Why is it that frozen food boxes aren’t recyclable with paperboard at the Drop-off Center? Those boxes look exactly the same as cereal boxes.

Signed,
Confused

Dear Rosie,
I see that EcoCycle is collecting "Commingled Containers" at all the Drop-off Centers and in all the curbside programs. Doesn’t mixing all these containers together make it a lot harder for you to recycle them, since you’ll have to separate them before they go to market? Wasn’t it better for EcoCycle when the public did the separating?

Signed,
Dorothy

Well, yes, in a way it was easier for materials to come in completely "source separated"-as we say in the biz. Less sorting on our part does mean lower processing costs. However, there are disadvantages to a fully separated system that stand in the way of recycling’s progress. For one, you can’t collect as many materials from the curb or from Drop-off Centers if you have to keep them separated. In order to collect from the curb all the items included in "commingled containers" you’d have to have four or five different sections in the truck-and that would be in addition to all the sections you’d have to have for paper! Different sections fill up at different rates, multiple dividers waste a lot of space, and you’d need one mighty long truck to have enough sections.

What’s more, one of the hindrances to getting people to recycle is the inconvenience of separating materials at home and finding storage space for a bazillion different categories of recyclables. Convenience is the key to getting 100% recycling participation, so the future of waste diversion includes more commingling, not less. Picture a world where all you do is sort your discards into "wet" and "dry" (compostables and recyclables). That’s where we’re going next! Of course, recyclers can still help us out by making sure they include only the materials listed in the commingled container guidelines, and by carefully following those guidelines.

Dear Rosie,
I went to the Drop-off Center in my town where EcoCycle is now collecting "Commingled Containers" and all the containers get mixed together in one bin. The sign on the box said, "Please avoid breaking glass." Why is that, and what if I’m the first to recycle in an empty bin? The glass is very likely to break. The glass box didn’t used to have a sign like this on it.

Signed,
Shattered in Lyons

You’re right. Used to be, when glass was separated by color, breaking it was not a problem. In fact, it used to be a popular anger-release activity to fling those bottles into the bin and hear them smash to bits.

Unfortunately for the angry or destructive among us, breaking glass is now a bad thing for recycling. Here’s why: At the new Boulder County Recycling Center, containers are brought in mixed together and then separated and prepared for market. They initially go through an automatic sort system where lighter items like plastic and aluminum are separated from the heavier glass items. Glass must then be sorted by hand and separated into the different colors. As you can imagine, little shards of glass are not easily sorted so the glass goes over a screen to sift out dirt, pebbles and little glass pieces that are too small to sort. These little pieces become unrecyclable. Of course, breakage happens (that’ll be the next bumper sticker), but the best way to help avoid breakage is to take that anger we used to release by breaking glass, and turn it on a plastic gallon milk jug or liter pop bottle. STOMP on those plastic bottles, and they become a cushion for the glass! (Fully inflated bottles just balloon to the top of a pile.) That way we can have our unbroken glass and our anger management, too. Isn’t that beautiful?