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Guy at the city council meeting said recycling is pointless, and I can't stop thinking about it
He stood up during public comment in Columbus and said 90% of what we put in the bin ends up in a landfill anyway, then sat down. I looked it up after and in our region it's closer to 40%, but I still don't know what to tell people who bring up that number. Does anyone have a source that lays out real local recycling rates in plain language?
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fionamurphy5d ago
Oh man, my buddy Dave went down this exact rabbit hole last year after some guy at a cookout told him the same thing! He called our city's public works office and they actually mailed him a one page sheet with the real numbers for our area, and it was around 45% actually getting recycled, not 90% going to the dump. The big thing he learned is that "recycling rate" gets measured all different ways depending on who's counting, so the 90% guy was probably mixing up national stats or old data or just making it up. Dave started telling people the truth is it depends on your city and what you put in the bin, because greasy pizza boxes and plastic bags jam the machines and then whole loads get tossed. So the number isn't fixed, it's more like it depends on us doing it right. Tell people to call their own city office and ask for the diversion rate, that's the real term for it.
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