Like others, our county collects and processes the ‘recyclables’ at great cost.
Then sorts through them at the expensive Recycling Center where very little is actually recycled.
(mostly aluminum cans that were previously recycled by little old ladies and kids at no cost to the county)
Then the county loads most of it back on trucks and drives it to the “Solid Waste Disposal Center” where it goes through another sorting process.
There a small amount of it is actually recycled by shredding it into compost and mulch.
Then the large remainder is trucked to the landfill along with other useless garbage.
The largest impact of the recycling program is to create more busywork government jobs, wear out more vehicles and burn up a lot of gasoline and diesel fuel driving garbage from here to there to there.
...largest impact of the recycling program is to create more busywork government jobs,...
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Initially, recycling programs were funded via Federal grants. Every such grant mandates an administrator. In my area, those grants administrators make $20,000 per grant.