Why you're recycling wrong

Key Takeaways

there is nothing like a hot cup of tea in the morning that is until I'm done and I have to decide what to do with my cup can I recycle it is it a trick question yeah this is a great question and I just figure you can recycle anything that's hardboard ask i can't recycle this [Music] knowing what you can and can't recycle isn't easy the rules depend on where you live and there are hundreds of products and materials where the rules aren't always clear I hear that that's not recyclable I don't know if that's like a legend an urban legend or something hate fruit towels my roommate and I actually have this discussion where I'm like I'll throw paper towels in there and she's like I don't think you can recycle then she'll pick them out like I don't know it's paper the confusion means that things that are actually garbage still end up in the recycling stream about 25% of what Americans try to recycle can't actually be recycled waste management experts say what's going on here is something called aspirational recycling when people are unsure if an item can be recycled they recycle it because it feels like the right thing to do and while our intentions are good this behavior isn't harmless even small amounts of contamination can turn entire halls of otherwise recyclable materials into trash and the problem has been growing the rate of recycling contamination more than doubled in the last decade so why is this happening well it's at least in part due to a major shift in how Americans recycled beginning in the 1990s and 2000's municipalities implemented single stream recycling programs paper metal plastic and glass no longer needed to be sorted they could all live in one bin communities quickly adopted the practice and by 2014 80% of all curbside recycling programs in the US were single-stream the problem is there's evidence that when we put all our recycling into one bin or more likely to throw trash in there along with it take to neighboring counties in Florida for example Palm Beach County where residents must priests or their recyclables had a contamination rate of only nine percent while Broward County's single stream program had a contamination rate of thirty percent single stream recycling takes the responsibility to sort off of the individual and shifts it to materials recovery facilities or Murph's where trash gets sorted from recycling by machines but also by workers who often have to remove waste by hand pizza boxes contaminated with grease electronics that aren't processed at standard recycling facilities even the likes of Christmas lights animal carcasses and bowling balls in Portland workers remove thousands of dirty diapers every month in a perfect world everyone would just know how to recycle correctly but short of that there's something we can all start doing differently right now unless you are absolutely sure don't recycle it in fact recycling education campaigns encourage the opposite when in doubt the best option may be to throw it out most people want to do the right thing and sometimes the way to be a good recycler is to throw stuff in the trash if you liked this video and want more like it we've launched a paid membership program on YouTube called the Fox video lab for monthly fees subscribers get access to DVD extras live cue days with creators and video recommendations you can go to box com slash join and be part of the video lab community see you there