Re:Many of the clothes we donate to charity end up dumped in...
by tablespoon on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @02:13PM
(#28213042)
> The increased cost aspect is interesting, and is something I've recently learned about. Fortunately our local goodwill is very active in pre-screening items when you drop off so I don't feel a huge need to get into the weeds with it.
So they're paying some dude to pre-screen instead of paying a larger trash bill. It's still a cost to them. If people were a little more conscientious, those costs could be eliminated.
> But then that makes recycling that much less impactful as well. I don't know what the right answer is here other than we need to improve the sorting/processing to avoid consumers needing to understand the intricacies.
Those intricacies are not hard to learn, and the improvements you seek are probably a lot harder than you or I realize.
For recycling, it sounds more and more like our current systems just aren't well designed. If there is so much incidental complexity downstream that can actually ruin the recycleability of other items, we as consumers should aggressively under-recycle. But then that makes recycling that much less impactful as well. I don't know what the right answer is here other than we need to improve the sorting/processing to avoid consumers needing to understand the intricacies.