Name: Eileen B
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Why do most garbage dumps not separate recyclable from regular garbage?
Replies:
It is very expensive to pay someone to do it or to invent, build, or buy a
machine to do it. Therefore, dumps will not do it unless the price of the
recycled materials rises high enough to offset the cost of separating the
materials. Most successful recycling operations today use "source
separation," which means that people separate their own garbage and put it in
separate containers. That way, the labor cost is spread out very broadly
among thousands of people, so that the cost to each person is very small (it
takes practically no effort at all to put cans in one box, jars in another,
paper in another, and garbage in another) and the cost to the dump operators
and trash haulers is practically zero. If everybody cooperates then everybody
wins.
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