Reply #15

The city dump filled up years ago so now we have to export garbage. Because of this the city instituted a fairly aggressive recycling program. We're charged for trash pickup by the size of our garbage can. We use the smallest container, which is twenty gallons

We also get a regular sized container for recycling, and a jumbo sized container for yard waste.

At the transfer station the recycling gets dumped onto a conveyor belt and any stuff the automated sorting machines can't deal with is removed by hand. Sorting recycling is not the greatest job, but maybe better than picking strawberries.

We rarely fill the garbage can because most anything that's not sticky or gross is accepted for recycling -- dry cardboard and paper, glass and metal containers, metal scrap, and any plastic with a recycling triangle on it.

We compost all of our food waste, and much of our yard waste. Our garden and landscaping is organic. We only use the yard waste can for the more noxious weeds and woodier sorts of yard trimmings.

My wife is more obsessive about recycling than I am, but only slightly. I'll throw an entire paper container that's sticky in the garbage, but she'll tear off any part that's not sticky and put it in the recycling.

In my fantasy utopia everything could be composted. Things like cell phones and cameras would grow on trees and when they broke you'd toss them onto the compost heap along with the orange peels, apple cores, and other food waste.