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Dear Umbra,

Trying

Dearest Trying,

Thank you for trying, Trying. I can't give you a simple answer, but I can encourage you to continue asking good questions.

The country is riddled with recycling microclimates, I'm sorry to tell you. Not only is one city's garbage another city's recycling, but your town could change its tune tonight and you could wake tomorrow in the world of All Bottle recycling. No universal rules apply — the only "one, two, threes" are on the bottles — but perhaps if I explain why it will ease your troubled mind.

City (or town, or county) recyclables are gathered up, sorted, and sold as reusable material. Cities want to design a system that diverts easily re-sellable materials out of the trash stream, provides a good service for residents, and, if all goes well, breaks even.

A material is re-sellable based on market forces related to demand and volume. For example, aluminum is in high demand, and beer cans are frequently emptied by thirsty townspeople, so towns have no trouble wrangling enough beer cans to sell. In contrast, the folks at GreenDisk told me that it takes about 40,000 to 44,000 pounds (!) of compact discs to make one standard container of shredded, sellable plastic — that’s around 1.2 million CDs. So it's not worth any city's while to pick up discarded Bon Jovi albums, as they can't get enough volume in one swoop to make their money back.

Your city only asks for recyclables that are used in high amounts, recycled in high amounts, and easy to re-sell. I’m guessing you can recycle #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) bottles: these are common hard plastics that can be shredded and transformed into benches and such. Any plastic that would disintegrate when shredded probably can’t be recycled in your town — takeout food clamshells spring to mind. Paper that is colored (magazines) or coated (milk bottles, freezer boxes) also tends to be less popular. Green glass is sometimes passed over because it can discolor new batches of brown or clear glass. The reasons are legion, and vary from city to city.

So I guess the answer to your question is: yes, it is complicated. You'll have to keep spending quality time with your recycling, getting a feel for its varieties and complexities, until you intuitively know whether or not its future lies in the landfill.

Practically,

Umbra

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