Yeah, we’re not nearly that fancy. Here’s what we have:

• blue bin - all recyclables: plastic (no bags or styrofoam), paper, cardboard, aluminum cans; must be clean
• black bin - everything else; I’ll even put in grass clippings, rocks, disassembled furniture, etc

If you want to recycle glass, plastic bags, batteries, light bulbs, etc, you need to find a drop-off bin, which are relatively uncommon (plastic bag dropoff is more common now). Target is my go-to since they have the bins I need the most (glass, plastic bags), but they don’t take light bulbs or alkaline batteries. Since there are no fines for throwing stuff in the trash that shouldn’t go there and recycling bins are inconvenient, most don’t bother (and many don’t pay for the recycling bin). I’ve seen clean cardboard, batteries, and aluminum cans in the trash, and it bothers me to no end.

Black bin goes to the street every week, blue bin goes every other week. Blue bin allegedly gets sorted at the facility, the black bin is dumped straight to the landfill. There’s a weight limit for garbage, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting fined for it, and I’ve certainly gone over a few times (see: rocks).

My city has 35k people, and the larger metro area has over a half million. So we’re a medium sized metro area, with a mix of farms and high tech business areas, with two major universities. There’s no reason we can’t be better about recycling…