In Love With Single-Stream Recycling

Single-stream recycling may be the greatest civic service improvement since curbside trash pickup.

My town recently switched over to single stream and it makes for incredibly convenient and responsible disposal of all the recyclable waste coming out of my house.  Single stream recycling works like this:

Each household gets a 50 gallon barrel like the one pictured here.   All of your glass, aluminum, cardboard, plastic (#’s 1 through 5), and box-board can be tossed into the bin.   They are separated after pickup at a processing center.  Pickup in my town is once every 2 weeks.

This system is a tremendous improvement over the old days, when each house was expected to separate cans and glass, plastic and paper, and when corrugated cardboard needed to be flattened and bound before being dropped curbside. 

In addition to the convenience factor, single-stream has illuminated for me some interesting facts about the waste produced by my household.  I have a family of five, with 3 young children.  Conventional wisdom says that my family can be expected to produce a mountain of garbage every week, but not so.   With a little diligence, especially around breaking and flattening every ubiquitous empty box-board, we actually produce less than 3 bags of real garbage a week.   And much of that is bio-degradable food prep waste and wastepaper.  

In fact, we’re filling up the recycle barrel faster than once every two weeks.  Meanwhile the 50-gallon garbage bin is never more than half full when it’s picked up weekly.