Not everywhere recycles cans?

[cwgii]

Just returned from new Orleans. Insane the amount of cans and plastic in the garbage. Lots of street people, none picking up stuff. What is up with that.

[smackvay]

Just returned from new Orleans. Insane the amount of cans and plastic in the garbage. Lots of street people, none picking up stuff. What is up with that.

Lots of lazy people

[everything]

You don't know if they have a sorting center for certain garbage pickups. We have 3rd party garbage collections contracted with the city.
They have a big sorting facility, how much they sort and how well I do not know. My guess is they pay per landfill trip/dump so why throw out a revenue stream. I tend to believe they filter more recyclables out than our city does because I asked the city and they told me last time the only thing they want is cardboard, the rest goes to landfill and they don't sort. Sure, they expect us to pre-sort and have two dumpsters, recycle and garbage. But, what goes into the garbage amazes me.

It's only in the last few years our city even invested in a recycling building that is present at the landfill, one the landfill was full they went uhh, all this carpeting, flooring, plastic, these things tend to fill the landfill up, and are being more pro-active, barely.

[Dr. Cadmium]

LA does not have a bottle deposit, and the local market for recyclable materials is not as developed.

In CT/NY/MA, if cans and bottles have a deposit and they aren't damaged they will get picked up by canners who redeem them. Note that yesterday I was in RI, which does not have a bottle deposit law and the amount of roadside beverage container trash is much higher.

However, the northeastern part of the country scrapyards do not pay a premium for cans (UBC), so they just go in with regular mixed aluminum. At $0.32/lb right now near me that works out to $0.01 for each damaged or non-redeemable can.

Most areas of the country do not have buyers for small quantities of plastic or glass.