My city started doing a similar thing. Their contracted recycling plants started rejecting the truck loads because they were seeing less than 40% recyclable content in the trucks. Lots of people overestimate how much of their trash is recyclable, and over-utilize the recycling bin.
Apparently the recycling plants will accept as low as 50% recyclable content in the load, anything under that for a prolonged period, they start rejecting the loads.
So for a year our city was just taking the recycling bin loads to the landfill. Years ago most cities could just sell it directly to China, ship it over on enormous garbage boats, but even China has stopped accepting our nonsense.
Our city had to do a big re-education campaign, and send out new stickers for the bin lids, to get residents to put only recyclable things in the recycle bins.
My city started doing a similar thing. Their contracted recycling plants started rejecting the truck loads because they were seeing less than 40% recyclable content in the trucks. Lots of people overestimate how much of their trash is recyclable, and over-utilize the recycling bin.
Apparently the recycling plants will accept as low as 50% recyclable content in the load, anything under that for a prolonged period, they start rejecting the loads.
So for a year our city was just taking the recycling bin loads to the landfill. Years ago most cities could just sell it directly to China, ship it over on enormous garbage boats, but even China has stopped accepting our nonsense.
Our city had to do a big re-education campaign, and send out new stickers for the bin lids, to get residents to put only recyclable things in the recycle bins.