At this point, "wondering" about this is willful ignorance. Municipal recycling programs in USA don't recycle much of anything. Valuable materials such as some metals don't make it into the blue bins; those are sold at actual recycling depots. Whatever is in the blue bins, is not recyclable in current economic conditions.
>Whatever is in the blue bins, is not recyclable in current economic conditions. //
Which is why you have local taxes, to cover such activities.
Personally I think we need to reverse the supply chain and require all shops to take back any packaging sold.
I'd love to see standardised reusable plastic cartons in supermarkets. And a heavy tax on transportation of mixed water - drink syrup is extremely cheap, we mix it with heavy water, wrap it in plastic and fill lorries with it; that's a massive waste. Anything with lots of water in should be mixed if at all possible at the delivery end. Baby steps, I know.
This isn't actually all that new, 25 years ago when I worked at a large Motorola facility, I was always amused when I worked late, which was often, of having the janitorial staff empty my wastebasket into the large bin they pushed around, and then dump the contents of the paper recycling basket into the same bin. It hasn't been economical to recycle paper waste streams in the US maybe ever.
When the whole Chinese banning recycling imports thing started, one of the few municipal recycling systems not affected was New York City, because they had taken the time to set up a full local supply chain for the recycling. About half of NYC's recycled paper gets turned into pizza boxes. https://citylimits.org/2019/09/17/other-cities-face-trash-cr...
"About half of NYC's recycled paper gets turned into pizza boxes."
That's not what the linked article says:
"The other 50 percent of the city’s paper waste is transferred to Pratt Industries’ paper mill on Staten Island, were much of the city’s waste paper is recycled into pizza boxes."
It doesn't say how much of the paper waste going into that mill is actually recycled, and it doesn't say how much of the portion that's recycled is recycled into pizza boxes.
Did you actually do the legwork to connect the actions of the janitor to company policy and the economics of recycling in the area?
Like, I would guess the janitor was just being lazy, and their actions provide little to no information about either the actual policy at the company or economics of recycling where it was located.
The substantial amount of recycled fiber in many products suggests that it isn't particularly uneconomic.
Lots of office workers had paper-only bins under their desks. Except, there was no place for janitors to put that paper, anywhere in or around the building. Just one big garbage dumpster. As someone else pointed out, we were also under massive time pressure.
Even if we had wanted to recycle the paper, there wasn't a way to do so unless we set up our whole own system, packed it into our personal vehicles every night and drove it to a recycling center miles away (all unpaid). Anyone who broached the subject was mocked.
Lazy, or rushed? The pressure on cleaning staff in many office buildings is significant, especially if they’re under contract at one of the major cleaning companies. Their itineraries are timed to the minute.
Is not recycleable for free. Always say that part. Because it can always be recycled for a little bit of money if we care a tenth as much as we pretend to.
Going significantly out of your way to get differently-packaged product could easily cost more than recycling it.
And if it's exceptionally difficult to recycle a certain kind of plastic into new plastic, then turn it into completely inert ash. Either way it's all hydrocarbons and you can convert any of those into a non-problem form.
