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Dearborn, Mi has had mandatory recycling for most of the 20 years I've lived here. Recently the switched to giving us two 96 gallon containers: one for trash every week and one for recycling ever other week. We're doing our best to buy things in recyclable packaging. Typically the recyclable can is full every other week when they come:

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Here are the things that are recyclable here:


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In-the-bin.com has the following recycling facts posted:

Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 7,000 gallons of water!
Americans use more than 67 million tons of paper per year, or about 580 pounds per person.
Every day American businesses generate enough paper to circle the earth 20 times!
Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to burn a 100-watt bulb for almost four hours or run a television for three hours.
Making recycled paper instead of new paper uses 64 percent less energy and uses 58 percent less water.
Americans make more than 200 million tons of garbage each year, enough to fill Bush Stadium from top to bottom twice a day!
Post-consumer plastic bottle recycling has increased dramatically over the last ten years, from 234 million pounds in 1989 to over 1.5 billion pounds in 1999.
Americans throw out an average of 4.4 pounds of garbage per person per day.
Paper is the largest component of municipal garbage (by weight and volume). Paper recycled today will be back on the shelf in about 60 days.
Every Sunday, 500,000 trees are made into newspapers that are not recycled.
Every day, U.S. paper manufacturers recycle enough paper to fill a 15-mile long train of boxcars.
An aluminum can recycled today will be back on the shelf in about 80 days. Communities can approach http://www.in-the-bin.com to find out more

Good to see more municipal recycling.

Our trash collection is just bags, you aren't given a trash can, although we bought two to help keep the vermin out.

There's no municipal recycling collections here although there is a recycling center. Unfortunately, it's slightly out of the way, but not so bad if a trip's combined with a trip to the grocery store. Also, we only need to recycle every 3 weeks so it's not too bad.

The recycling center also doesn't take general plastics, it's #1 and #2 only so some plastic ends up in the regular trash.

One of the direct benefits of recycling for us is that we use fewer trash bags. Unfortunately, although I compost produce waste, I don't compost meat wastes so we often end up throwing out a stinking bag that's half full. If anybody can give any suggestions for eliminating food stink so we can reduce our bag use further I'd appreciate it.

Around here, they don't take ziploc bags or plastic bags from bread loaves, so I reuse them to enclose food waste. It eliminates the smell and possible insect attraction. For bits of uneaten moist pet food, I flush it down the toilet rather than place it in the trash bin, to eliminate additional solid waste that needs to go out for trash collection.

If the district in your area accepts these light plastic bags, you may need a more creative solution - whether it's reusing a few used ziploc bags to save a larger trash bag, or find another moisture-proof enclosure for the discarded scraps.

where i live now, the city (fairly rural) has a 3 tier recycling/trash system. we have the regular recycling of bottles, cans, paper, cardboard, etc.

we also get two trash cans, one being for organic recycling...things like tissues, boxes from frozen food, dryer lint, coffee grounds, food remnants. the other is for whatever is left, which is hopefully very little.

i think it's a pretty advanced program. i get a pick up every two weeks, and generally my bins are less than half full. i try not to use a whole lot of stuff. i use cloth grocery bags, but when i do get a plastic one, i keep it for used cat litter.

my trash bill is actually less because i do the organic recycling.

Our municipal garbage collection has a second recycling truck that comes by, taking newspaper and flyers, #1, #2 #4 and #5 plastics, cleaned out tin cans, thin and corrugated cardboard (large amounts of corrugated preferably bundled, photocopy paper and cleaned out glass jars.

One thing that bothers me, the local take-out food industry rely heavily on styrofoam containers. Nobody takes styrofoam. I emailed city hall once saying, why don't you make it a criteria of obtaining a take-out food business license that recyclable containers must be used. They responded with the usual "we'll for sure look into that"... yeah right!

Around Christmas we were downtown, had a lunch in a "food court". There is a disheartening amount of non-recyclable garbage, and about the same amount of equally disheartening recyclable garbage, all getting dumped.

Same thing at local movie theaters. Anything and everything just heading into the landfill bin. A few half-hearted notices to recyle, that some of their containers are sortable, but no follow through.

One thing that bothers me, the local take-out food industry rely heavily on styrofoam containers. Nobody takes styrofoam. I emailed city hall once saying, why don't you make it a criteria of obtaining a take-out food business license that recyclable containers must be used. They responded with the usual "we'll for sure look into that"... yeah right!

Around Christmas we were downtown, had a lunch in a "food court". There is a disheartening amount of non-recyclable garbage, and about the same amount of equally disheartening recyclable garbage, all getting dumped.

Same thing at local movie theaters. Anything and everything just heading into the landfill bin. A few half-hearted notices to recyle, that some of their containers are sortable, but no follow through.

Mendel, thanks for your recycling story. I agree on Styrofoam. I think regulation will be the only way to go. Make it against the law or financially not worth it to use.

Paul