CONFUSION AT THE RECYCLING CENTER

I was a Sesame Street kid. I remember when they toured LIVE and came to the Bergen Mall in NJ. All my little friends and I wanted to know where Mr. Hooper was. Sadly, he had just passed away....

My trip to the recycle center today got me thinking about Sesame Street. And then, well then I got suspicious.




It just doesn't seem possible that something so easy could be working...

Let me explain:

I took a car load of recyclables to the Fairfax County Recycle Center (Ben's county -- it was mostly his stuff.) Basically there is one bin for almost all paper goods like cardboard, chipboard, newspaper, junk mail, catalogs, magazines, etc (food stained paper products a no-go). And then there was a bin for the various glass, cans, and plastic. That's it -- you basically just have to sort into 2 piles.

Meanwhile...back north, at the PA recycle center that I go to a lot (up there, the garbage collection is not covered in your taxes, so you have to pay a private company to pick it up. The more they pick up, the more you pay ... a great motivator to get folks to recycle more), I have to sort the recyclables into some 10 categories: clear glass, green glass, brown glass, #1 plastic, #2 plastic, cardboard, chipboard (think cereal box), newspaper, all other paper, and then, finally, cans.

Why the difference? I get suspicious of the recycling places that mix almost everything together because I wonder - who is doing the sorting? Are they even sorting it at all? Is it possible to melt all the plastics, cans AND GLASS together to make something useful? Why not have the people bringing those products at least PRE SORT them? I guess I carry suspicions because I remember seeing a story once about a community that was supposedly "recycling". BUT, when the trucks came at night to pick up the curb side recyclables, it turns out, they were just mixing it in with the garbage!! With the BIG PUSH for everyone to go green (have you noticed how "in" it is right now to be green???) I wonder if all the effort is really taking shape, or is it a matter of it just "feeling good" to say we're going green. I hope going green isn't just a fad...



Any recycling experts out there? I am thinking of the Sesame Street song that I used to dance to in my Grandma's house "What about garbage? Where does it go? What if you could follow it? Where would you go?"