i don't think that raleigh recycles plastic bags if you put them in the bins...do they? i've been gathering them up every couple of months (because, by and large, we use reusable bags for our groceries and are only left with bags from bread, cereal, etc)

anyway, we generate significantly more recyclable materials than trash...juice bottles, milk jugs, cardboard/paperboard, newspapers, cans (drink and from cooking), etc...i don't take my trash to the curb but once a month because we simply don't fill it very often, but recycling is weekly

i'm stoked

6/12/2010 8:20:54 AM

agreed. same for me. I couldn't for the life of me think of what we recycle (brain fart, oh well), but yeah, my coffee habit means I recycle a good bit of milk jugs, etc.

now if they'll start recycling food waste, that'd be awesome.

6/13/2010 11:13:40 AM

ew

6/13/2010 11:15:09 AM

i have a decent compost pile in back and so far it works as its supposed to (no smell)...what i need is a better composting container for inside since the one i use now is clear and you can see all the grossness

6/13/2010 11:26:04 AM

^ I bought a small stainless steel trash can with the foot lever on it. Works great for food scraps you want to compost and it matches my bigger stainless steel trash can for regular trash.

6/13/2010 11:29:53 AM

recycling food waste is not as nasty as you'd think. just a brief smell when you dump your food in the bins. the end.

dunno what they actually do with it.

6/13/2010 11:37:34 AM

municipal composting

6/13/2010 6:11:49 PM

^^^^

Got this with a gift card from crate and barrel. Definitely does a much better job of trapping odors than any of the other containers we tried.

http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=754&f=29452

6/13/2010 6:23:52 PM

Vermiculture done properly doesn't smell -- and can even be indoors...










[Edited on June 15, 2010 at 4:25 AM. Reason : ]

6/15/2010 4:24:20 AM

i'll post a picture of the modified oil drum in which i burn all my trash next time i'm home

just for you hippies

6/15/2010 7:42:10 AM

i can't wait for this new bin... i've got so much cardboard going in and out of the house, the little green box just ain't cutting it

6/15/2010 9:11:26 AM

but WHEN will i get my bin?

6/15/2010 9:15:03 AM

haha yeah i don't know either... they sent me a card ad were like

UR GETTIN A BIN, GUESS WHEN?

6/15/2010 9:21:00 AM

My household probably has twice the volume of recycleables compared to trash on a weekly basis. Cardboard food boxes, food cans, glass jars, beer cans, beer bottles, wine bottles, milk jugs, etc. Our recycling bin is overflowing every week and sometimes we toss some stuff into the trash can b/c there's no where else to put it. Can't wait to get these new recycling carts!

6/15/2010 9:23:04 AM

Epic

Slow

Response

6/15/2010 10:02:10 AM

I have 2 recycling bins, both of which are overflowing at the end of the week. We usually only make one bag of trash per week though.

I ended up keeping both my bins. They're in the garage that accesses to the kitchen so it's super easy to open the door and toss the recyclables in them as you go. I parked the new cart next to the trash can, but when trash day comes I wheel it around to the garage door, dump the two bins in it, and wheel it to the street. Not a bad system at all.

6/15/2010 10:31:38 AM

i couldn't tell you the last time filled even 1/4 of our trash bin in a week

6/15/2010 10:42:54 AM

Quote :

"Our recycling bin is overflowing every week and sometimes we toss some stuff into the trash can b/c there's no where else to put it."

Really?
REALLY?!?
What...is your house 100 square feet?

6/15/2010 10:45:17 AM

what i want to know is, are the containers made from recycled plastic?

6/16/2010 8:27:36 AM

^ as a matter of fact, they are

6/16/2010 9:02:39 AM

I know a lot of people on here are excited about getting this bigger trash can for recycling, but it is pretty much shitty for paper recyclers. This idea of having each home with it's own trash can is called single stream recycling. Instead of having paper separated from everything else, you just jam it all together.

While it may be great for the homeowner, trust me it sucks for paper recyclers as we end up with significantly more plastic and glass showing up in our operation that eventually wrecks our equipment and goes to a landfill anyway.

The reason the city and recyclers like it is it increases their total intake of "recyclables", but unfortunately the separation processes to remove the glass and plastic are not fool proof and if the paper is wet, then it makes it very difficult to thoroughly clean the "trash" from the paper.

I deal with it everyday and it sucks. Every one of our recycled paper suppliers (furnish as we call it) that has gone to single stream brings in contaminated crap that we either reject and send to a boiler to be burned or we go ahead and process it and eventually end up with more rejects to the landfill and damage to our screening equipment.

Also recycling glass is pretty much a huge waste of resources unless you are sorting it by color. The reason why is that the glass gets broken and become small fragments that are hard to process and then hard to separate by color. The recycling facilities that I have visited, most just segregate the glass as best they can and then haul it off to a landfill. Sometimes it is used as landfill cover, but usually it just ends up where it would have had you not recycled it in the first place.

Also glass is horrible in industrial equipment like pumps and pipes as it just beats down on the metal until it starts leaking and then you must replace/patch the damaged areas costing money, time, resources. If you feel like you must recycle your glass, please find a place like those containers they used to have on campus where you can separate by color. Most glass makers will take a single color stream, but very few will take a mixed stream. Also the recyclers of glass pretty much always lose money on glass because no one will pay much for it and they have to pay to have it transported and it landfilled. What is crazy about all of this is that some cities, I believe Raleigh is one, will not allow any glass to go to a landfill, so it must be hauled to some podunk landfill elsewhere at higher transportation.



[Edited on June 16, 2010 at 9:39 AM. Reason : k]

6/16/2010 9:38:40 AM

^Raleigh already had single stream. They didn't separate anything when they picked up the small bins. They would just pick it up and dump it in the bin on the side of the truck then would eventually dump the bins from both sides of the truck into the main container in the middle.

6/16/2010 10:45:45 PM

^^ While I appreciate your concerns, it sounds like a problem that the industry needs to tackle to me. How hard can it really be to separate glass/metal from paper?

6/16/2010 10:51:10 PM

we live in Graham and I wish that our local recycling program would:
(a) Switch to the rolling carts rather than the small hand-held bins (I grew up in Greensboro where they've had carts since I was in high school, so recycling in Graham makes me feel like I've gone back in time). They're easier to use, hold a lot more, and protect the cardboard, magazines, newspapers, etc. from getting rained on (which seems to happen every other Tuesday night when the recycling goes to the curb).
(b) Accept plastics other than 1s and 2s. Majority of the plastic containers we throw in the trash are 4s and 5s. We could waste/pollute much less if we could recycle all the plastics. Don't most recycling programs accept all numbers now? I know Greensboro does.

6/17/2010 12:07:24 AM

^^^As this man can attest, they just throw your recycling in the landfill anyway. I'm just happy we'll have double the trash cans!

6/17/2010 12:21:32 AM

We have rolling recycling carts here in Wendell that are about half the size of the full size trash rolling carts.

Wish I could switch them around though cause we recycle pretty much everything.

6/17/2010 12:59:51 AM

Quote :

"Accept plastics other than 1s and 2s."

Quote :

"Accept plastics other than 1s and 2s."

Quote :

"Accept plastics other than 1s and 2s."

[Edited on June 17, 2010 at 1:13 AM. Reason : ]

6/17/2010 1:13:06 AM

It'd be nice if they went to a more coordinated separation system. At least in downtown or high population density areas. Granted, I don't know what NCSU is doing, but on campus in the dorms at the least, and in big apartment complexes, they could easily have big bins where people sort their own recyclables (i mean, a big bin for glass, big bin for aluminum, big bin for paper, etc.). For the recyclers, it'd be convenient and help them work more efficiently and save their processing equipment. For the peeps, it's like what, an extra 2 mins of your week to do that?

So,... do they do this already, on campus? If not, why?

6/17/2010 2:59:21 AM

^ why should the consumer sort their own recyclables? i've been to several of the recycling plants in the southeast, including the one that wake county uses...it automatically sorts everything on its own

6/17/2010 7:34:12 AM

^^ I have lived 4 different apartment complexes and only 1 of them had recycling bins available for residents to use. That was Melrose Place back in 2003-04.
When I lived at UT there weren't any recycling bins for residents. It would be great if more apts/dorms would provide bins.

^ Neither my roommate nor I had any problem sorting our own recycling. Probably b/c we were smart enough to sort them when we threw them away (we had separate bins for glass, plastic, cans) rather than have to stand at the community bin sorting them after the fact.

[Edited on June 17, 2010 at 8:20 AM. Reason : ]

6/17/2010 8:18:49 AM

Quote :

"Really? REALLY?!? What...is your house 100 square feet?"

Yeah like I said our bin is full EVERY week. So if its full every week, and we have an overflow of recycleables one week it does no good to keep it in the house (as you suggest) as there's no room in the bin the next week. We're not gonna keep a rolling supply of recycleables in the house with the hope that "one day" there will be extra space in the bin.

6/17/2010 8:24:41 AM

^^ oh, i realize it's not hard...i did it for years

my point is that it's unnecessary...the sorting facilities are actually pretty sophisticated and handle the sorting pretty well

[Edited on June 17, 2010 at 8:25 AM. Reason : carats]

6/17/2010 8:25:08 AM

^^
And it hasn't occurred to you to:

...simply put the extras in a box and put them next to the recycle bins at the street? (they'll take 'em)

...or request an additional bin for $5? (I have 3 of them)

...or put the extras in your neighbors bin? (if there's room)

...or even take the recyclables yourself? (like many others do)

No. You throw them away. (Fuck you.)

It's already illegal to throw away aluminum cans, and since October, it's also illegal to throw away plastic bottles.
What's your address, by the way? (I promise not to turn you in *fingers crossed*)

6/17/2010 8:55:29 AM

^^ while that may be true, according to...oh I forgot (an earlier post) ...ill-sorted items jam up/damage machinery sometimes..

I wonder if the sorting equipment got good (read: was made to be very sophisticated) because they really wanted a fancy sorting machine, or if it got good because people were never required to really sort their stuff much.

if the user/customer sorts things, that's one step of efficiency there.. I'd venture.

6/17/2010 9:19:45 AM

Quote :

"ill-sorted items jam up/damage machinery sometimes"

very rarely, and it has less to do with the "ill-sorted items" and much more to do with materials that are not recyclable in the first place

Quote :

"if the user/customer sorts things, that's one step of efficiency there"

irrelevant...if sorting were required, MANY fewer people would recycle because they don't want to sort it and so the overall amount would be greatly reduced...if sorting were optional, you'd still have to have sorting machines to handle the recyclables of those people who didn't do it, at which point you're in the situation we are in now

6/17/2010 9:27:46 AM

^^^before you go all vigilante on me just know its only a few cardboard boxes maybe once a month...not boxes and boxes of aluminum cans

6/17/2010 9:31:43 AM

^^ see that's a problem I see with how things are. Sometimes people can be so resistant to doing the little things in life.

like putting grocery carts back. Here, they're locked together and you have to put in a 10cent coin (basically) to unlock your cart (10cents does more here than it does in the U.S.), and so of course people want their change back and so they go and put their cart back. Granted, they have an incentive....

But I just don't see why people are so resistant to a few little things here and there, like sorting. I don't disagree that people would probably not sort if they had to (and would therefore probably throw more away), it's just sad that this is the case.

[Edited on June 17, 2010 at 9:33 AM. Reason : stop posting so fast, PEOPLE!]

6/17/2010 9:33:13 AM

^ oh, i agree with you...aldi brought over the european idea of responsibility being tied to money with their 25¢ cart "rental" and i think it works out great...also, bring your own grocery bags or pay for new ones, it's up to the customer

i sorted my recycling for years and i had no problem with it...i still causes me to pause when i put cardboard in with glass and plastic and metal, but since it doesn't matter...

6/17/2010 9:37:13 AM

^ perhaps we need to take some cues from the airline industry.. start charging people in order to change their habits.

6/17/2010 9:50:25 AM

I seem to recall something about a ban on free plastic grocery bags here, either bring your own, get paper for free, or pay for plastic. But I can't recall where, and whether it was a proposed bill or actually a law. It would be good if they did so though.

Quote :

""Residents and collectors should find carts easier to move than bins. The majority of the city will be serviced by fully automated trucks, which means the driver won't get out of the cab. He will be protected from wind, rain and intense sun.""

Durham puzzles me on this one. Shortly after I moved there, they went from the open recycling bins to the big wheeled carts, like for trash. And yet, their recycling and trash trucks are all still two-man operations--there is a guy who rides around on the back of the truck and wheels the bins up to the back, where an arm grabs them and dumps them into the truck, after which the dude puts them back at the curb. Maybe it's just a matter of not wanting to buy a new fleet, but it seems like the single-operator side arm trucks would save a lot of $$$. Of course it would also create unemployment, but it's not the city's responsibility to employ as many citizens as possible.

6/17/2010 10:11:07 AM

Quote :

"The majority of the city will be serviced by fully automated trucks"

Speaking of this, Raleigh sent me a thing about how in order for the trucks to pick up these new carts, they have to be five feet away from everything, including the curb, which would basically result in my cart being directly in the middle of the street. Not sure how this is going to work out.

6/17/2010 1:06:08 PM

That had to be badly worded. I'm guessing (since I do not live in Raleigh, but have experience with the automated trucks Greensboro has used since the early 90's) that they have to be 5 feet away from anything at the curb (mailboxes, parked cars, fire hydrants, each other), not 5 feet away from the curb itself. Perhaps they meant 5 feet from the end of a curb so they're not placed too close to intersections or driveway cuts.

6/17/2010 3:53:28 PM

Dont listen to that guy. Follow your gut feeling.

6/17/2010 4:28:20 PM

HOLY CRAP BRING THE F****** CARTS ALREADY

8/24/2010 3:22:35 PM

^

8/24/2010 4:51:00 PM

^^

8/24/2010 5:27:53 PM

is there anything online with a map and/or outline of when different areas will be getting their bins?

because i'm really sick of these tiny, useless green boxes

8/24/2010 5:29:00 PM

In other news, the old bins are great for attracting flies to your porch.

8/24/2010 5:40:59 PM

No shit. I hate how small are recycling bin is. It fills up two days after recycling day

8/24/2010 5:53:23 PM

Quote :

"Extra Recycling Carts Two sizes recycling carts are available. Raleigh Recycling provides each single family or town home with one 95 or 65 gallon sized roll cart to participate in the recycling program. The recycling program is transitioning from the small 18 gallon recycling bins to the 95 gallon roll carts. You may only get a roll cart if your neighborhood has been transitioned over. Read about the change by clicking the link below called "Raleigh Recycling has BIG News". Buy a Garbage Cart by Mail To purchase a roll cart, send a check for $42 for a 65 gallon or $48 for a 95 gallon cart to: City of Raleigh Revenue Services – 26 P.O. Box 590 Raleigh, NC 27602-0590. Be sure to include a note stating that you wish to buy a recycling cart and the size (65 or 95 gallon). Include your name, phone number and the address where you would like the recycling cart delivered. Once payment has been received, Solid Waste Services will deliver the recycling cart to the address specified in the request. Buy a Recycling Cart by Phone To purchase a recycling cart over the phone using VISA or MasterCard, call Solid Waste at 919-996-6890. Other Ways to Purchase a Recycling Cart Payment for recycling carts may be made in person at the following location: Avery C. Upchurch Municipal Complex.222 W. Hargett St., 1st Floor Revenue Services lobby. 919.996.3200, Monday-Friday, 8:30 am- 5:00 pm."

http://raleighnc.gov/home/content/SolidWaste/Articles/Purchase.html

I bet if I send in a check they will bring one even though I am not supposed to have one yet....only problem is spending $42 on something they are going to bring for free anyway. I bet if they actually did some research they would realize that more beer is consumed in SW Raleigh and therefore we should get the new carts first.

8/24/2010 6:15:00 PM