Do they really recycle the items?
 

Hello, I just bought a home in the villages and I come from a very socially and environmentally progressive part of the country and we have recycled for 30 years. I have dutifully separated my trash from my recycle, used the appropriate bags etc.
My neighbors told me: " its all a joke and they just throw the recycle in the same place as the garbage"......
Is this true?
Can any Villagers that have lived in the Villages inform me it they truely recycle our materials we separate into bags for them?

Thanks,
Sue:wave:

Heck, we must be from the same town.....Welcome! :clap2:

If it is too hot to go outside today and you need something to occupy your mind, here are some interesting trashy reads: Energy-from-Waste*Facility - Covanta

Overview of Costly Lake County Municipal Garbage Contract - Lake County Fiscal Rangers

Lake County task force presents recommendations on garbage to commissioners - Orlando Sentinel

I can't imagine they would run a separate truck with all the expense involved if it were not being recycled. It's funny some complain that the Developer is making money from our recycled trash and others complain it's not really being recycled.
I cannot verify what happens to our trash but I believe it is truly recycled.

Two separate trucks come to my street every week. The recycle material is shipped to a single stream recycling facility. Even the abominable clear plastic bags are sorted and recycled there in a mostly automated operation. The regular trash does NOT go to a landfill. It is shipped to any one of several trash burning power plants.

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You are not an unpaid employee for recycling anymore than you are for garbage because you have to properly bag it and take it to the curb. If we wanted to pay the costs involved, we could leave the garbage next to the house or garage, but society decides what is a reasonable effort for individuals to make in order to make the operation run as efficiently as possible. Likewise for recycling, it is more efficient to keep them separate from garbage because of contamination. You could also think of it as you ARE being paid to place recyclables separately, in that your taxes would otherwise be higher. The money the contractor makes on selling recyclables reduces the amount he has to charge the municipality. Personally, I think the sooner we get to sending nothing to landfills, the better off future generations will be.

So you think there are no cons to recycling? Google it. There are pros and cons to almost everything. Right now in Florida recycling is a choice. I put out bundled newspapers and boxes because that makes sense to me. Plastic bottles placed in a plastic bag doesn't make sense to me.

Just on that basis alone, more than half of my stuff would have been tossed.

Most of my larger containers had labels so they would have been tossed too.

At least one of my big containers had a label and had contained a poison-herbicide so that would have been tossed.

At most I only have one (dark green) glass bottle per month and it has a label on the front and back. I don't drink soda etc. so there are no alum cans. My steel-cut oats comes in cardboard but I only have about one or two per month and they will break down in a land fill.

Of that one bag, that took me several months to fill, there might have been only one or two items that they could use. So I'm not going to feel bad about not recycling.

Here's an idea: If in the future I have an item that seems worthy of recycling I might just put it out by itself with no bag. As a matter of fact, I just remembered, I did that once and it worked.

I happen to agree with much of what you say. At least when living in Minneapolis area the waste companies discounted your bill if you agreed to recycle.

In my home town recycling got to be so anal that they were demanding that residents separate bottles from cans, from plastic from paper and demanding that residents pull the labels off of cans and flatten them. Waste management had so many designated days for certain pick ups that they issued a calendar so residents knew what to place at the curb. and in specially colored bins

It infuriated me because my parents were not in the best of health and to go through all of this nonsense in the middle of winter

Yes, I remember, those were the good ol' days! :)

Right! Some of them have called us petty, small-minded and shameful.

Yes, it's "trash-talk". :)

Perhaps they could start the Church of Latter Day Recycling. :)