Our "Sorted" Past

Recycling Reviewed, part 1

Recycling has been around in some form as long as any of us can remember. We took glass and plastic bottles back to the grocery store for the deposit and we collected aluminum cans to take to the scrap yard for a little pocket change. We even understood the importance of repurposing items for other uses than their original intended use, which is why most of our parents had a bird feeder made from an old milk jug or a paper mache picture frame made from cardboard and newspapers.

Although the idea of recycling still intrigues people and many more of us see the increasing importance of keeping as much as we can from being taken to the landfill, the methods available to us for residential recycling are very different and, in some cases, can be controversial.

The recycling options we have available to us today include sorting each type of recycling material into different bins, putting all of the recycling into one bag to be picked up by “one truck” ...which will be revisited in Recycling Reviewed, part 2, and the convenient process of “Single Stream” recycling which the Waste-Away Group adopted in 2009.  

If you have ever seen the recycling truck pick up your recycling, it all gets dumped into one truck....a Recycling truck to be exact, but I digress. Years ago my husband and I sorted all of our recyclables into separate containers like the old system we were used to, only to watch the recycling driver dump each container into the same compartment in the truck! We looked at each other in sheer amazement. It was then that we were introduced to "Single Stream" recycling. 

This extremely convenient process allows recycling customers to put all of their unsorted, unbagged recyclables into the same container loose for it to be picked up and taken to Recycling Works to be sorted--some by hand, and some by their state-of-the-art machines. Can you imagine one of the machines is named “The Green Eye”? This and many other components make it not only a convenient, easy way to recycle, but help control costs since Waste-Away Group is able to more quickly and efficiently service containers when it all goes into the same compartment of the truck....a Recycling truck....(have I already said that?)

The common goal, however, is for as much material as possible to be recycled instead of reaching the landfill--which, again, will be addressed in Recycling Reviewed, part 2. So in thinking about the effective, efficient, and successful process of “Single Stream” recycling offered by Waste-Away Group, simply remember that the old methods of keeping different types of recyclables in different bins is certainly our “sorted” past.