I stood in line at a Des Moines recycling center in 2019 and watched a guy pull 40 pounds of pizza boxes out of the bins | Climate Action - Opinions Matter
I stood in line at a Des Moines recycling center in 2019 and watched a guy pull 40 pounds of pizza boxes out of the bins
I was dropping off a truckload of cardboard from a move and this worker spent 10 minutes pulling greasy boxes out one by one, telling me the whole load would get tossed if too much of that stuff was mixed in. That stuck with me more than any article about carbon footprints ever did. Now my family keeps a separate bin just for soiled paper and we compost what we can out back, and our actual landfill trash dropped from about 3 bags a week to one. Anyone else have a moment like that where a random person at a drop-off spot totally changed how your household sorts stuff?
My aunt worked at a transfer station years ago and she told me the same thing about greasy cardboard ruining whole batches of recycling. Sort of wild how one guy doing his job can teach you more than a whole documentary. Keeping the greasy stuff separate is such a small habit but it clearly adds up.