Walking in the Rain, Counting the Bins
As I walked through my neighborhood on a rainy Monday morning, I counted:
12 overflowing recycling bins,
9 overflowing trash bins, and
at least four stacks of cardboard outside the bins.
Along the way, I closed half a dozen lids that the wind had blown open.
Near the end of my walk, I heard a rumbling behind me and turned to look. It was the recycling truck. I watched as the mechanical arm advanced toward a recycling bin, grasped it, and hinged upward to invert the bin and dump its contents into the truck bed.
The arm receded, and the truck moved to the next house to repeat the process. This time the driver emerged from the truck to grab a pile of soggy cardboard from the ground and heave it high up into the truck bed. Then he directed the truck to empty the bin.
I was curious—what was the driver going to do at the next house, where the excess cardboard was stacked on top of the recycling bin instead of next to it? He activated the mechanical arm, but when it raised the bin, all that cardboard fell off and scattered. Now the driver had to spend more time to gather it all by hand and toss it in.
In my city, cardboard that doesn’t fit inside the bins is indeed supposed to be placed alongside it. But that practice conflicts with the requirement to keep recyclables clean and dry. Did I mention that it was raining? I live in the Seattle area, where on any random Monday morning rain is likely most months of the year. Ideally, all cardboard should be flattened and placed inside the bin.
The excess cardboard is a symptom of a greater problem: too much packaging. The overflowing bins are a sign that many of my neighbors generate a lot of trash and recyclables. If your stuff doesn’t fit in the bin, something is wrong.
In my book Rethink the Bins I note that Americans generate between 4.5 and 8 pounds of household waste per person per day. That’s over 100 pounds per week for an average family! This is one place where being below average is a good thing.
On my walk, I peered into the not-quite-closed recycling bins to check if the contents belonged there. I saw items that did belong, like flattened cardboard boxes, papers, and plastic milk jugs. But I also saw nonrecyclable plastic—clamshells from tomatoes, netting from bags of oranges. Plastic bags, some that looked to be full of other stuff that the people thought was recyclable, peeked out from some bins.
Plastic bags are definitely not allowed. My neighbors probably don’t realize that those bags and their contents are headed for the landfill, never to be recycled.
Workers at the sorting facility, where the recycling truck goes once it is full, will pick large bags off the conveyor belt before they can clog up the machinery. They try to grab individual plastic grocery bags, too, but the belt moves fast and some of those get through. When I toured the facility in 2019, the tour guide told us that they must stop the machinery several times every day to extract plastic bags that catch in the gears.
When I see overflowing bins, I want to help my neighbors reduce their waste. The message is simple: buy less stuff, choose items with less packaging when possible, and sort trash and recyclables properly, following the guidelines in your city. Simple, however, does not necessarily mean easy.
The people who attend my webinars on recycling are already motivated to do their best to reduce waste. They want answers to “Is this type of plastic packaging recyclable?” (sorry to say, probably not) or “What can I do with old paint?” (drop-off sites exist in many areas).
How can I reach the people with the bins that don’t close? I’m not sure. They aren’t likely to register for recycling webinars. The garbage and recycling page on my city’s website contains plenty of information, but I’m sure that most residents have never visited the website.
If you’re reading this and agree that reducing waste and recycling properly are worth doing, I hope that you will share my words with your friends and neighbors.