LOL someone needs a dictionary to explain the word recycling.

That's great. You won't have to personally deliver the recycling now.

Scoops never had to up their game because they were the only game in town. I hope you spread the word about the new company....maybe even suggest they "litter" your area with flyers advertising they recycle. If they get enough business Scoops will have to take notice.

Yay for you....no more trips to the recycling center 25 miles away!

Is it too cynical of me to ask that the new company actually show proof that they pull out the recyclables? Scoops is going to have to do something to retain their business once word gets out. I am certainly glad that your son found out about this and now you won't have to go to all that extra trouble, like we do around here. Our place is only 15 miles away, though, ha!

It's a wonder that there are still so many areas that don't have separated refuse collection. In many places the collection companies operate with a city or county-granted service contract. In such cases, the processing of recyclables can be required as a condition of the contract. I know it is in my area, we've had separate containers for yard waste-recyclables-general garbage as long as I can remember.

That will be so much more convenient for you, I'm glad you found it available.

We've had single stream here for a while now - with pickup every other week. I didn't mind the sorting, but when we were required to sort, we were living where outside space between our house and the lane behind where the truck would pick up was narrow, those multiple containers a little bit in the way.

I like the single stream better, but ours won't accept glass. Glass has to be delivered to the recycle center - and luckily I have very little to take, its a very occasional trip.

California is much better about these things, and that probably goes for some other states as well. PA is lagging. The "new" company has actually been in our county and surrounding counties for years, mostly in the larger communities. I believe they have a contract with our county seat, although I'm not 100% sure about that.

Another nice thing is that they supply both the recycling can and the trash can. I'm not sure what I'll do with my four heavy-duty plastic trash containers. I'm sure we can find a use for them in the barn if I can clean them out sufficiently. Big "if."

That is great news. You will love, love, love single stream recycling. We got big green bins in my town for the recyclables. Until then we had to just use those rectangular open bins and everybody could see how many bottles of wine you drank that week. lol

Susan - that is really good news. Now you'll probably get a chuckle out of this - but I had to go to the Post Office this morning to mail our taxes and I remembered to pick up a 'Flat Rate' box so that I could send you some of the paper bags that I've been hoarding for you.

Milford, PA used to have a recycling center right next to the township building but they discontinued it a few years ago because it was costing them money. There are now 3 different companies that will collect single stream recycling in that part of Pike County . When we visit there now I see that most of our neighbors are recycling. I wonder what they have to pay?

Here in NJ it's free - the county picks up the recycling every other week. But here, as in many other municipalities it's the law that you have to recycle.

You will really enjoy having the single stream. I can just see your grandson now asking if Granny has any cans to go into the bucket!

Maire, I'll be paying $31/month, which is the same as I pay for the other service w/o recycling.

What will you do with all those paper bags now? I'll miss my shipments! You've been such a considerate supplier. I got my hair cut yesterday. We'll have to have lunch soon so I can whine about it. :-)

That's great news. I love having single stream recycling. It makes recycling a reasonable proposition for most people.

What is single-stream recycling? We have blue box pickup.....glass, paper, aluminum, that hard plastic that toys etc come in, cardboard, boxboard.....pretty much everything.

And green bin for compostables. And garbage. Everything gets picked up weekly.

Jasdip - Usually single stream recycling means that all recyclable can be put in one container with no sorting. it gets sorted at the recycling plant - using magnets, machinery and manual labor.

My city has curbside single stream recycling: Plastics 1-7, glass, cardboard, paper, even foil now. Trash goes in a separate container, but there's really not much left since so much recycles and I compost. Leaves go into my compost bin, or the yard waste barrels, which gets made into compost by the city.

Enjoy your newly slightly simplified life, Alisande. I love it when things like this happen.

Thanks for that explanation, Spicey. I thought it meant that you just dumped all the recyclables in with your trash. That service is not offered around here, the only companies that pick up trash around here are small locally owned, and I don't think they do any recyclables at all. We don't pay for trash pick up.we take all of our stuff to the county crusher whenever we go to Berryville. We probably spend about two dollars a month for our trash and recycling is free.

You have to pay? Whoa. Garbage and recycling (except glass, I admit) are free here. Well, unless you need more than two bins per home (we have three adults, a teenager, and one toddler. We could put it out every other week and be enough). All of it at the curb. They'll even pick up yard waste at the curb for free. I'm happy you found something more convenient. I canNOT believe they train their workers to say sure, we pick up recycling, in the same bag. Really? Wonder how often people question it? Amazing.

That is great news for you, Alisande! I guess I have been spoiled. We have curbside recycling and our little city gets tens of thousands of dollars back each year! Our cost is part of our taxes, so I don't pay anything per month. Like others have said, with so much getting recycled, there is very little other trash. It's a great system.

Rob.....Free? Sheesh. I pay $33.24 monthly for garbage pickup every week, recycle every other week. Just about $400/year. For yard waste, we're on our own. We've always had a pickup (truck), a family farm available where DH can burn larger branches and things, and access to take other 'green organic' trimmings that would take too long to compost into the woods where they blend right in and decompose with other logging or road building debris.

New rule within the last few months here, if either a garbage can or recycle can should be so full the lid won't close, we're charged extra. They charge in increments by how far open the refuse is holding the lid....2" open and 'this' much more, 6" open and 'that' much more...

I haven't had to test the lid open rule. Couple of phone calls after entertaining or a mega cleaning/purge and friends, extended family can always find one of us to share our cans that week ;)

We have single stream recycling once a week, the waste disposal and recycling fees are bundled with the water bill.

Dang! I feel for you.

I pay $22.50 a month for garbage pickup, and they used to pick up recycle stuff once a month, but now we have these huge box-car size bins only about two blocks away, and it is single stream, except for flattened cardboard. I love having that, as I would sometimes forget with the once-a -month recycle pick up, and that would be another month away for me!

Our pickup cost for garbage and single stream recycling is included in lot rent in our Sr. park. You will love it and think of all the gas you will save

Wow...you all pay a lot for garbage pickup. I live in suburban DC and garbage is done by private companies. I pay $8 a month for once a week pickup. My only complaint is that we have garbage trucks on our street almost everyday because people use different companies. Seems so inefficient and wasteful to me. Wish it was municipal.

Recycling is free from the county. They supply the bins.....one big closed bin for paper...a small, open bin for bottles and cans. Single stream would be even better.

Our garbage is contracted through the city. We've had recycling pick up since the 70's. We now have single stream recycling. Two carts, one for garbage and another for trash. They also pick up yard waste you can leave in the street and oil fillers and used motor oil. Right now we are billed every other month. This summer we will no longer get billed as it will be billed to our taxes. Contract down't run out for many years so fees are not likely to rise.

No such thing as FREE pickup Rob333. Someone is paying for the equipment, the workers, the dump fees etc. If you are not being billed then you are paying through property taxes. If you rent then your rent cost is most likely adjusted to reflect those costs of doing business by your landlord.

A bit off topic , one problem we have are recycling thieves. They come around and rustle through our carts on trash set-out night. I have chased quite a few off. One actually came in the and entered my neighbors back yard. I caught one coming up on the property before and chased them away. They don't seem to be bothering mine anymore. I come home late some nights and I stop and stare them down 'til they leave. Tried to get the neighbors involves but other than the one next door whose place was entered they don't seem to understand that it is a real problem and it is theft. The city keeps our rates low through the money gained by recycling.

What do the recycling thieves want? Are they looking for scrap metal to sell?

In this day and age, with the condition of our earth and oceans, not recycling should be illegal! I really cannot believe that some communities do not recycle. So glad you have a more convenient solution, but I sincerely admire the extra effort you have been making to keep this beautiful planet clean(er).

Thanks, Sleeperblues. I agree it's pretty shocking that recycling isn't mandatory. Shocking and infuriating, because so many people won't bother even thinking about it unless they're forced to.

Garbage thieves, is that really something you need to spend time thinking about? If you've discarded items, you've discarded them.

Different people see different things in recycling. To me, the issue is neither moral nor environmental, but rather it's economic. When the scale is large enough (large cities and communities), there's significant value that can be recovered in processing and sorting the portion of waste that can be profitably sold for reuse.

In smaller or more remote communities, it may very well be that costs can't be recovered by doing so and absent public support to pay extra to process the waste (which would probably be unlikely in most cases), recycling wouldn't happen. If so, so be it.

Our pick-up is "free". Actually it isn't, we pay for it through our property taxes but there is only one contractor who does it. For some municipalities it will be municipal workers and for others it is contracted out. We have 3 trucks that come each week on the same day. One picks up trash, another one picks up garden waste and food waste( which go in separate bins) and the third picks up newspaper, cardboard and the rest(no glass) which are all in separate bins.

Single stream would be nice but I suspect that it's cheaper to have me do the sorting than a unionized worker.

Starting in September we will be fined if we don't recycle food waste, I don't think that will be getting enforced any time soon. It will be up to the people who pick up the waste to do the reporting and I doubt they care enough to be that fussy.

I don't sort food waste in the summer because it attracts fruit flies so if someone has any suggestions to deter that I'm looking for ideas. I can't keep the garbage outside because of bears so that isn't an option and I'm not keeping our food compost in the fridge cause that's just yucky. I was wondering if there is something I can just put in the container to deter them.

I'm curious about food waste . . . we compost our fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, etc., so I can understand if they're doing something similar on a larger scale. But what other kinds of food waste do they want, and what do they do with it?

A bucket with a good lid might help with the fruit flies. Bears get into our garbage outside, so I'm not a good one to advise you on that. :-)

This isn't a popular opinion. I can see why plenty of people don't recycle. Recycling doesn't always make sense financially or otherwise. Recycling often uses more resources than it is worth to recycle the items. For instance, it makes more sense to melt down aluminum cans than it does to bleach used paper to make it into new paper. Glass and plastic aren't that easy to reuse or repurpose or upcycle.

Instead of recycling, it would make more sense to cut down on one time use items such as glass mayonnaise jars and plastic bags and reuse items many times over and cut down on extra packaging.

Our city was a pioneer in the blue box recycling decades ago. They introduced the green bin composting but it hasn't gone over at all. People are refusing to separate their compostable refuse from garbage. It's costing the city millions to get this to work.

We on the other hand took to it gladly. We got a green bin from the city, it's not given to apartments, but the home owners all got one. We actually have 2 green bins that we use religiously.

Everything from paper towels, meat and vegetable food scraps, grease, and kitty litter go in the green bin. I don't do the kitty litter as that would fill them up real fast, but I have, on occasion.

I'm so disappointed that people haven't embraced it, and I've written letters to the editor on that point. People can't be bothered, or think it's gross. I can't see it, the food has to be handled anyway to put somewhere.

"What do the recycling thieves want? Are they looking for scrap metal to sell?"

Cans and bottles (plastic) mostly. Also any metals. They are not individuals. Trucks with high sides built up come through the neighborhood and send the people with carts and bicycles collect for them. It's big business , illegal and unfortunately out of control. These are well organized rings of thieves. Even with the individuals who aren't part of a ring, I also don't want some damn tweaker going through my stuff to buy their drugs.

I don't blame you. I confess I never thought of empty plastic bottles as a hot commodity, but I'm out of that loop.

The CRV (California Redemption Value) is one of most prolific in the US. The original idea behind it was to encourage people to recycle by having them pay a fee for each recyclable container (for example a twelve pack of soda has a 60 cent surcharge). Then they thought people would bring them to recycling centers to get some of their money back. But when the citywide recycling became so easy most people just started tossing it all into the bins. Good for the cities/counties because of the added revenue. Good for the customers because collection fees would stay down.

Then this happened: Recycling Theft

My former neighbor started a high-tech, materials-handling facility, that claims to offer "true single stream disposal". Meaning you put everything in one large receptacle, the haulers bring it all to his facility, and pay a lower $/ton fee than the local city run "dump" charges, his facility then processes all of the material, separating out recyclables, and then transferring the remainder to the city "dump" and paying their higher per ton fee. His promotional material claims that his facility achieves a higher percentage of recycled material than the other processor in that area that offers "single steam recycling" and separate garbage disposal.

When I was remodeling a duplex I own and had a large dumpster in the driveway, a couple of people stopped by to ask whether they could rummage through the dumpster to pull out any metal. My answer was NO, because I didn't want to risk them injuring themselves and suing me. Instead I made an agreement with one of them that I would set any metal waste aside for them to haul away, which seemed like a win-win. I wouldn't have to pay the disposal fee for whatever they took, and they knew enough about where to take it, and how to pre-process it so they could maximize its value. It was especially a win-win, when he offered to remove the entire oil-fired furnace from the low, damp, gross crawlspace, that we were replacing with a heat pump. The HVAC guy wrote up his initial bid including several hundred dollars for its removal and disposal.

watch, I don't pay property taxes since I rent. It's free for me. If I was a homeowner, it'd be a part of my taxes, but not an amount I'd know. I was a homeowner, so I know how it works in my county.

watchme, if this massive criminal activity by the "ring of thieves" you're concerned about is illegal, call the police. I'm somewhat surprised you'd care to give it a second thought- if it's truly a problem, let the people for whom it's a problem deal with it. If they've choosen not to, then indeed, it's not a problem.

The CRV concept (refundable deposits on bottles and cans) was in place LONG before "recycling" as a concept became known. Yes, soda and beer bottles were washed and reused, but I believe the deposit idea was to help reduce trash and litter in public places.

Snidely your attitude (let others deal with it) is a great part of the problem. The police are well aware of the problem but we live in a large city and they simply don't have the manpower. I do call them and report as they ask using the non emergency phone number. There are several pleas by the city to report this. It is against California law. Many cities are having this problem as per the link I left in my above post. The problem is that ignorant people are apathetic. The local online neighborhood "watch" community gets all riled up over a strange car parked for 15 minutes while someone makes a phone call but or a teenager is standing talking to friends on "their" corner They don't get the connection that these are NOT homeless or low income individuals taking a bag of cans for a few dollars. Same mindset that gives a dollar to the scammers who stand at the intersections. It's like feeding cats. Unless the homeowners work together it will continue. Meanwhile I and my next door neighbor will protect our little corner of the world. This has become a highly organized operation. But when I see these lowlifes I chase them off. It brings criminals into the area. Some of these people are paid off in drugs. Many are casing homes for other valuables. The same people who refuse to open their eyes to the scavenger problem are the same ones that are complaining about the uptick in home burglaries and vehicle break-ins.

watchme, thanks for suggesting I'm ignorant and have an attitude.

I disagree with you. That doesn't give me "an attitude", it gives me a different opinion. So long as scavengers don't make a mess, I don't care where my trash goes. There's no reason to give it more than 5 seconds of thought.

If you feel so strongly about it, take your own trash to a recycling center yourself. Then what happens down the street won't affect you and you can ignore the matter from that point forward. You can't control anyone other than yourself, don't try to do more or act like a busybody about it.

If your city's politicians thought it was a problem, the police department would get tasked to address it. They've apparently decided they have more important things to deal with. I'd suggest you do too.

Snidely "Ignorance" is not an attack. It's that you don't understand the scope of the problem nor do you seem to want to educate yourself on the problem.

Obviously you did not take time to read the link I posted explaining it clearly regarding Los Angeles. The same problem exists in most cities that have robust recycling programs in the state. That is why the state enacted laws against the practice. That is why a newer tries to limit how mush "product" can be brought to a recycling center at one time. To say that this theft is not anyone's concern is no different than saying shopping lifting isn't a problem. So you think it's perfectly ethical to look the other way if you observe someone shoplifting? How about breaking into a vehicle to steal ir t's contents. That's a low priority call in my city also. In almost every larger city in fact. The police DO see it as a problem. They simply don't have the manpower. The cities DO see it as a problem. The state sees it as a problem.
California Recycling Theft law

I live in Los Angeles and I don't care who takes my trash. At the moment I'm more concerned about residential housing being converted into weekly vacation rentals ala Airbnb, which is totally against R1 city code. If a mob conglomerate wants to dig through my recycled trash, so be it. No matter who takes it, at least it's getting recycled and that's all I care about. If the city were that concerned about it they'd establish the Trash Police and write tickets. Like the ineffective Water Police. It's against the law? So is texting and driving and they can't control that either. Some things you just have to let go of.