Bringing ‘purity’ to Toronto’s blue bins
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/04/13/bringing-purity-to-torontos-blue-bins.html
IMO there are four things needed to get recycling working correctly...
1) Do no rely on the public to know what is recyclable or not.
It’s not the citizens job to understand and follow the cities ever changing recycling rules. For example, who’d have known that the black plastic fast food containers we get from Swiss Chalet, marked #2 recycling are in fact not recyclable. If it’s metal, paper or plastic with a recycling symbol, it’s going in the blue bin. If that doesn’t work for the city, make it easier for the people, see #2.
2) Remove non-recyclables from the system
Do not allow, or financially disincentivize companies from producing, importing and selling products or food in non-recyclable packaging. This may require national or provincial legislation. Packaging stewardship programs can help, where manufacturers, importers and retailers can be fined for bringing in non-reclycable packaging materials.
3) Return to refillable, returnable beverage containers
The original recycling program that we still use for beer. Require returnable glass bottles with deposit charge for drinks. I was born in 1971, and never saw a problem returning my pop bottles. Financially disincentivize the use of both single use and refillable plastic bottles, charge the producers and retailers the true cost of their impact. Charge bottled water companies the true cost of taking our drinking water, thus reducing this silly use of plastic. This also removes a lot of plastic from the environment, and the recycling bins.
4) Require all fast food containers and coffee cups to be recyclable and charge a deposit on all.
If we can put a man on the moon, we can make a Tim Hortons cup that can be recycled. By putting a refundable deposit on all fast food containers this will force the restaurants to take ownership of their packaging, and will give the old Chinese ladies on my street rolly bin diving a new revenue stream. This leaves the question what to do with unmarked, containers and packaging, since who do you hold responsible and who do you return it to for refund.
Do all of the above. And recycling won’t be BS. Right now we’re just shipping it all to China, and treating their country like our garbage dump. It’s no wonder they finally said no.