Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by mikepurvis on Monday July 15, 2019 @09:11AM (#20440424)

It boggles my mind that modern fast food restaurants don't have a clear board above the multi-receptacle trash area telling you which bin each single-use item they serve goes into.

I mean, maybe that's partly because it doesn't matter and in the end they're just combining it all and sending everything to landfill regardless. But still; they got the bins, how much harder can it be to put up a sign?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by greedo on Monday July 15, 2019 @11:50AM (#20441945)

Aren't most of the things sold by fast food restaurants contaminated and thus un-recyclable?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by mikepurvis on Monday July 15, 2019 @12:55PM (#20442693)

Probably, but in that case, they should be honest and just have a single receptacle.

OTOH, fast food joints are possibly one of the handful of places you could actually do recycling right, since you have a pretty uniform stream of items, thus limiting the need to sort. So instead of having a "recycling" bin, they could have a bin for plastic cutlery, and a bin for straws, and a bin for drink lids, with everything else going in a common trash.

Getting thousands of identical contaminated plastic forks that just need a wash before being melted down is probably a lot more appealing to a recycler than getting a bag that's a big jumble of contaminated junk.

[ Parent | on HN ]