You always come up smelling of roses
In northern Colorado, the trash companies offer trash service with several levels of bins- and one option of bags; you pay for the bags up front, then only use them as needed. I use a small bin. In addition, large recycling bins (with lids) are available FREE to anyone paying for trash service, and they're picked up every other week on trash day.
My recycling bin is usually full every other week, my small trash bin never ends up full- even if I skip a week.
The reason why we aren't paid for recyclables in the US boils down to government subsidies and other kickbacks favoring natural resource extraction as opposed to recycling used materials. Clearly, that makes it a man-made problem.
Those who believe their recycling is wasted are invited to go see for themselves what happens to their recycled trash. It certainly doesn't go to waste here!
Fun fact du jour; the average aluminum soda can requires a similar amount of electricity to manufacture- most of which is the electrolysis from ore- as running your widescreen TV for FOUR HOURS. Recycling aluminum saves 95% of this.
Americans still throw away enough aluminum IN SODA CANS ALONE to rebuild the entire commercial airline fleet... every year.
By contrast, BMW has joined with other German carmakers to develop ways to recycle the ENTIRE car, seat cushions, fluids, wiring, dashboards and all.
Those who think it doesn't matter are unaware of the massive- and heavily subsidized- destruction of natural resources behind their beer cans.
Casting pearls...
