What Actually Happens After Garbage Day?

A recycling coordinator answers your questions

My daughter Mary Katherine works as a recycling coordinator in Northern California. She spends the majority of her time helping businesses comply with SB 1383, California’s food scraps recovery law, which requires residents, businesses and organizations to separate organics from trash. Several months ago, I asked people on social media if they had any questions for MK. They had many! She answered most of them on Instagram Live, which I’ve lightly edited below for brevity.

How recycling works

Q: Why is this all so complicated?

MK: It shouldn't be this complicated but we have so many different types of packaging out there and no communication between the manufacturers of the packaging and the garbage companies that have to deal with it at the end of its life cycle. And a lot of packaging is just not recyclable at the end of its life. Multilayer packaging like a bubble wrap mailer is a good example. It's a layer of paper with a layer of plastic bubble wrap glued to it. To recycle that, you would have to separate the bubble wrap from the paper and who's going to do that? It’s so time consuming and there is no recycling market for the plastic bubble wrap.

Q: Please explain how recycling works as a market-based system.

MK: After the stuff is sorted, a baler machine crushes it into bales. If nobody wants to buy a bale and process it, it's not going to be recycled. There’s a market for only certain types of materials so that is why a lot of plastic is not getting recycled. Sometimes it's cheaper to just use virgin plastic.

Q: Why do some states have no bottle deposit?

MK: Some have passed legislation to force retailers to make consumers pay a deposit on beverage bottles or cans. Ontario, Canada, has a bottle deposit program for alcohol containers but not for soda cans or water bottles. In California, we have it for beverage bottles in general, including beer bottles and as of this year, wine bottles. Whether or not a specific region has a program like that depends on whether or not the government passed that legislation. The beverage industry pushes back against programs like bottle deposits because they think they increase prices and therefore will reduce sales.

Q: Do real people actually sort through the recycling?

MK: Yes. Everything that gets put into the recycling truck gets dumped out at facility. It goes down a series of conveyor belts and through a bunch of machinery that sort it. There are also people working on the line pulling out garbage. People put a lot of garbage in recycling bins unfortunately so when the workers on the machines see things like a plastic container that still has a lot of food inside, they just take it off the line and send it to the landfill. Putting things like syringes and sharp objects into recycling has a real-life impact. Real people are sorting that stuff.

Q: Will we run out of space in the landfills?

MK: If we continue to live as a throwaway society, we probably will run out of space.

Q: How are landfills created?

MK: Back in the day, we didn't have landfills like today. People just dug a hole in the ground and threw the garbage in it. Sometimes they would burn the garbage in burn dumps. In many parts of the world, that's how waste is still managed. In the US and Canada, starting in the 70s and the 80s, engineers put a liner in the excavation area. When it rains, the water filters through the trash and becomes this toxic liquid called leachate coming out of the bottom [of the landfill] that can pollute the groundwater. Modern landfills have pipes to capture the leachate and send it off to be treated. Other pipes capture methane gas created by food decomposing in the landfill. When a landfill is closed, they put a cap on it and seed the area with grass and they monitor the wells for methane gas for years.

Goats trim the grass at a closed landfill in Northern California

Q: How was the Pacific garbage patch created?

MK: The Pacific Garbage Patch is like a gyre where ocean currents converge and the garbage just kind of stays floating in the area. A lot of it sinks so we don't really know how much plastic is on the ocean floor.

Q: How did that plastic get there?

MK: A lot of it comes from areas of the world that don't have formalized waste collection. In California, we have bins that we put out on the curb, we put our trash in them, the truck comes and takes it away and it gets sent to a landfill or it gets taken to a sorting facility for recycling. There's a system in place to manage the trash, to keep most of it from escaping into the environment. Some of that trash gets shipped overseas and is called recycling—this isn't recycling. Some of that ends up in the ocean.

AM: But the West created the problem. The West has pushed all the plastic packaging on countries that don't have the infrastructure [to manage it].

What is recyclable (or not)

Q: Does anything actually get recycled or is it just optics?

MK: Some stuff actually does get recycled. Recycling is not as good as it could be because of issues with contamination. And a lot of products being manufactured have no end market whatsoever but something like an aluminum can, yes that is recycled. People shouldn't throw something like that into the garbage. I think there's a lot of negative press about recycling because of all the issues with recycling plastic. The rates for recycling plastic are really low [5 to 6 percent in the US]. Some stuff does get recycled, like soda bottles, but most plastic is not getting recycled.

Also, when plastic does get recycled, the process releases microplastics [into the environment]. And plastic can't be continually recycled. Glass and metal can be recycled indefinitely, paper can be recycled multiple times.

Q: What’s the impact of wishcycling on resources?

MK: It makes the recycling process more complicated. Depending on the type of material, it can spoil other things that could have been recycled otherwise. If you put a bunch of food in the recycling or a bucket of grease, that whole stack of material would need to be sent to the landfill. Plastic bags get tangled in the machinery that's designed to sort our recyclables and if the tangling is bad enough, they have to shut down the sorting line and cut out all the plastic. Hazardous waste going into recycling could cause a facility fire. People could be injured or even killed. If you don't know where something goes, check with your city. They probably have put together a resource to educate people on what goes where.

Q: Are milk cartons recyclable?

MK: Check with your city because it depends. In the city I live in, I cannot put milk cartons or soup cartons or any type of aseptic packaging in the recycling. But my mom can put them in the recycling where she lives. So if you don't know where something goes, always check locally. Your city might have an app to search what goes where by your zip code. My city has that app and so does my mom’s city.

Q: How does the waste management facility know if plastics are compostable or not?

MK: That's tricky. There isn't really a good way to tell the difference. A lot of regular plastic made from oil is dyed green and people look at it and think oh that must be compostable plastic. A composting facility typically assumes all the incoming stuff that looks like plastic is plastic. At least in our area in California, the facilities don't want those in the compost.

In a regular recycling bin, compostable plastics contaminate it. [Compostable plastic and regular plastic] are processed at different temperatures, they're made of different materials. Don’t put compostable plastic into the regular recycling bin.

Q: So what happens to that non-compostable plastic?

MK: Usually it goes in the garbage. Most cities don't take compostable plastic like cold cups used for iced tea or iced coffee and drinks like that. The majority of composting programs don't accept those.

Q: What isn’t recyclable that people try to recycle?

MK: Well this doesn't happen often but today I saw a toilet in the [recycling] bin. Please don't put a toilet in the bin! It's not recyclable.

Plastic bags. Styrofoam is a big one. In most areas, that's not recyclable. In general, you find a lot of fast food packaging—a hamburger wrapper covered in mustard and sauce and all crumpled up. Diapers. Food. I think plastic film is probably the biggest one because most areas don't recycle plastic bags.

People often throw a box in the recycling, like a box of cookies, with a plastic tray inside it, the box is wrapped in plastic. In order to recycle the box, you need to remove the plastic tray and wrapper and throw those away because those types of plastic aren’t recyclable in the vast majority of recycling programs. If you buy something in a box that has Styrofoam in it, you have to take the Styrofoam out and break down the box in order to recycle it. Breaking down boxes saves space in recycling bins and so I always encourage people to break down their boxes.

Q: Where does hazardous waste go after you drop it off?

MK: I'm not a hazardous waste expert but a lot of cities have programs like a drop off day or they have a permanent facility where you can drop off hazardous waste. Some types of hazardous waste are recycled and some stuff has to be incinerated in order to destroy its hazardous properties. Some of it has to go to hazardous waste landfills and I don't want to speak too much to that because I'm not a hazardous waste expert.

Q: Is it really that bad to put food in the garbage bin?

MK: We do discourage people from doing that. If you live in an area that has a dedicated food waste collection program then I would definitely suggest utilizing that program to keep the food waste separate from your regular garbage. When we send food scraps to the landfill, they consume valuable landfill space—landfills have to be closed when they get full. Food decomposing in the landfill creates methane emissions, a greenhouse gas. Also, food waste can be turned into compost which is a resource that we can use. If you have a yard, if you like gardening, backyard composting can be a great way to create a soil amendment for your garden.

How to recycle (or not)

Q: Do recycling companies require shipping labels to be taken off of cardboard boxes?

MK: No they deal with that down the line.

AM: I read that all the cardboard goes into this sludge and the plastic tape and labels are strained out so you don't have to rip all of those off.

Q: Do cereal boxes need to have the plastic pouch removed?

MK: Yes.

Q: Does plastic we put in the bin have to be perfectly clean? (This cleanliness question came up over and over.)

MK: People put lot of stuff in the recycling that can't be recycled because it's too dirty. We get peanut butter jars filled with peanut butter, mayonnaise jars filled with mayonnaise.

That food isn’t cleaned out at the facility. The jars get pulled off the line and sent to landfill. So do your best to scrape out the food. It doesn't have to be 100% spotless. When I'm washing my dishes I put metal cans and plastic containers in my sink to catch the water that I'm using already and I kind of shake stuff out and let it dry and that's how I make sure that my recyclables are clean enough to go into the bin.

Q: What does the triangle mean on plastic bags? What are the numbers on plastic bottles? Do they indicate how many times it's recycled?

MK: The number inside the chasing arrows symbol is a resin identification code. It tells you what type of plastic it is. It is different from the recycling symbol.

Q: Should we just throw plastics in the garbage?

MK: You should always check locally [which items are accepted] but a lot of plastic that people put into the recycling is actually not recyclable and I see a lot of things like chip bags and candy wrappers in there. That stuff is not recyclable. Number sevens are not recyclable.

Q: How does one become a waste management professional? (Several people asked.)

MK: It's not glamorous but I think it's a great career choice. I really enjoy it. I did my undergrad in environmental governance and then a certificate at Fleming College in Ontario, Canada, for sustainable waste management. That prepared me to get into a waste management career but most people in waste management don't have a certification. If it’s something that you're interested in and you're just out of college, see if you can get an internship with a garbage company or with your county’s waste management department or your city’s solid waste management department. Sometimes you’ve got to look in dumpsters and that's not glamorous and I don’t get my nails done. So if you like having long nails then maybe garbage is just not the right fit. I really enjoy it and it’s helping [address the garbage crisis].

AM: In an ideal world, there would be no need for your job.

MK: Well, yeah, but we're not going to get there overnight. There's so much garbage generated every day and it feels like the majority of the public is just not aware of the problem because it's out of sight, out of mind. You put the bin out on the curb, the truck comes around, dumps it and then you just don't think about it again. It goes away. A whole thing goes on in the back end to process it and send it to the landfill or recycling or compost. I would love to see more outreach to the public that says, “Hey, this is what happens.”

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