

2 comments

2 Comments

lisa_murray8d ago

Oh wow, that's frustrating. So how do you even check what your local facility can actually handle? I tried looking up my city's recycling guidelines once and it was basically just a PDF from 2018 with like three bullet points. Did that Austin guy give you any tips on where to find reliable info or is it just a guessing game?

ryan_carr598d ago

At the Austin transfer station they told me to check what haulers like Waste Management actually process, since most cities just contract out and don't update their own guides. I started calling the local recycling center directly instead of trusting city websites, and found out half my stuff was going to the dump.